Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Yaohua Hu

Baining Guo

Heung-Yeung Shum

Xin Tong

Gang Chen

Kun Zhou

Stephen S Lin

Bruno C Silva

Hongbo Jiang

Chen Li

Alex Pfaffe

A technique to reduce the size of a light map using variable sampling is provided. A surface is identified and divided into various regions in accordance with the frequencies associated with the regions. Different sampling rates for lighting information are allocated to the regions based on the different frequencies associated with the regions. The lighting information is re-sampled in accordance with the allocated sampling rates into a light map.

Light map compression

Pre-computed shadow fields are described. In one aspect, shadow fields for multiple entities are pre-computed. The shadow fields are pre-computed independent of scene configuration. The multiple entities include at least one occluding object and at least one light source. A pre-computed shadow field for a light source indicates radiance from the light source. A pre-computed shadow field for an occluding object indicates occlusion of radiance from the at least one light source.

Pre-computed shadow fields

Systems and methods are presented for real-time realistic river modeling. In one implementation, when provided with the physical features of a modeled terrain, the systems and methods described herein automatically determine a watercourse route in relation to the terrain and calculate river borders. The systems and methods then calculate a surface structure for the river between the borders and map texture coordinates to the surface structure. The systems and methods apply textures at the texture coordinates to provide an animated, view-dependent representation of wave geometries for the modeled water surface including reflection, refraction, and Fresnel effects.

River modeling

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Beijing, China

Yaohua Hu