Derivatives of Spherical Harmonics
Auto-discovered
Visit resource ↗Description
Derivatives of Spherical Harmonics presents a High-Performance Graphics 2025 poster by Christoph Peters with formulas for partial derivatives of any order of the spherical harmonics basis.
The abstract states that intermediates from ordinary SH evaluation already supply what higher-order derivatives need, so the extra cost is negligible. A supplemental code generator targets GLSL, HLSL, C, C++, and Python. Notes record presentation on 24 June 2025, an author version published 15 June, and later citations the author adds for related first-order spherical-coordinate derivative work.
It is for advanced graphics programmers and researchers who already evaluate spherical harmonics for lighting or irradiance and need analytic derivatives for gradients or higher-order filters.
Access is a free project page on momentsingraphics.de with abstract, figures, and downloadable poster materials linked from the page.
It is useful when you need SH derivatives without a separate expensive derivative pipeline. Link last verified accessible on 2026-09-29. Link last verified accessible on 2026-09-28.