Patent ID: 6342885
Filing Date: 2002-01-29
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
An apparatus for illuminating samples in a volume rendering pipeline, comprising:a gradient magnitude modulation unit producing an opacity, emissive, diffuse and specular modulation factor from a gradient magnitude vector of each sample; a reflectance mapping unit producing a diffuse intensity and a specular intensity from the gradient magnitude vector of each sample and an eye vector of the volume; a first arithmetic logic unit combining an opacity of each sample with the corresponding opacity modulation factor to generate modulated opacities; a second arithmetic logic unit combining an emissive coefficient with the emissive modulation factor of each sample to generate modulated emissive coefficients; a third arithmetic logic unit combining the diffuse intensity with the diffuse modulation factor of each sample to generate modulated diffuse intensities; a fourth arithmetic logic unit combining the specular intensity with the specular modulation factor of each sample to generate modulated specular intensities; and a lighting unit applying the modulated emissive coefficient, modulated diffuse and specular intensities to color components of the samples to illuminate the volume sample.