Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090079758 | Method and device for generating shadow maps - A method and a device for determining shadows in a computer-generated image are provided, wherein the determination whether a pixel x is in shadow is based on a shadow test function ƒ(d(x), z(P)), d(x) representing the depth of the pixel x with respect to the light source and z(p) being a shadow map z for the computer-generated image. According to the invention, the shadow test function ƒ satisfies | 03-26-2009 |
20130016100 | PHYSICAL REPRODUCTION OF REFLECTANCE FIELDS - A three-dimensional relief can be produced from one or more two-dimensional digital (2D) images. A height field is computed from the 2D images and illumination direction information. The height field comprises a multiplicity of geometric surface elements arrayed in a 2D field corresponding to the pixels of the one or more 2D images. Each geometric surface element corresponds to a pixel of each of the digital images and has at least one height parameter representing a displacement from a surface floor. Once the height field is computed, optimizations can be made to the height field including adding and adjusting albedo and glossy surface finishing. The height field can be used to fabricate relief elements in a material, such that each relief element corresponds in shape, position in the height field, and height above the surface floor, to one of the geometric surface elements in the height field. | 01-17-2013 |
20140146388 | CONTENT-ADAPTIVE LENTICULAR PRINTS - A lenticular display device is described that is effective in increasing both perceived angular resolution and spatial resolution. These desirable results are achieved by modifying the lenslet array to better match the content of a given light field. An optimization algorithm or method (which may be implemented with software run on a computing device) is provided that analyzes an input light field and computes an optimal lenslet size, shape, and arrangement of sets of lenslets across the width of the array to better (or even best) match the input light field given a set of output parameters. The resulting lenticular display device (or print) shows higher detail and smoother motion parallax compared with fixed-size lens arrays. The usefulness of these content-adaptive lenticular prints has been demonstrated or proven using rendered simulations, by generating 3D-printed lens arrays according to the present description, and with user studies. | 05-29-2014 |
20150079327 | 3D PRINTING WITH CUSTOM SURFACE REFLECTION - A method for fabricating custom surface reflectance and spatially-varying bi-directional reflectance distribution functions (BDRFs or svBRDFs). The 3D printing method optimizes micro-geometry to produce a normal distribution function (NDF) that can be printed on surfaces with a 3D printer. Particularly, the method involves optimizing the micro-geometry for a wide range of analytic NDFs and simulating the effective reflectance of the resulting surface. Using the results of the simulation, the appearance of an input svBRDF can be reproduced. To this end, the micro-geometry is optimized in a data-driven fashion and distributed on the surface of the printed object. The methods were demonstrated to allow 3D printing svBRDF on planar samples with current 3D printing technology even with a limited set of printing materials, and the described methods have been shown to be naturally extendable to printing svBRDF on arbitrary shapes or 3D objects. | 03-19-2015 |