Geometry of arbitrary light distributions

Sophisticated simulation of lighting is crucial for plausible computer image generation. In many real time applications the simulation of light is restricted to directional, point and spot light sources. This paper presents a method to simulate hemispherical and omnidirectional light sources with arbitrary light distributions by means of light distribution textures (LDTs). These textures can be gained from photometric data files provided by manufacturers of luminaires. The derivation of LDTs from such files is presented. Reconstruction of the photometric solid from the LDT with bilinear and bicubic filtering is also discussed