Pixar

Manuel Kraemer

John R Anderson

Robert L Cook

Peter-Pike Sloan

William Polson

Chris Bernardi

Pitchaya Sitthi-Amorn

Surfaces without a global surface coordinate system are divided into surface regions having local surface coordinate systems to enable the caching of surface attribute values. A surface attribute value for a surface region may include contributions from two or more adjacent surfaces. Sample points may be arranged at the corners, rather than centers, of surface regions and include prefiltered values based on two or more surfaces. A renderer may sample the surface attribute function using these prefiltered values without accessing any adjacent surfaces, even if the renderer's filter crosses a surface boundary. A multiresolution cache stores surface attribute values at different resolution levels for surface regions of one or more surfaces, which may be discontiguous. Two or more resolution levels may have the same number of sample points but have values based on filters with different areas and spatial frequency limits. Resolution levels may be selected based on geodesic distance on a surface.

Caching attributes of surfaces without global parameterizations

A method and apparatus are provided for generating vector displacement maps, often in an interactive manner. Given a set of objects to be animated or imaged, they can be each represented by one or more faces. In a subdivision process, faces might be represented by polygons through a method of repeated subdividing. In the subdivision process, relative location of polygons relative to the original face (and possibly relative orientations) are maintained, for later use by other processes. This can be done by maintaining source data for each face of a subdivided surface, where source data indicates an original location on the original object that corresponds to that face and the polygons resulting from the subdividing. The source data can be a link, path, index or label for each face of the subdivision surface, where the source data indicates an original location on the original object that corresponds to that face.

Generating vector displacement maps using parameterized sculpted meshes

An improved attribute determination process allows the sharpness of a surface attribute function to be adjusted on a per-object, per-surface, per-texture, per-function, or other appropriate basis. A computer-based animator then can selectively adjust the sharpness or other attribute(s) of portions of a to-be-rendered image without significantly increasing the rendering time. For a selected texture, corresponding sampling regions will be shifted about the respective surface points projected in texture space. A multi-dimensional set of sub-regions can be generated for the shifted sampling region. Bounding boxes can be determined for each sub-region, the boxes occupying less area, such as in texture space, than a single bounding box for the original sampling region. The bounding boxes can be used for local attribute determinations (such as texture lookups) for each sub-region, with the local attributes being processed to determine an attribute for the respective surface point.

Systems and methods for elliptical filtering

Rendering methods include receiving a 3D object including adjacent first and second objects, determining surface illumination for points on the first and second objects, associating first and second 3D grids with the first and second objects, mapping points of the first and second objects to the first and second 3D grids, determining surface illumination for vertices in the first and second 3D grids in response to the surface illumination for the first and second objects, performing a low pass filter on the surface illumination for vertices in the first and second 3D grids, determining first and second illumination compensation for points on the first and second objects, determining illumination compensation for vertices in the first and second 3D grids in response to the first and second illumination compensation for the first and second objects, combining the filtered surface illumination and illumination compensation for vertices in the first and second objects.

Method and apparatus for rendering of complex translucent objects using multiple volumetric grids

Methods for rendering a 3D object includes determining incident illumination for object surface points, determining surface colors associated with these points, determining diffuse illumination values associated with these points, associating a 3D grid having vertices the object, determining input scattering values for the vertices from the incident illumination and the surface colors associated with these points, low pass filtering the input scattering values to determine modified scattering values for the vertices, determining output scattering values for these points from the modified scattering values for the vertices, and determining reflected illumination values for these points from the output scattering values, surface material colors, and incident illumination for these points

Color compensated translucent object rendering methods and apparatus

Methods for rendering an object includes determining diffuse illumination values for object surface points, associating a 3D grid including vertices with the object, mapping object surface points to vertices, determining diffuse illumination values for vertices from the diffuse illumination values for object surface points, low pass filtering diffuse illumination values for the vertices to determine illumination compensation values for the vertices, determining illumination compensation values for the object surface points from the illumination compensation values for the vertices, and determining compensated diffuse illumination values for the object surface points from a weighted combination of the diffuse illumination values and illumination compensation values for the surface points.

Three-dimensional paint projection weighting of diffuse and scattered illumination methods and apparatus

Techniques for using a polynomial texture map (PTM) to encode micro-occlusions information. The micro-occlusions information stored in the PTM is then used to display micro-occlusions cast on a surface by surface geometries or other geometries under various irradiance conditions.

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Emeryville, CA, United States of America

Manuel Kraemer