Light probe placement for displaying objects in 3D environments on electronic devices

A system comprising:

• a device with one or more processors;
• and
• a memory including instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to:
• determine characteristics of a physical environment based on sensor data obtained in the physical environment, wherein the characteristics of the physical environment comprise geometric attributes corresponding to fixed portions or empty spaces of the physical environment;
• generate a digital representation representing the characteristics of the physical environment;
• based on characteristics of the digital representation, determine three-dimensional (3D) positions in a 3D environment for a set of virtual light probes, the set of virtual light probes defining light incident on the 3D positions in the 3D environment based on virtual cameras at the 3D positions;
• and
• provide a view of the 3D environment based on the 3D positions determined for the set of virtual light probes.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing program instructions executable via one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

• determining characteristics of a physical environment based on sensor data obtained in the physical environment, wherein the characteristics of the physical environment comprise a semantic understanding or an expected context;
• generating a digital representation representing the characteristics of the physical environment;
• based on characteristics of the digital representation, determining three-dimensional (3D) positions in a 3D environment for a set of virtual light probes, the set of virtual light probes defining light incident on the 3D positions in the 3D environment based on virtual cameras at the 3D positions;
• and
• providing a view of the 3D environment based on the 3D positions determined for the set of virtual light probes.