378 results about "Global illumination" patented technology

An apparatus and method for real-time volume processing and universal three-dimensional rendering. The apparatus includes a plurality of three-dimensional (3D) memory units; at least one pixel bus for providing global horizontal communication; a plurality of rendering pipelines; at least one geometry bus; and a control unit. The apparatus includes a block processor having a circular ray integration pipeline for processing voxel data and ray data. Rays are generally processed in image order thus permitting great flexibility (e.g., perspective projection, global illumination). The block processor includes a splatting unit and a scattering unit. A method for casting shadows and performing global illumination in relation to light sources includes sweeping a two dimensional array of rays through the volume can also be implemented with the apparatus. A method for approximating a perspective projection includes using parallel projection.

An analytical device including an optically opaque cladding, a sequencing layer including a substrate disposed below the cladding, and a waveguide assembly for receiving optical illumination and introducing illumination into the device. The illumination may be received from a top, a side edge, and a bottom of the device. The waveguide assembly may include a nanoscale aperture disposed in the substrate and extending through the cladding. The aperture defines a reaction cell for receiving a set of reactants. In various aspects, the device includes a sensor element and the illumination pathway is through the sensor element. Waveguides and illumination devices, such as plasmonic illumination devices, are also disclosed. Methods for forming and operating the devices are also disclosed.

A method for estimating the motion between a first image and a second image in a system for creating a panoramic image from a plurality of images taken by a camera, the method comprising the steps of: downsampling a first image in a first direction and in a second direction; downsampling a second image in a first direction and in a second direction; filtering the first and the second image so as to filter out any global illumination changes between the first image and the second image; calculating a first displacement along the first direction between the first downsampled image along the first direction and the second downsampled image along the first direction; and calculating a second displacement along the second direction between the first downsampled image along the second direction and the second downsampled image along the second direction. In an alternate embodiment, a device and computer readable medium corresponding to the above method is described.

The teachings as provided herein relate to a watermark embedded in an image that has the property of being relatively indecipherable under normal light, and yet decipherable under infrared illumination when viewed by a suitable infrared sensitive device. This infrared mark entails, a substrate reflective to infrared radiation, and a first colorant mixture and second colorant mixture printed as an image upon the substrate. The first colorant mixture layer in connection with the substrate has a property of strongly reflecting infrared illumination, as well as a property of low contrast under normal illumination against a second colorant mixture as printed in close spatial proximity to the first colorant mixture pattern, such that the resultant image rendered substrate suitably exposed to an infrared illumination, will yield a discernable image evident as a infrared mark to a suitable infrared sensitive device.

Various methods, apparatuses, and systems in which a digital photography device includes a global shutter to control exposure time, a sensor array, and a flash illumination are described. The global shutter is in the optical path of light going to the sensor. The flash illumination generates a pulsed illumination. The shutter speed of the global shutter during a pre-flash illumination substantially matches the shutter speed during the flash illumination during the taking of a picture using the flash illumination based on the global shutter receiving a trigger signal from a controller.

A method for correcting seismic amplitudes for geometrical artifacts resulting in non-uniform illumination of reflector surfaces. The illumination is calculated for each offset as a function of spatial position. The amplitudes are scaled by a scale factor which may be the reciprocal of the illumination. Data considered to be poor quality due to low illumination may be discarded, and the amplitudes scaled further to compensate for the discarded data.

A compact camera with a compact camera body integrated with a lens, a direct flash module and an indirect flash module. The direct flash unit includes a flash light emission window arranged to project direct illumination in a first direction toward an object to be photographed. The indirect flash unit includes an indirect flash light emission window arranged to project indirect bounce illumination in a second direction off of an indirect reflecting surface to the object. The camera also has a controller that receives a first signal containing information from a first light sensor connected to the direct flash unit, and a second signal containing information from a second light sensor connected to the indirect flash unit. In response to the received first and second signals, the controller selectively adjusts the amount of flash illumination projected from the direct and indirect flash units.

A method for calculating a lighting function for an object to be rendered using a basis function is provided. The method includes calculating a transfer function approximation of the lighting function through a stream processor. A method for presenting lighting characteristics associated with a display object in real-time and a method for determining secondary illumination features for an object to be displayed are also provided. A computer readable medium and a computing device having a graphics processing unit capable of determining lighting characteristics for an object in real time are also included.

A computer-animated scene is shaded by a computing system having an in-core memory and coupled to one or more out-of-core storage devices. The scene is comprised of shading locations on a surface element of an object in the scene. A point cloud representation of the scene is generated. An octree data structure based on the point cloud representation of the scene is generated. To generate the octree data structure, the Morton code for each point in the point cloud representation of the scene is computed. The points are then sorted based on the Morton code, recursively subdivided to find at most a threshold number of nodes, and written to the one or more out-of-core storage devices. The shading locations are then shaded based on the nodes written to the out-of-core storage devices.

A method, program product and system for conducting a ray tracing operation where the rendering compute requirement is reduced or otherwise adjusted in response to a changing vantage point. Aspects may update or reuse an acceleration data structure between frames in response to the changing vantage point. Tree and image construction quality may be adjusted in response to rapid changes in the camera perspective. Alternatively or additionally, tree building cycles may be skipped. All or some of the tree structure may be built in intervals, e.g., after a preset number of frames. More geometric image data may be added per leaf node in the tree in response to an increase in the rate of change. The quality of the rendering algorithm may additionally be reduced. A ray tracing algorithm may decrease the depth of recursion, and generate fewer cast and secondary rays. The ray tracer may further reduce the quality of soft shadows, resolution and global illumination samples, among other quality parameters. Alternatively, tree rebuilding may be skipped entirely in response to a high camera rate of change. Associated processes may create blur between frames to simulate motion blur.

Frames of image data representative of a scene containing deformable geometry subject to global illumination are computed in real-time. Frame animation data is computed for a series of frames representative, in animated sequence, of a scene containing deformable geometry. The frame animation data includes vertex attributes of a control mesh descriptive of the three dimensional surface of graphical elements occurring within the scene. Based on the frame animation data, respective illumination values are computed for the individual polygons of the control mesh to determine the global illumination of the scene. The computation is performed iteratively with respect to each frame set of frame animation data until a qualified convergence of global illumination is achieved. Within each iteration, the respective illumination values are determined based on the frame-to-frame coherent polygon illumination values determined in a prior iteration. Qualified convergence is achieved within the frame-to-frame interval defined by a real-time frame rate.

The teachings as provided herein relate to a watermark embedded in an image that has the property of being relatively indecipherable under normal light, and yet decipherable under infrared illumination when viewed by a suitable infrared sensitive device. This infrared mark entails in combination with at least one distraction pattern, a substrate reflective to infrared radiation, and a first colorant mixture and second colorant mixture printed as an image upon the substrate. The first colorant mixture layer in connection with the substrate has a property of strongly reflecting infrared illumination, as well as a property of low contrast under normal illumination against a second colorant mixture as printed in close spatial proximity to the first colorant mixture pattern, such that the resultant image rendered substrate suitably exposed to an infrared illumination, will yield a discernable image evident as a infrared mark to a suitable infrared sensitive device.

An active sensor a method for optical illumination and detection provides low cost and high-speed optical scanning of bio-arrays, DNA samples / chips, semiconductors, micro-electromechanical systems and other samples requiring inspection or measurement. A plurality of illumination sources forming a parallel multi-pixel array is used to illuminate one or more samples via an imaging system or by placement in close proximity to the samples. The array may be a line array or a two-dimensional array. A plurality of detectors is integrated within the multi-pixel illumination array or provided in a separate array, each detector for detecting optical properties of the sample that results from illumination by one or more associated illumination sources. One detector may be associated with multiple illuminators or one illuminator may be associated with multiple detectors. Filters may be integrated within the illumination path and / or detection paths to provide wavelength and / or polarization discrimination capability and microlenses may also be incorporated within the illumination path and / or detection paths to provide focusing or imaging. The illumination sources may be provided by TFT-LCD devices, diode emitters, organic LEDs (OLEDs), vertical cavity emitting lasers (VCELs) or other light sources that may be integrated to form a high-density illumination matrix. The detectors may be PIN photo-diodes or other suitable detectors that are capable of integration within the illumination matrix.

An external mirror assembly for an automotive vehicle has a shell having an aperture. A mirror is carried by the shell, substantially occluding the aperture. The mirror assembly has a lighting element having an electroluminescent film electrically connected to a triggering device for energizing the film and illuminating the mirror assembly. The triggering device includes first and second switches for generating a series of high and low frequency pulses and a control device connected to each of the switch for triggering each of the switches to illuminate the lighting element in either a flashing or continuous pattern.

The present invention relates to a method and system for foreground segmentation in which frames of a video sequence are analyzed in the transform domain to determine one or more features. The features are used to model the background. The background can be modeled as a single Gaussian model with a mean and variance of the features. A current frame is segmented by determining if one or more features of the current frame analyzed in the foreground domain satisfy a threshold between the background model. The threshold value can be based on the mean and / or variance of features. During the segmentation, the mean and variance can be updated based on previous corresponding values and current features to adaptively update the background model. In one embodiment, the frames are divided into a plurality of blocks. A transform is used to analyze the blocks in the transform domain. For example, the transform can be a discrete cosine transform (DCT). The features can be a DC feature comprising the DC coefficient and an AC feature comprising a weighted sum of the AC coefficients. The weighted sum is determined with weights which are varied to emphasize different aspects of the present invention. Additional processing steps can be used to remove false positives, handle sudden global illumination changes, handle sudden local illumination changes and remove false negatives.

A road illumination system having sensors detecting approaching vehicles and operating thereupon and via a controller switches associated with street lights is provided herein. The system turns street lights off when no vehicles are present and spares thereby electricity. The system activates the street lights groupwise, to supply enough illumination with a minimal amount and complexity of equipment. The system further has an extended ability to identify malfunctioning and exceptional situations, in which is activates the street lights continuously. The system is a distributed wireless one, and may be configured remotely.

A given computer graphics scene may be rendered as a set of triangles. A set of photons may be distributed over the scene, and a number of steps may be performed for each triangle. For each triangle, a list of photons may be constructed. For that triangle, a set of control points may be identified for purposes of determining global illumination. For each control point, a specific illumination estimate may be computed. A kd-tree of the control points of the triangle may be built. An illumination estimate may then be drive for the triangle.

The invention discloses a region-segmentation-based portrait illumination transfer method. An illumination effect on a reference portrait is transferred to a target portrait, so that the target portrait has an illumination effect similar to that of the reference portrait. An illumination effect material database is established, and most of illumination effects in the nature can be approximately fitted. An illumination material which is the most similar to the illumination attribute of the reference portrait and the material attribute of the target portrait is searched from the illumination effect material database for illumination transfer. An edge preserving filter-based transfer method is used for hair and face regions, and a quotient image method is used for shoulder regions. The consistency of the illumination effect is ensured by using global illumination constraints. The method can be widely popularized and applied to application scenarios such as portrait art illumination effect synthesis, interactive digital entertainment and image virtual scene synthesis.

An apparatus and method for improving the brightness of a polarized display at viewing angles off of the vector normal to the display panel. The advantages of the present invention will be most pronounced when employed in applications in which the viewing angle requirements are asymmetric, such as for avionics applications that require cross-cockpit viewability of the display. The present invention overcomes the limitations inherent in earlier designs by introducing a polarization rotation element as part of the display device to rotate the polarization of light from one orientation to another orientation. Through the use of the present invention, the axis in which the angle of sufficient off normal brightness is broadest can be reoriented to an axis that is most ideal for the particular application, thus dramatically improving the overall performance and efficiency of such displays.

The invention discloses a fluorescent wheel. A transmission area adopts a diffusion plate, so that while realizing laser transmission, diffusion can also be realized, thereby achieving a speckle removing effect, saving an extra speckle removing component and improving light processing efficiency of the fluorescent wheel. The invention also discloses a two-color laser source using the fluorescent wheel above. Output of three-primary-color light can be realized through the fluorescent wheel part, and transmitting two-color laser can be subjected to speckle removing. The fluorescent wheel and the two-color laser source are applied to the laser illumination and display field.

The invention discloses a moving object detection method capable of automatically adapting to complex scenes, which comprises the steps of 1) carrying out illumination compensation on a video image; 2) acquiring a background image of each frame of the video image by using a mixed Gaussian background modeling method; 3) acquiring an absolute difference image of each frame by using a background difference method principle; 4) acquiring an optimal segmentation threshold of a gray probability model of each absolute difference image by adopting a maximum entropy segmentation principle; 5) carrying out binarization processing on each absolute difference image by using the optimal segmentation threshold so as to acquire a foreground image; 6) carrying out morphological processing by adopting modules with different structures; and 7) carrying out region calibration on each foreground image by using a connected domain calibration algorithm, and locking a calibrated moving object by using a rectangular frame. The moving object detection method disclosed by the invention has good moving object adaptive detection accuracy and robustness in different complex scenes such as drastic changes in global illumination, background disturbance, relative movement and the like, and can improve the performance of object detection.

An active sensor a method for optical illumination and detection provides low cost and high-speed optical scanning of bio-arrays, DNA samples / chips, semiconductors, micro-electromechanical systems and other samples requiring inspection or measurement. A plurality of illumination sources forming a parallel multi-pixel array is used to illuminate one or more samples via an imaging system or by placement in close proximity to the samples. The array may be a line array or a two-dimensional array. A plurality of detectors is integrated within the multi-pixel illumination array or provided in a separate array, each detector for detecting optical properties of the sample that results from illumination by one or more associated illumination sources. One detector may be associated with multiple illuminators or one illuminator may be associated with multiple detectors. Filters may be integrated within the illumination path and / or detection paths to provide wavelength and / or polarization discrimination capability and microlenses may also be incorporated within the illumination path and / or detection paths to provide focusing or imaging. The illumination sources may be provided by TFT-LCD devices, diode emitters, organic LEDs (OLEDs), vertical cavity emitting lasers (VCELs) or other light sources that may be integrated to form a high-density illumination matrix. The detectors may be PIN photo-diodes or other suitable detectors that are capable of integration within the illumination matrix.

The invention discloses a calculation method and device for global illumination. The method comprises the following steps that: obtaining directed distance field information and / or illumination information corresponding to each pixel in a plurality of preselected pixels in a screen, wherein the directed distance field information and / or illumination information corresponding to each pixel is stored in a two-dimensional map mapped from a three-dimensional map; and according to the directed distance field information and / or illumination information corresponding to each pixel, carrying out global illumination calculation. By use of the method, the technical problem that a calculation method for the global illumination in the relevant art consumes more hardware resources and a presented picture effect is not ideal can be solved.

The invention discloses a method for achieving global illumination drawing of an animation three-dimensional scene with virtual point light sources, and belongs to the technical field of three-dimensional animation drawing. According to the method, geometric objects in the scene are divided into the static geometric objects and the dynamic geometric objects, and organization and management are respectively carried out with different scene graphs. On the basis that light sampling is carried out on illumination emitting space of the light sources, intersection points of light and the geometric objects in the scene are solved, the virtual point light sources are created at the positions of the intersection points to illuminate the animation three-dimensional scene, and indirect illumination drawing of the animation three-dimensional scene is further achieved. By means of the method, the large number of virtual point light sources can be reused between continuous frames, and global illumination drawing of the animation three-dimensional scene with viewpoints and geometric object movement can be supported at the same time. The method is used for producing three-dimensional animations, and the visual quality of the three-dimensional animations can be improved.