Lighting Pass

A lighting pass is one possible layer of a multi-layered render pass. It is a specialised pass, intended to heighten an earlier pass, and so is never the first pass of the sequence.

The idea of a lighting pass is to identify the light sources and either raytrace or raycast the light beams between each object and the source of light. Whilst raycasting techniques – that start at each visible model and work back to the source - are fundamentally computationally easier than raytracing techniques – which start at the source and cast out to see what models they intersect with – both are far too slow and computationally intensive for most real-time environments.

There are methods to speed up a lighting pass, typically involving breaking the process up into a multi-threaded task, with each thread tackling a different part of the same light source, or a different light source in parallel. However, even this is too slow for most mainstream user computers. It is used at a handful of dedicated visualisation sites only, at this time, and awaits advances in hardware capability before it can be used in a more widespread manner.

See Also: Raycasting, Raytracing, Frame Rate, Render Pass, Beauty Pass, Specular Pass, Depth Pass, Lighting Pass, Depth Pass, LOD

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

Beauty Pass Colour Pass Diffuse Pass Direct Light Highlight Pass

Indirect Light Lighting Pass Reflection Pass Shadow Pass

Specular Pass

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Hemisphere Lighting With Radiosity Maps
Rendering of lighting in outdoor scenes is a paramount concern. To truly be realistic, the light levels constantly vary, and the sun (or suns) are not usually even the primary lightsource! All that adds up to is a computational disaster, unless some way is found to render lightsoure data quickly, and easilly....

High Dynamic Range Photography, and Use in Eye Emulation
H.D.R., or high dynamic range photography is a relatively new technique used by photographers to take high-quality full lighting range photos that are near-indistinguishable from paintings, for their ability to correctly replicate the lighting of a given scene, exactly how the human eye would see it.

Wearable Display Jackets
The concept of clothing that integrates lighting displays is one that has only recently been realised, yet it hasd been in cyberpunk a long, long time. The original 'electropigment' dating back to Snow Crash itself.

Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects

This tome is, as the4 title suggests, more of an overview for the subject than a detailed how-to. It covers everything from the very basics of computerised model animation, right through rigging and boning, on to timing and lighting ? but it does so without going into painstaking detail on any one topic.

Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm
NewScientist reports on six hypothetical ways to make robotic beings that will not harm humans. Not that any of them are likely to come to pass.

Room Lighting as Network Access
A new method of creating wireless networks without interfering with sensitive equipment, including medical equipment, is to make use of the rapid on/off capabilities of LEDs in normal modern LED lightbulbs. 800mb/s is the current limit, and that is only in the prototype.

AI researchers believe 'Rascals' can pass Turing test
Passing the Turing test -the holy grail of artificial intelligence, whereby a human conversing with a computer can't tell it's not human- may now be possible via VR with a Blue Gene supercomputer, according to AI experts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

What's in a name? ...a demotion for the darling concept of the real
Virtual always suggests unreal, or imaginary. A virtual entity can pass for, a real thing but is less than the real thing itself. Sounds like a nice statement. Are we really so sure its true?

3D RoboVision
A team working at Brown University, believe they have made a breakthrough in robotic vision systems: A robot that follows a person from room to room to room, tracking them regardless of lighting conditions, crowds milling between the user and the robot, temporary obstructions or anything.

Cranial Nerves
There are twelve cranial nerve pairings (making 24 nerves in total) which split out from the brain, and move to cover the needs of the cranium and face, rather than make their way down through the central spinal cord. These nerves are important to consider, as most are of critical importance to sensory data, yet do not pass through the central cord, and so cannot be intercepted at the same juncture.

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