Patent ID: 7692647

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: analyzing, static image frames of video content depicting real rain to identify various sizes and shapes of real rain; automatically modeling, in real-time, images of real rain and associated information to generate synthetic rain particles, wherein the images and associated information are automatically modeled for blending with respective ones of multiple frames of image content, and wherein automatically modeling further comprises: for each frame of the multiple frames and for each sample raindrop represented by at least a subset of the images: generating a rain mask for the sample raindrop, the rain mask identifying portion(s) of the frame that will be shaded by the sample raindrop, the rain mask being generated from alpha values defining opacity of the sample raindrop, the alpha values having been modeled to 3-D coordinate space of the frame; creating a shaded rain mask from the rain mask to specify color and intensity distribution of the sample raindrop, wherein creating the shaded rain mask further comprises determining the color and intensity distribution based on pre-computed radiance transfer values and a transfer function of a sphere model of the sample raindrop, the sphere model having a refractive index of water; and rendering, in real-time, the synthetic rain particles across respective frames of video content.