Patent ID: 7652666

Claim:
A method performed by a computer system for generating objects for an interactive relighting system, the method comprising: receiving a set of objects at the computer system, each of at least some of the objects being characterized by a set of object parameters including one or more geometric parameters and one or more surface parameters, a surface parameter representing the surface's response to incident illumination; receiving an image plane at the computer system for at least one camera view characterized by a set of camera view parameters, the image plane being subdivided into pixels; executing a set of shading operations for the objects with the computer system to generate surface parameter values for the objects as inputs to an arbitrary desired illumination model; determining with the computer system, for each pixel of the image plane, values representing the object parameters for surface portions of one or more objects projected to that pixel; and generating a stored object representation with the computer system based on storing, for each pixel of the image plane, the respective values representing the object parameters.