Virtual Point Light Generation for Mobile 3D Indirect Lighting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Mobile electronic devices struggle to generate sophisticated 3D graphics with indirect lighting effects due to limited 3D graphics processing capabilities, leading to high power consumption and reduced battery life.
Innovation Solution
A distributed computing system where a server device generates virtual point lights (VPLs) for a 3D virtual environment and transmits them to a client device, allowing the client to use these VPLs as additional direct illumination sources to simulate indirect lighting, reducing computational complexity and power consumption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If ray-tracing techniques are used to model indirect lighting, then rendering accuracy is improved, but processing power consumption increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the computationally intensive indirect lighting calculations from the client device and relocates them to a remote server. The server performs ray-tracing and generates virtual point lights, which are then transmitted to the client for rendering. This extraction resolves the contradiction by performing accurate rendering only where computational resources are available (server), while the client device uses minimal processing power to display the pre-computed lighting effects.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a remote server as an intermediary between the client device and the rendering process. The server acts as a mediator that performs complex lighting calculations and returns simplified rendering data to the client. This intermediary approach allows high-accuracy rendering without requiring the client device to have powerful processing capabilities, thus resolving the power consumption vs. accuracy contradiction.
2Productivity
If virtual point lights are generated locally on mobile devices, then rendering performance is improved, but battery life is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the computationally intensive indirect lighting calculations from the mobile device and relocates them to a remote server. The server performs ray-tracing and generates virtual point lights, which are then transmitted to the client for rendering. This extraction resolves the contradiction by performing accurate rendering only where computational resources are available (server), while the client device uses minimal processing power to display the pre-computed lighting effects.
Solution Approach 2:
The server performs all complex lighting calculations and generates virtual point lights in advance before the rendering is needed on the mobile device. These pre-computed lighting data are transmitted to the client, which then performs only simple rendering operations. This preliminary action approach significantly reduces the processing burden on the mobile device during actual rendering, thereby extending battery life while maintaining rendering performance.
3Measurement precision
If complex indirect lighting computations are performed on client devices, then graphic quality is improved, but device complexity requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the computationally intensive indirect lighting calculations from the client device and relocates them to a remote server. The server performs ray-tracing and generates virtual point lights, which are then transmitted to the client for rendering. This extraction resolves the contradiction by performing accurate rendering only where computational resources are available (server), while the client device uses minimal processing power to display the pre-computed lighting effects.
Solution Approach 2:
The server creates virtual point lights that are copies or representations of the complex lighting computations. Instead of performing the full ray-tracing calculations on the client device, the system generates simplified lighting data structures (virtual point lights) on the server and transmits them to the client. These copies contain sufficient lighting information to produce accurate rendering effects without requiring the client to have complex processing capabilities.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method for generating three-dimensional graphics includes generating a virtual environment in a server including a first object, second object and a direct illumination source. The method includes generating a virtual point light (VPL) in the virtual environment at an intersection between a ray from the direct illumination source and the first object, and sending data corresponding to the VPL to a client computing device through a data network. The method includes generating an illumination of the second object in the virtual environment with the VPL received from the server, and displaying the illuminated second object.