The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 12, 1993
Filed:
Jul. 26, 1990
Stuart Wells, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
James Van Loo, Los Altos, CA (US);
Jack R McKeown, Cupertino, CA (US);
Mukund Bhakta, San Jose, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
An adaptive shading method is utilized to generate shaded images in real time. The technique to shade the image is determined according to the curvature of the surface, the variation of the light vector across the surface, and the variation of the eye vector across the surface. The color or intensity is first computed at each of the vertices of the polygon. A series of tests are then performed to determine the order equation that is to be used to interpolate the color or intensity across the polygon between the vertices. Using this technique, polygons having a slight or no curvature and an infinite light source (thus being the simplest form of shading), will use an extremely fast, low order equation to interpolate across the polygon. Polygons, having a high degree of curvature and/or positional light source will utilize, as necessary, a higher order equation which requires additional computation time but produces desirable shading results.