Automating Lighting Design for Interactive Entertainment

Recent advances in computer graphics, particularly in real-time rendering, have caused major improvements in 3D graphics and rendering techniques used in interactive entertainment. In this paper, we focus on the scene lighting process, which we define as the process of configuring the number of lights used in a scene, their properties (e.g. range and attenuation), positions, angles, and colors. Lighting design is well known among designers, directors, and visual artists for its vital role in influencing viewers' perception by evoking moods, directing their gaze to important areas (i.e. providing visual focus), and conveying visual tension. It is, however, difficult to set positions, angles, or colors for lights within interactive scenes to accommodate these design goals, because an interactive scene's spatial and dramatic configuration, including mood, dramatic intensity, and the relative importance of different characters, change unpredictably in real-time. There are severa...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2004
• Where: CIE
• Authors: Magy Seif El-Nasr, Ian Horswill
• Keywords: Applied Computing, CIE 2004, Interactive Scene, Lighting, Real-time