Dynamic Lighting Effects For Textures Without Normal Maps

摘要

Systems, methods and program storage devices are disclosed, which comprise instructions to cause one or more processing units to dynamically render 3D lighting effects for a supplied 2D texture map—without the need for a programmer to supply a normal map along with the 2D texture map. According to some embodiments, an algorithm may inspect the pixel values (e.g., RGB values) of each individual pixel of the texture map, and, based on the pixel values, can accurately estimate where the lighting and shadow effects should be applied to the source 2D texture file to simulate 3D lighting. Further, because these effects are being rendered dynamically by the rendering and animation infrastructure, the techniques described herein work especially well for “dynamic content,” e.g., user-downloaded data, in-application user-created content, operating system (OS) icons, and other user interface (UI) elements for which programmers do not have access to normal maps a priori.

主权项

1. A non-transitory program storage device, readable by a programmable control device and comprising instructions stored thereon to cause one or more processing units to:
obtain a first representation of a first two-dimensional image, wherein the first representation comprises a first plurality of pixels, and wherein each pixel in the first plurality of pixels comprises a first plurality of pixel color values and a transparency value; convert the first plurality of pixel color values into a luminance value for each pixel in the first plurality of pixels; create a height map over the first two-dimensional image using the converted luminance values for each pixel in the first plurality of pixels, wherein each position in the height map corresponds to a pixel from the first plurality of pixels; calculate a normal vector for each pixel in the first plurality of pixels; and cause at least one of the one or more processing units to render three-dimensional lighting effects on the first representation of the first two-dimensional image, wherein the calculated normal vectors for each pixel in the first plurality of pixels are used as the normal map for the three-dimensional rendering.