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:
Mar. 24, 1998
Filed:
Jul. 18, 1995
Softimage, Montreal, CA;
Abstract
A three-dimensional graphic object appearing in an animation is deformed to simulate the effects of motion on the object. A user can selectively apply a stretch, yield, or flex deformation effect to the control vertices of the object, to change the shape of the object as a function of any of a linear velocity, angular velocity, linear acceleration, or angular acceleration of the object. Various other parameters for each of these deformation effects can also be selected and set by the user, including a sensitivity to the motion in generating the deformation and a maximum deformation. The flex deformation can selectively be set to either a linear or curved profile, simulating the effect of friction applied by the environment on one or more surfaces of the object. The stretch deformation can selectively be set to either a constant or a free volume to simulate the effect of inertia, causing a body to elongate or shrink in the direction of the movement. The yield deformation can be set either a linear or curved profile, simulating the displacement of an object's internal matter toward one end that occurs, relative to the direction of the object's motion, i.e., causing one end to bulge. For each control vertex on the object, an effect offset is determined for each motion component and for each selected deformation effect. The sum of the effect offsets for the control vertex represents a total offset that is added to the original control vertex to determine a deformed control vertex. This step is repeated for all control vertices to produce the deformed object.