882 results about "Computer graphics" patented technology

An improved human user computer interface system, providing a graphic representation of a hierarchy populated with naturally classified objects, having included therein at least one associated object having a distinct classification. Preferably, a collaborative filter is employed to define the appropriate associated object. The associated object preferably comprises a sponsored object, generating a subsidy or revenue.

Provided are a contents generating apparatus that can support functions of moving object substitution, depth-based object insertion, background image substitution, and view offering upon a user request and provide realistic image by applying lighting information applied to a real image to computer graphics object when a real image is composited with computer graphics object, and a contents generating method thereof. The apparatus includes: a preprocessing block, a camera calibration block, a scene model generating block, an object extracting / tracing block, a real image / computer graphics object compositing block, an image generating block, and the user interface block. The present invention can provide diverse production methods such as testing for the optimal camera viewpoint and scenic structure before contents are actually authored and compositing two different scenes taken in different places into one scene based on a concept of a three-dimensional virtual studio in the respect of a contents producer.

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for remote rendering of computer graphics. The system includes a graphics application program resident at a remote server. The graphics application is invoked by a user or process located at a client. The invoked graphics application proceeds to issue graphics instructions. The graphics instructions are received by a remote rendering control system. Given that the client and server differ with respect to graphics context and image processing capability, the remote rendering control system modifies the graphics instructions in order to accommodate these differences. The modified graphics instructions are sent to graphics rendering resources, which produce one or more rendered images. Data representing the rendered images is written to one or more frame buffers. The remote rendering control system then reads this image data from the frame buffers. The image data is transmitted to the client for display or processing. In an embodiment of the system, the image data is compressed before being transmitted to the client. In such an embodiment, the steps of rendering, compression, and transmission can be performed asynchronously in a pipelined manner.

A 3D image generation and display system facilitating the display of high-quality images in a Web browser comprises means for creating 3D images from a plurality of different images and computer graphics modeling and generating a 3D object from these images that has texture and attribute data; means for converting and outputting the 3D object as a 3D description file in a 3D graphics descriptive language; means for extracting a 3D object and textures from the 3D description file, setting various attribute data, and editing and processing the 3D object to introduce animation or the like and assigning various effects; means for generating various Web-based 3D objects from the 3D data files produced above that are compressed to be displayed in a Web browser and generating behavior data to display 3D scenes in a Web browser with animation; and means for generating an executable file comprising a Web page and Web-based programs such as scripts, plug-ins, and applets for drawing and displaying 3D scenes in a Web browser.

Methods and systems are described that unite various shading applications under a single language, enable the simple re-use and re-purposing of shaders, facilitate the design and construction of shaders without need for computer programming, and enable the graphical debugging of shaders.

A Method and apparatus is provided for producing and displaying pairs of spectrally-multiplexed gray-scale or color images of 3-D scenery for use in stereoscopic viewing thereof. In one illustrative embodiment of the present invention, pairs of spectrally-multiplexed color images of 3-D scenery are produced using a camera system records left and right color perspective images thereof and optically processes the spectral components thereof. In another illustrative embodiment of the present invention, pairs of spectrally-multiplexed color images of 3-D imagery are produced within a computer-based system which generates left and right perspective images thereof using computer graphic processes, and processes the pixel data thereof using pixel-data processing methods of the present invention. Thereafter, produced pairs of spectrally-multiplexed images can be recorded on diverse recording mediums, and accessed by the display system of the present invention for real-time display on diverse display surfaces including, for example, flat-panel liquid-crystal display (LCD) surfaces, CRT display surfaces, projection display screen surfaces, and electro-luminescent panel display surfaces. In the various illustrative embodiments of the display system, stereoscopic viewing of 3-D imagery is facilitated by wearing electrically passive or electrically-active light polarizing spectacles during the image display process of the present invention.

A computer graphics display method and system for controlling data visualization in at least one external dimension is provided which allows better querying and navigation of data in external dimension space. A data visualization is displayed in a first display window. A summary window provides summary information on data for the data visualization across one or more external dimensions. First and second controllers are displayed for controlling the variation of the data visualization in respective first and second external dimensions. A user queries the data visualization in the first and second external dimensions by selecting a point in the summary window. A user navigates through the data visualization in the first and second external dimensions by defining a path in the summary window. Grid points are also displayed in the summary window to facilitate data queries and navigation based on actual data points. The first and second controllers can be first and second sliders, such as, slide buttons, dials, or any other type of input. An animation control panel, including tape-drive controls, a path control, and a speed control, controls an animation of the data visualization over a selected navigation path through external dimension space.

Three-dimensional computer graphics systems and methods and more particularly to structure and method for a three-dimensional graphics processor and having other enhanced graphics processing features. In one embodiment the graphics processor is a Deferred Shading Graphics Processor (DSGP) comprising an AGP interface, a command fetch & decode (2000), a geometry unit (3000), a mode extraction (4000) and polygon memory (5000), a sort unit (6000) and sort memory (7000), a setup unit (8000), a cull unit (9000), a mode injection (10000), a fragment unit (11000), a texture (12000) and texture memory (13000) a phong shading (14000), a pixel unit (15000), a backend unit (1600) coupled to a frame buffer (17000). Other embodiments need not include all of these functional units, and the structures and methods of these units are applicable to other computational processes and systems as well as deferred and non-deferred shading graphical processors.

An extended computer graphic user interface (GUI) component includes a drop-down list of currently selected items displayed after a selection icon is clicked in a conventional manner. The drop-down list includes an input liner used to enter a new item to be added to the list of currently selected items, and a second selection icon that displays when any item of the list of currently selected items is highlighted while the cursor is moved over it. The second selection icon causes a pop-up menu of options to display if clicked in a conventional manner. The pop-up menu is aimed at further customizing the extended GUI component. Options of the pop-up menu include the possibilities of deleting an item, choosing an item to become a default item and restoring an initial list of items. The selection of the pop-up menu is alternatively obtained in right-clicking over the highlighted item.

The invention discloses a method for realizing a car driving simulator facing to training, which depends on computer graphics, virtual reality and other technologies and generates virtual vision, sound effects and motion simulation in the car driving process through a computer in order that a driving learner immerses into a virtual driving environment; according to the feelings of vision, hearing and touch provided by the virtual driving environment, the learner can conceive driving motions and manipulate a catanator in a simulated cockpit. The invention is suitable for the increasing need of driving training, saves fields, cars, gasoline, manpower and other resources and has the functions of various test items and error prompt in order that a user masters the basic skills under a safer environment; the practices in urban scenes, mountainous roads and freeways can reach the effect of familiarizing traffic regulations and improving driving skills; the simulation in various weather can train the driving skills of users under the severe situation and the strain capacity of various emergent situations, thereby having important application value in commercial and scientific research fields.

Methods, systems, devices and computer program products operable in a computer graphics system include constructing a hierarchical ray tracing acceleration data structure comprising a tree structure, the modes of which are generated utilizing a bounding interval hierarchy based on defining an axis-aligned scene bounding box and two parallel planes to partition a set of objects in a sense into left objects and right objects, and matching split planes to object bounding boxes. The two planes are perpendicular to a selected one of x, y, or z-axes. Given a splitting plane, each object in an image is classified either left or right based on a left / right selection criterion, and two splitting plane values of the child modes are determined by the maximum and minimum coordinate of the left and right objects, respectively.

Methods and systems are described that unite various shading applications under a single language, enable the simple re-use and re-purposing of shaders, facilitate the design and construction of shaders without need for computer programming, and enable the graphical debugging of shaders.

Methods for defining smooth and continuous coordinate systems in a volume comprised of a lattice structure of guide columns derived from arbitrarily modeled surface topologies involving polygons, nurbs, linear segments, and subdivision surfaces. Applications of these techniques in computer graphics and computer animation include: (1) the definition of pseudo-coordinate systems for use in creating geometry which must grow from said surface (2) the creation of a highly stable coordinate system involving guide columns in which Cartesian physical simulations may be carried out and rendered as well as deformed and rerendered if desired.

A device that is not necessarily high in performance, includes: a standard information obtaining unit configured to obtain standard information including a type of drawing process that could be used for computer graphics and a feature of the shape of polygon; a drawing information obtaining unit configured to obtain drawing information including information indicating the type of drawing process used for the actual computer graphics and information indicating the shape of polygon; a simplification judging unit configured to judge whether the type of the drawing process and the shape of the polygon indicated by the drawing information satisfy the standard indicated by the drawing standard information; a polygon simplifying unit configured to simplify the polygon by reducing vertices composing the polygon when said simplification judging unit judges that the standard is satisfied; and a drawing unit configured to execute computer graphics process using the polygon whose vertices are reduced, in order to achieve simplification of polygons and reduction of the total processing time for computer graphics (CG).

Methods, systems, devices and computer program code (software) products operable within a computer graphics system or other computer system enable quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) light transport simulation by ray tracing: and include constructing a bounding interval hierarchy (BIH), within a computer, using quantized planes to reduce memory requirements while maintaining a selected degree of precision.

The present invention provides methods, systems and computer program code (software) products for terminating spatial partition hierarchies and other hierarchies by a priori bounding, thereby to provide, among other aspects, more efficient ray tracing in computer graphics systems.

Systems and methods are provided for controlling texture sampling in connection with computer graphics in a computer system. In various embodiments, improved mechanisms for controlling texture sampling are provided that enable 3-D accelerator hardware to greatly increase the level of realism in rendering, including improved mechanisms for (1) motion blur; (2) generating anisotropic surface reflections (3) generating surface self-shadowing (4) ray-cast volumetric sampling (4) self-shadowed volumetric rendering and (5) self-shadowed volumetric ray-casting. In supplementing existing texture sampling techniques, parameters for texture sampling may be replaced and / or modified.

A method and apparatus are disclosed for testing the accuracy of digital test images generated by a computer graphics program executed on a computer graphics system. A test program is utilized to compare the test image with a reference image. The user defines regions of interest and a maximum error for each region. This allows the user to focus on a particular object or group of objects. Global image quantification verification generates one measurement of error or image difference for each region of the test image. Each region is divided into sub-regions and an average color value is calculated for each sub-region and the corresponding sub-region in the reference image. The differences between the averages for corresponding sub-regions in the test and reference images are calculated. A test image region may be unacceptably different from a reference image if a normalized sum of the absolute differences exceeds the maximum error.

A method and apparatus for comprising primitive data generated by tessellation of patches in a three-dimensional computer graphics rendering system receives domain point indices for a first primitive in a list of primitives defining the tessellated patch, stores the domain point indices for the received primitive, compares domain point indices of a next primitive in the list with stored domain point indices and determines any matches, stores domain point indicates of the next primitive or, if a match was found, stores a reference to the position of the matched index, receives domain point indexes of the next primitive in the list and repeats the step until each primitive in the list has been compressed.

The invention provides a design method of a virtual scene experience system, comprising the following steps: (a) collecting a panoramic image through a panoramic camera; (b) establishing a 3D virtual model based on the computer graphics and by use of a 3D modeling method; (c) fusing the physical image information in the panoramic image into the 3D virtual model to realize virtual-real fusion and to get a virtual fusion scene; (d) establishing a mode of interaction between users and the virtual fusion scene, and setting up a virtual scene experience interface; and (e) experiencing the virtual scene experience interface through an immersive display device.

The invention relates to a large scale complex three-dimensional scene processing method based on the octree, belonging to the computer graphics and the virtual reality field, including the steps: (1) loading the large scale three-dimensional scene, organizing all the elements in the scene by the scene drawings; (2) building and generating the octree structure of the scene, recording the related information; (3) using the octree structure, performing the fast sight elimination through the crossing detection algorithm of the retinal cone body and the bounding box; (4) rendering the objects in the retinal cone body. The invention considers the deficiency to render the large scale complex three-dimensional scene when the present drawing renders the engine, uses the octree structure to organize the scene, cuts the geometrical nodes outside the retinal cone body by the space information and the tree structure, fast computes the node sequence required to render, reduces the number of the triangle surfaces transmitted to the rendering channels, thereby effectively advancing the rendering speed, reaching the realtime requirement.

A digital elevation database is compressed to create a compressed digital map database which is used by a digital computer system for displaying three-dimensional terrain data in the form of polygons. The compressed digital map database is produced from a database of elevation points by selecting every mth row and every nth column, thereby resulting in a reduction of database storage requirements. During program run-time the intersection of rows and columns forms cells with four corners. The elevation value of a center elevation point for each cell is formed by various methods, thereby creating a cell made up of four three-dimensional triangles. One method for creating the elevation of the center elevation point uses the elevations of the four corners of the cell. Another method uses extrapolated elevation values from the cell's extended diagonals. The three-dimensional triangles formed from the center elevation point are then transformed and projected using standard computer graphics methods on a digital computer to produce a three-dimensional projected display.

The invention discloses a mobile robot pose correction algorithm based on multi-level map matching, which belongs to the technical fields of robotics and computer graphics. The algorithm of the invention uses a synchronous positioning and a composition algorithm to establish a global raster map, and combines a matching relationship between the current observation and the raster map to correct thetrack calculated by the track using an AMCL algorithm for reckoning the pose, so that the relatively accurate global pose information can be obtained, at the same time, the raster map is converted toa corresponding global target point cloud map, and the laser point cloud observed by the robot in real time is registered with the target point cloud map to further correct the global pose. The methodof the invention can obtain accurate global pose information and reduce the accumulation of long-distance positioning errors, and avoids the shortcomings of an existing particle filter technology that the pose solution is not accurate due to a limited particle space, the accuracy and efficiency of an ICP algorithm are too dependent on the initial pose, and efficient and accurate pose solution canbe realized.

The invention relates to a scattered point cloud Delaunay triangulation curved surface reconstruction method based on a mapping method and belongs to the field of a computer graphics and virtual reality technology. The method specifically includes the first step of obtaining original point cloud data of a target, the second step of obtaining K-level neighborhoods and unit normal vectors of all points in the original point cloud data, the third step of fragmenting the point cloud data, the fourth step of parameterizing fragmented point clouds to a two-dimensional plane, the fifth step of conducting Delaunay triangulation on the point clouds in the two-dimensional plane and mapping the point clouds back to corresponding three-dimensional space, and the sixth step of optimizing an initial triangle mesh model. Compared with the prior art, the scattered point cloud Delaunay triangulation curved surface reconstruction method based on the mapping method has the advantages that the quality of a triangle mesh can be ensured and triangle meshing on the scattered point clouds can be quickly realized when mesh modeling is carried out on large-scale point cloud data, and the method has a better effect on large-scale point clouds.

A Method and apparatus is provided for producing and displaying pairs of spectrally-multiplexed gray-scale or color images of 3-D scenery for use in stereoscopic viewing thereof. In one illustrative embodiment of the present invention, pairs of spectrally-multiplexed color images of 3-D scenery are produced using a camera system records left and right color perspective images thereof and optically processes the spectral components thereof. In another illustrative embodiment of the present invention, pairs of spectrally-multiplexed color images of 3-D imagery are produced within a computer-based system which generates left and right perspective images thereof using computer graphic processes, and processes the pixel data thereof using pixel-data processing methods of the present invention. Thereafter, produced pairs of spectrally-multiplexed images can be recorded on diverse recording mediums, and accessed by the display system of the present invention for real-time display on diverse display surfaces including, for example, flat-panel liquid-crystal display (LCD) surfaces, CRT display surfaces, projection display screen surfaces, and electro-luminescent panel display surfaces. In the various illustrative embodiments of the display system, stereoscopic viewing of 3-D imagery is facilitated by wearing electrically passive or electrically-active light polarizing spectacles during the image display process of the present invention.

A computer graphics system may comprise a graphics processor, a sample buffer, and a sample-to-pixel calculation unit. The graphics processor renders samples into the sample buffer in response to received graphics data. The sample-to-pixel calculation unit generates a plurality of output pixels by filtering the rendered samples based on a filter function. The pixels may be computed by generating a weighted sum of sample values (e.g. red sample values) for samples falling within the filter support. The coefficients used in the weighted sum may be added to form a normalization factor. One weighted sum of sample values may be computed per pixel attribute such as red, green, blue and alpha. The normalization factor may be computed in parallel with one or more of the weighted sums. Normalized pixel values may be obtained by dividing the weighted-sums by the normalization factor.

The invention discloses an expression cloning method and device capable of realizing real-time interaction with a virtual character and belongs to the fields such as computer graphics and virtual reality. The method includes the following steps that: 1, modeling and skeleton binding are performed on the virtual character; 2, the basic expression base of the virtual character is established; 3, expression input training is carried out: the maximum displacement of facial feature points under each basic expression is recorded; 4, expression tracking is carried out: the facial expression change of a real person is recorded through motion capture equipment, and the weights of the basic expressions are obtained through calculation; 5, expression mapping is carried out: the obtained weights of the basic expressions are transferred to the virtual character in real time, and rotation interpolation is performed on corresponding skeletons; and the real-time rendering output of the expression of the virtual character is carried out. With the method adopted, the expression of the virtual character can be synthesized rapidly, stably and vividly, so that the virtual character can perform expression interaction with the real person stably in real time.

Techniques, systems, arrangements, and computer program products are operable in computer graphics systems to make shadow volumes more general with respect to the meshes that can serve as occluding geometry in such computer graphics systems, as well as for accelerating shadow volume techniques, particularly for large and complex input scenes.

A computer graphics system may comprise a graphics processor, a sample buffer, and a sample-to-pixel calculation unit. The graphics processor renders samples into the sample buffer in response to received graphics data. The sample-to-pixel calculation unit generates a plurality of output pixels by filtering the rendered samples based on a filter function. The pixels may be computed by generating a weighted sum of sample values (e.g. red sample values) for samples falling within the filter support. The coefficients used in the weighted sum may be added to form a normalization factor. One weighted sum of sample values may be computed per pixel attribute such as red, green, blue and alpha. The normalization factor may be computed in parallel with one or more of the weighted sums. Normalized pixel values may be obtained by dividing the weighted-sums by the normalization factor.

The invention provides a method for measuring and reconstructing a tree based on single three-dimensional laser scanning, and relates to the technologies of computer graphs and computer vision. The method comprises steps of data preprocessing, axial estimation, three-dimensional framework computation and three-dimensional model generation. The method only utilizes single scanning data of a laser scanner to obtain branch shape and radius information faithful to the primary tree, carries out main operations in a two-dimensional image space, has simple and effective algorithm and accurate reconstruction result, and has important application values in the computer graphics application fields such as virtual reality, computer game, natural scene simulation, urban landscape design and the like and in the fields such as agriculture and forestry investigation, tree measurement, etc.