Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Ziyad S Hakura

John Michael Snyder

Jerome E Lengyel

Methods and arrangements are provided for real-time rendering of scenes having various light sources and objects having differing specular surfaces. An offline encoder is employed to parameterize images by two or more arbitrary variables allowing view, lighting, and object changes. The parameterized images are encoded as a set of per-object parameterized textures based on shading models, camera parameters, and the scene's geometry. Texture maps are inferred from a ray-tracer's segmented imagery to provide the best match when applied to specific graphics hardware. The parameterized textures are encoded as a multidimensional Laplacian pyramid on fixed size blocks of parameter space. This technique captures the coherence in parameterized animations and decodes directly into texture maps that are easy to load into conventional graphics hardware.

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Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Ziyad S Hakura