Lights from highlights and shadows

Pierre Poulin and Alain Fournier Proc. Symposium of 3D Interactive Graphics, March 1992

Abstract

Designing the illumination of a scene is a difficult task because one needs to render the whole scene in order to look at the result. Obtaining the correct lighting effects may require a long sequence of modeling/rendering steps. We propose to use directly the highlights and shadows in the modeling process. By creating and altering these lighting effects, the lights themselves are indirectly modified. We believe this new technique to design lighting is more intuitive and can lead to a reduction of the number of modeling/rendering steps required to obtain the desired image.

BibTeX entry

@Article{Poulin:1992:LHS,
  author =       "Pierre Poulin and Alain Fournier",
  editor =       "David Zeltzer",
  title =        "Lights from highlights and shadows",
  journal =      "Computer Graphics",
  volume =       "25",
  number =       "2",
  pages =        "31--38",
  month =        mar,
  year =         "1992",
  coden =        "CGRADI, CPGPBZ",
  ISSN =         "0097-8930",
  conference =   "held in Boston; 29 March -- 1 April 1992",
  keywords =     "extended light sources, shadow volume, soft shadows,
                 hard shadows, interactive light modeling",
}

Online Version

Postscript available here

Figures

Figure 1: Creating a light by its highlight(GIF, 3K).
Figure 3: Creating a directional light by its shadow(GIF, 5K).
Figure 6: Global view of the modeler(GIF, 62K).
Figure 7: Cone under a triangular light: No convex hull(GIF, 4K).
Figure 8: Cone under a triangular light: Convex hull applied(GIF, 3K).
Figure 9: Cone under a triangular light: Convex hull will filled shadows(GIF, 2K).