Lighting and AO

All functions with the heman_lighting_ prefix are meant for doing things that are useful for lighting, like generating normals or ambient occlusion.

Normal Maps

Normal maps are generated using a simple forward differencing algorithm.

heman_image* heman_lighting_compute_normals(heman_image* heightmap)

Given a 1-band heightmap image, create a 3-band image with surface normals. The resulting image values are in [-1, +1].

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion is computed by doing 16 sweeps across the height map to find horizon points, as described by Sean Barrett here.

heman_image* heman_lighting_compute_occlusion(heman_image* heightmap)

Compute occlusion values for the given heightmap, returning a new single-band image with values in [0, 1].

Complete Lighting

heman_image* heman_lighting_apply(heman_image* heightmap, heman_image* colorbuffer, float occlusion, float diffuse, float diffuse_softening, float* light_position)

High-level utility that generates normals and occlusion behind the scenes, then applies simple diffuse lighting.

Parameters:

• heightmap (heman_image*) – The source height map, must have exactly one band.
• colorbuffer (heman_image*) – RGB values used for albedo; must have 3 bands, and the same dimensions as heightmap.
• occlusion (float) – Desired strength of ambient occlusion in [0, 1].
• diffuse (float) – Desired strength of diffuse lighting in [0, 1].
• diffuse_softening (float) – Used to flatten the normals by lerping them with +Z. Set to 0 to use unaltered normal vectors.
• light_position (float*) – Pointer to three floats representing the light direction.

Heman automatically un-applies gamma to the albedo, then re-applies gamma after lighting. This behavior can be configured using heman_color_set_gamma.