SphericalHarmonicsPortal

This page serves as an entry point to everything related to Spherical Harmonics.

What are Spherical Harmonics (SH)?

Visual representations of the first 4 bands of real spherical harmonic functions. Blue portions are regions where the function is positive, and yellow portions represent regions where it is negative.

According to wikipedia, SH are special functions defined on the surface of a sphere.

In computer graphics, we're using them as a tool to quickly and easily encode or decode a directional information. We use a specific set of spherical harmonics, denoted <math>Y^l_m(\theta,\phi)</math> called Laplace's spherical harmonics.

Archive

You can find an old (2009) explanation about SH Environment Maps.