Realistic lighting of virtual scenes has been a widely researched domain for decades. Many recent methods for realistic rendering make extensive use of image-based lighting, in which a real lighting environment is captured and reused to light virtual objects. However, the capture of such lighting environments usually requires still scenes and specific capture hardware such as high end digital cameras and mirror balls. In this paper we introduce a simple solution for the capture of plausible environment maps using one of the most widely used capture device: a simple webcam. In order to be applied efficiently, the captured environment data is then filtered using graphics hardware according to the reflectance functions of the virtual surfaces. As the limited aperture of the webcam does not allow the capture of the entire environment, we propose a simple method for extrapolating the incoming lighting outside the webcam range, yielding a full estimate of the incoming lighting for any direction in space. Our solution can be applied to direct lighting of virtual objects in all virtual reality applications such as virtual worlds, games etc. Also, using either environment map combination or semi-automatic light source extraction, our method can be used as a lighting design tool integrated for post-production.
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