Patent ID: 8223148

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: generating an irradiance cache that stores an indirect irradiance value for each of a subset of surface points in a scene, wherein the indirect irradiance values are calculated in accordance with a ray tracing technique; for each surface point in the scene for which an indirect irradiance value has not been stored to the irradiance cache: determining if there are enough nearby surface points with indirect irradiance values stored in the irradiance cache to perform interpolation or extrapolation, wherein said determining comprises applying a cosine weighted distance between a particular surface point and the current surface point to determine if the particular surface point is a nearby surface point to the current surface point, wherein the cosine weighted distance is determined according to a maximum form factor of the particular surface point, wherein the maximum form factor is an indication of influence of geometry of the scene on lighting at the particular surface point; if there are enough nearby surface points to perform interpolation or extrapolation, interpolating or extrapolating multiple indirect irradiance values of the nearby surface points to generate an indirect irradiance value for the current surface point; if there are not enough nearby surface points to perform interpolation or extrapolation, calculating an indirect irradiance value for the current surface point in accordance with the ray tracing technique; storing the indirect irradiance value for the current surface point to the irradiance cache; and rendering the scene in accordance with the stored indirect irradiance values.