ABSTRACT
Since HDR images may represent the true physical properties of lighting at a given point, HDR images can improve the rendering process. In particular, a series of techniques commonly referred to as image-based lighting (IBL) provide a method of accelerating the computation of digital images by rendering images lit by HDR images that are, almost always, generated by capturing the entire sphere of lighting at a point in a real scene. Effectively, IBL methods render images by using the captured HDR image as lighting in shading computations, recreating the physical lighting conditions in the virtual scene as that in the real scene. This results in realistic-looking images that have been embraced by the film and games industries.
