Vector Artwork Flood-Fill Using Iterative Bounding Box Refinement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing digital image editing software faces challenges in performing fast and efficient flood-fill operations on vector-based artwork due to the computational expense of planarizing and rendering numerous vectors, which is particularly problematic on resource-constrained devices like smartphones and tablets.
Innovation Solution
The technique involves rasterizing a region under a point of interest, creating an initial bounding box, and iteratively updating and comparing bounding boxes to minimize the number of vector objects fed into planar maps, reducing the computational load and memory requirements, allowing for accurate and speedy flood-filling of complex vector artwork.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If traditional flood-fill methods are used on vector artwork, then accurate filling is achieved, but processing time becomes excessively long (10 minutes)
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the flood-fill process into distinct phases: initial bounding box creation, iterative bounding box refinement, planar map generation only for relevant vectors, and flood-fill execution. This segmentation allows the system to process only the necessary portion of the vector artwork rather than all vectors, dramatically reducing processing time while maintaining accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by creating initial and refined bounding boxes before generating planar maps. These bounding boxes pre-identify the region of interest, allowing the system to filter out vectors outside the flood-fill area beforehand. This preliminary filtering prevents unnecessary processing of irrelevant vectors, resolving the contradiction between accuracy and processing time.
2Reliability
If all vector objects are fed into planar maps for flood-fill, then complete coverage is achieved, but memory requirements become excessive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and processes only the vectors that intersect with the bounding boxes from the complete set of vector objects. By taking out only the relevant vectors needed for the flood-fill operation and excluding all others, the system achieves complete coverage of the flood-fill area while using minimal memory, directly resolving this contradiction.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by generating planar maps only for vectors within the bounding box region rather than uniformly processing all vectors. This localized approach ensures that the flood-fill is complete for the target area while avoiding the memory overhead of processing the entire vector artwork, balancing completeness with memory efficiency.
3Productivity
If iterative bounding box refinement is performed, then processing speed increases (10x faster), but algorithm complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback through iterative bounding box refinement where each iteration uses the results of the previous iteration to create a more precise bounding box. This feedback loop continues until convergence, ensuring that only vectors within the final refined bounding box are processed. The feedback mechanism drives the 10x speed improvement by progressively eliminating irrelevant vectors, while the iterative nature manages complexity through systematic refinement rather than complex global processing.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are disclosed for performing flood-fill operations on vector artwork. In one embodiment, a region under a point of interest (POI) of vector artwork is rasterized and flood-filled, and an initial bounding shape around that area is used as a first guess as to the area to be filled. In other cases, the initial bounding shape is created around some initial area that includes the POI (no rasterization). In any such case, vector objects having bounding shapes that intersect the initial bounding shape are identified and fed into a planar map. After map planarization, a new bounding shape is created around a new area resulting from the planarizing and that includes the POI. In response to that bounding shape not extending beyond the initial bounding shape, a vector-based flood-fill operation can be performed on that new area. The process repeats if a new bounding shape extends beyond previous bounding shape.