US 10,380,790 B2Granted

System and methods for generating procedural window lighting effects

AssigneeRobert Bosch GmbH

InventorsLei Yang, Liu Ren, Jennifer Chandler

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Abstract

A method of rendering a three-dimensional building with window effects has been developed. The method comprising: reading a building facade texture for the three-dimensional building from a memory; identifying room boundaries or floor boundaries within the building facade texture based on window areas of the building facade texture; generating a window lighting layer for the building facade texture using the identified room boundaries or floor boundaries; generating a modified building facade texture having window effects by combining the window lighting layer with the building facade texture using a window transparency cutout layer, the modified building facade texture being configured such that the window lighting layer can be seen only through the window areas of the building facade texture; and rendering images of the three-dimensional building using the modified building facade texture. A system having a display, a memory, and a processor for performing the method has also been developed.

Claims12

Dependent claims

A method of rendering a three-dimensional building with window effects, the method comprising:

reading, with a processor, a building facade texture for the three-dimensional building from a memory that is operably connected to the processor, the building facade texture including a window transparency cutout layer that marks window areas of the building facade texture as transparent;
identifying, with the processor, floor boundaries within the building facade texture based on window areas of the building facade texture, the identified floor boundaries being unique two-dimensional texture-space coordinate ranges within the building facade texture that correspond to individual floors within the three-dimensional building;
generating, with the processor, a window lighting layer for the building facade texture using the identified floor boundaries, the generating of the window lighting layer further comprising:
identifying portions of each of the individual floors to be lit by comparing a first pseudo-random function with a threshold value, the first pseudo-random function being evaluated for each pixel along a horizontal axis of each of the individual floors, a pixel along the horizontal axis being lit if the first pseudo-random function is greater than the threshold value and unlit if the first pseudo-random function is less than the threshold value;
and
generating the window lighting layer with lit areas corresponding to the identified portions of each of the individual floors to be lit;
generating, with the processor, a modified building facade texture having window effects by combining the window lighting layer with the building facade texture using the window transparency cutout layer, the modified building facade texture being configured such that the window lighting layer can be seen only through the window areas of the building facade texture;
and
rendering, with the processor, images of the three-dimensional building using the modified building facade texture.

6 more elements

A system for rendering a three-dimensional building with window effects, the system comprising:

a display configured to display rendered images of the three-dimensional building;
a memory configured to store program instructions and a building facade texture for the three-dimensional building, the building facade texture including a window transparency cutout layer that marks window areas of the building facade texture as transparent;
and
a processor operably connected to the display and the memory, the processor being configured to execute the programming instructions to:
read the building facade texture from the memory;
identify floor boundaries within the building facade texture based on window areas of the building facade texture, the floor boundaries being unique two-dimensional texture-space coordinate ranges within the building facade texture that correspond to individual floors within the three-dimensional building;
generate a window lighting layer for the building facade texture using the identified floor boundaries, the window lighting layer being generated by:
identifying portions of each of the individual floors to be lit by comparing a first pseudo-random function with a threshold value, the first pseudo-random function being evaluated for each pixel along a horizontal axis of each of the individual floors, a pixel along the horizontal axis being lit if the first pseudo-random function is greater than the threshold value and unlit if the first pseudo-random function is less than the threshold value;
and
generating the window lighting layer with lit areas corresponding to the identified portions of each of the individual floors to be lit;
generate a modified building facade texture having window effects by combining the window lighting layer with the building facade texture using the window transparency cutout layer, the modified building facade texture being configured such that the window lighting layer can be seen only through the window areas of the building facade texture;
and
render images of the three-dimensional building using the modified building facade texture.

10 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 15/537,820Filed 22 Dec 2015 · us provisional application
Priority: 22 Dec 2014
Published: US 2017/0372512 A128 Dec 2017
Granted: 13 Aug 2019
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification9 codes

G06T 15/506
Lighting effects: illumination models
G06T 15/005
Three-dimensional [3D] image rendering: general purpose rendering architectures
G06T 15/04
Three-dimensional [3D] image rendering: texture mapping
G06T 15/50
Three-dimensional [3D] image rendering: lighting effects