Silicon Graphics, Incorporated

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Hooked Wireless, Inc.

Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.

Graphic Properties Holdings, Inc.

John Milligan Airey

Mark S Peercy

John Stephen Montrym

Robert A Drebin

Christopher J Migdal

David L Dignam

Brian Keith Cabral

Michael R Bruno

Danny Loh

Danny D Loh

Samuel Chiming Wang

Johannes Peter Govaars

Jonathan Worthen Brandt

Andrew D Bowen

Thomas M Olano

A floating point rasterization and frame buffer in a computer system graphics program. The rasterization, fog, lighting, texturing, blending, and antialiasing processes operate on floating point values. In one embodiment, a 16-bit floating point format consisting of one sign bit, ten mantissa bits, and five exponent bits (s10e5), is used to optimize the range and precision afforded by the 16 available bits of information. In other embodiments, the floating point format can be defined in the manner preferred in order to achieve a desired range and precision of the data stored in the frame buffer. The final floating point values corresponding to pixel attributes are stored in a frame buffer and eventually read and drawn for display. The graphics program can operate directly on the data in the frame buffer without losing any of the desired range and precision of the data.

Floating point computer system with fog

An animation file player can display animation files with an embedded system graphics application programming interface (graphics API). In an example implementation, an animation file comprises a Flash&#xae; animation file such as, a Shockwave Flash&#xae; animation file, and the embedded system graphics API comprises an OpenGL&#xae;|ES graphics API. The present invention is not intended to be so limited, and other types of animation files and embedded system graphics APIs can be used.

Method and system for displaying animation with an embedded system graphics API

Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering

One aspect of the invention is a method for displaying extended range pixel values. The method includes the step of receiving a plurality of image pixel values each with at least one associated data value. The method also includes the steps of sending at least one of the plurality of image pixel values to a first display device ( ) having a maximum display value; and sending at least one of the plurality of image pixel values exceeding maximum display value to a second display device ( ). In a further embodiment, the at least one associated data value may be at least one of the group consisting of a pixel intensity, a color, and a location of the pixel value.

Extended range pixel display system and method

One aspect of the invention is a method for implementing a graphics control construct. The method includes the step of assigning by a graphics system interface ( ) a value to at least one bit in a stencil buffer (S) in response to a first condition of a first conditional clause in an application program ( ). The method also includes the steps of selecting at least a first portion of image data in response to the value, and processing the selected first portion of image data in a frame buffer ( ) of a graphics pipeline ( ).

Method and system for implementing graphics control constructs

A system and method for high-speed execution of graphics application programs, including shading language instructions, that utilize 3D graphics hardware. The method involves expressing a graphics computation in a platform-independent procedural shading expression, converting the expression (i.e., user application program) into an intermediate representation such as a tree, and then translating it into a sequence of parametric shading expressions. The method can alternatively processes the intermediate tree representation using a cost-based, tree-grammar recognizer such as iburg. The result is a platform-specific and least-cost, in terms of the underlying hardware, sequence of parametric shading expressions that realizes the graphics computation. The system and method is useful in translating platform-independent RenderMan&trade; Shading Language programs into fast-executing, platform-specific OpenGL&trade; or Direct3D&trade; executable code.

System and method for high-speed execution of graphics application programs including shading language instructions

A method, system, and computer program product are provided for accelerated shading of an object surface by bump mapping in tangent space or object space. A tangent space transform module builds a tangent space transform matrix M(p) having elements comprised of normal, tangent, and binormal vector components determined at a surface point on the object surface. The tangent space transform module further transforms shading vectors, such as, lighting and viewing vectors, into a tangent space defined by the tangent space transform matrix and outputs corresponding tangent space shading vectors. A bump mapping module performs vector operations between one or more tangent space shading vectors and a perturbed normal N' in tangent space. A texture memory stores a surface dependent or a surface independent tangent space perturbed normal texture map. The lighting module computes a shading value for the surface point based on the vector operations. The shading value can be then be mapped to a pixel to shade the object surface rendered on a computer graphics display. In one example, the bump mapping module outputs diffuse and specular components. The diffuse component corresponds to a first dot product between a normalized, interpolated tangent space lighting vector and three perturbed normal components Nx', Ny', and Nz'. The specular component corresponds to a second dot product between a normalized, interpolated tangent space half angle vector and three perturbed normal components Nx', Ny', and Nz'. Different types of shading vectors and lighting equations can be used depending upon the chosen illumination model. For bump mapping in object space, an object space transformation, such as the inverse of a modelview matrix, is used to define a transformation from eye space to object space for shading vectors. A bump mapping module performs a vector operation between an object space shading vector and a perturbed normal in object space to compute a shading value.

Method, system, and computer program product for shading

A method, system, and computer program product for accelerated shading of an object surface by bump mapping in tangent space. A tangent space transform module builds a tangent space transform matrix M(p) having elements comprised of normal, tangent, and binormal vector components determined at a surface point on the object surface. The tangent space transform module further transforms shading vectors, such as, lighting and viewing vectors, into a tangent space defined by the tangent space transform matrix and outputs corresponding tangent space shading vectors. A bump mapping module performs vector operations between one or more tangent space shading vectors and a perturbed normal N' in tangent space. A texture memory stores a surface dependent or a surface independent tangent space perturbed normal texture map. The lighting module computes a shading value for the surface point based on the vector operations. The shading value can be then be mapped to a pixel to shade the object surface rendered on a computer graphics display. The bump mapping module outputs diffuse and specular components. The diffuse component corresponds to a first dot product between a normalized, interpolated tangent space lighting vector and three perturbed normal components Nx', Ny', and Nz'. The specular component corresponds to a second dot product between a normalized, interpolated tangent space half angle vector and three perturbed normal components Nx', Ny', and Nz'. Different types of shading vectors and lighting equations can be used depending upon the chosen illumination model.

Method, system, and computer program product for bump mapping in tangent

Method system and computer program product for shading

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Mountain View, CA, United States of America

John Milligan Airey