Patent ID: 7268789

Claim:
A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for reflection space image based rendering of an object at an interactive frame rate, the computer-executable instructions performing: loading a sphere geometry for a global set of source viewing vectors; and loading a global set of source radiance environment maps; for a frame, computing a destination viewing vector that points along a viewpoint of a current frame; determining a number of source viewing vectors in said global set of source viewing vectors which are nearest to the destination viewing vector computed in said computing step: warping each source radiance environment map in a set of source radiance environment maps associated with the number of source viewing vectors nearest the destination viewing vectors to create a destination radiance environment map associated with a destination viewing vector, each source radiance environment map including values representative of pre-integrated total reflected radiance for surface orientations of the object; whereby the object can be rendered with texture environment mapping from the destination radiance environment map without performing integration of a lighting equation; and blending each warped source radiance environment map at a respective weight, and accumulating the blended warped source radiance environment maps in a buffer to create the destination radiance environment map.