Ronald F Perry

US Patent:

6359619, Mar 19, 2002

Filed:

Jun 18, 1999

Appl. No.:

09/336387

Inventors:

Richard C. Waters - Concord MA
Thouis R. Jones - Cambridge MA
Ronald N. Perry - Cambridge MA
Larry D. Seiler - Boylston MA

Assignee:

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, INC - Cambridge MA

International Classification:

G06F 1500

US Classification:

345426

Abstract:

In a method for rendering an evolving three-dimensional scene description as a series of two-dimensional images (frames), the evolving scene description includes object geometries G and their associated shader procedures S. Each shader procedure S is factored into a static procedure S and a dynamic procedure S such that S(A,I)=S (S (A,R),I), where A denotes the appearance parameters required to shade objects, I denotes an instance of the control parameters, and R denotes a range of control parameters which include I. Similarly, the rendering procedure TSI (transform, sample, and interpolate) for object geometry is factored into a static procedure TSI and a dynamic procedure TSI such that TSI(G,I)=TSI (TSI (G,R),I). The factorization of both S and TSI is chosen to significantly reduce the overall rendering time for the evolving scene. Specifically, viewpoint independent or weakly viewpoint dependent computations S (A,R) and TSI (G,R) are computed in the static phase of rendering and stored either as independent data structures or as a single combined data structure called the internal representation.