Local Illumination
Local illumination is a computer graphics rendering technique that calculates the color of a surface point based solely on direct light interactions with that point, ignoring indirect lighting effects like reflections or global illumination. It typically uses models such as the Phong or Blinn-Phong shading to simulate how light from sources directly hits surfaces, producing realistic highlights and shading. This approach is computationally efficient but lacks the realism of more advanced methods that account for light bouncing between objects.
Developers should learn local illumination for real-time rendering applications like video games or interactive simulations where performance is critical, as it provides a good balance between visual quality and computational cost. It's essential for implementing basic lighting in graphics pipelines using APIs like OpenGL or DirectX, and serves as a foundational concept before advancing to global illumination techniques for more photorealistic results in offline rendering.