Simulating an infrared emitter array in a video monitoring camera to construct a lookup table for depth determination

A process generates a lookup table to estimate spatial depth in a visual scene. The process identifies subsets of illuminators of a camera system with image sensors and illuminators. The image sensors are associated with multiple pixels. For each pixel, and for each of multiple depths from the pixel, the process simulates a virtual surface at the depth. For each subset of the subsets of illuminators, the process simulates illumination of the virtual surface from the subset and determines an expected light intensity at the pixel from light reflected from the virtual surface due to the simulated illumination. The process forms intensity information from the expected light intensity determined for the pixel for each of the depths and each of the subsets. The process constructs a lookup table comprising the intensity information. The lookup table associates the intensity information for each pixel with the respective depth and the respective subset.