Patent ID: 6753875
Filing Date: 2004-06-22
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
A system for rendering a digital image, comprising:a texture map data structure representing a texture map of a plurality of texels, said texture map data structure comprising a plurality of coefficients to define a respective lighting function for each texel of said texture map; a modulation element for defining a range of modulation values corresponding to first input values, wherein said modulation values includes a non-zero minimum modulation value to define an ambient light level; and a rendering algorithm for applying said texture map to a surface, said rendering algorithm determining scalar quantities associated with orthogonal vectors on said surface, applying said scalar quantities to a respective lighting function of said texture map data structure to calculate a gray-level value, determining a dot product of a vector normal to said surface and an illumination vector, obtaining a respective modulation value from said modulation element using said dot product as a second input value, multiplying said respective gray-level value by said modulation value, and rendering a respective pixel using said multiplied gray-level value.