For high-quality rendering, such as for film visual effects and/or animation, a render of a single frame may take many minutes or even hours. A significant bottleneck may occur in the creative process when an artist desires to make lighting changes to an otherwise completed scene. This process may be very time consuming because for every change (where to place the light, the color of the light, whether the light should cast shadows, how blurry the shadows should be, etc.), a re-render must be performed for the change to be made visible to the lighting artist and/or director. Adding to the time-consuming nature of the process is the iterative nature of lighting design. Changes are made, the frame is re-rendered, the results are observed, more changes are made, the frame is re-rendered, etc., until the lighting artist and/or director is satisfied with the results. Because each render may take a number of hours to complete, the lighting process may be very time consuming and inefficient.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds