Disney Enterprises, Inc.

University College London

Tim A Weyrich

Wojciech Matusik

Kenneth John Mitchell

Wojciech Jarosz

Marios Papas

Szymon Marek Rusinkiewicz

Wenzel A Jakob

Gwyneth Bradbury

Techniques are described for designing and manufacturing a surface that produces a desired image when illuminated by a light source. As described, the desired image may be decomposed into a collection of Gaussian kernels (referred to as Gaussians). A shape of a micropatch lens corresponding to each Gaussian may be determined, and the resulting micropatch lenses may be assembled to form a highly continuous surface that will cast an approximation of the desired image formed form the sum of a plurality of Gaussian caustics. The disclosed techniques may be used to create a design for a light-redirecting surface amenable to milling (or other manufacturing process).

Reflective and refractive surfaces configured to project desired caustic pattern

The disclosure provides an approach for generating virtual terrains. A terrain editing application is configured to receive assets of various types, including a blank canvas, two-dimensional (2D) sketches, real-world elevation maps, authored heightfields, etc. The assets specify characteristics of a terrain, and provide starting points for creating the virtual terrain. The editing application further provides a set of tools allowing a user to modify the virtual terrain. In one embodiment, the set of tools may include a copy-and-paste tool, a peak creation tool, a ridge creation tool, a ridge tracing tool, and a resynthesis tool. The editing application generates a new layer for each edit, as well as 2D and three-dimensional (3D) previews of the edited terrain. The editing application also provides a user-adjustable frequency decomposition of each layer. The editing application combines layers using Laplacian blending to produce the final virtual terrain.

Example based editing of virtual terrain maps

Techniques are disclosed for virtual scene generation. An image depicting a scene and annotated by a sparse set of labels is received. A dense set of labels annotating the image and a density map associated with the image are generated based on the sparse set of labels. A virtual scene is generated based on the dense set of labels and the density map, and the virtual scene is output.

Virtual scene generation based on imagery

Growing community of inventors

London, United Kingdom

Tim A Weyrich