Did You Know...
...that the Eveready Battery began as an invention called the "electric flowerpot," which was a tube with a battery and light bulb inside? The idea was to fasten this gizmo to the side of a flowerpot so it would illuminate the flowers from the bottom. The idea died on the vine and the businessman who licensed the flower pot, Conrad Huber, was left with a pile of useless tubes -- until he found a way to market them as batteries to light the world!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8189002 | Method and apparatus for visualizing three-dimensional and higher-dimensional image data sets In one aspect, the invention provides improvements in a digital data processor of the type that renders a three-dimensional (3D) volume image data into a two-dimensional (2D) image suitable for display. The improvements include a graphics processing unit (GPU) that ... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8189003 | System and method for rendering computer graphics utilizing a shadow illuminator Embodiments of the present invention are directed to rendering computer graphics using an augmented direct light model which approximates the effect of indirect light in shadows. More specifically, a shadow illuminator light source is provided for. The shadow illumi... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8189004 | Translating Renderman shading language code The present disclosure includes, among other things, systems, methods and program products for translating RenderMan shading language code. ... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8179395 | Image special effect apparatus and image special effect method An image special effect apparatus capable of realizing the illumination effects corresponding to various image special effects if an illumination effect pattern is not previously determined and the shape of the effect face changes rapidly is provided. An imag... | 05/15/2012 |
| 8174527 | Environment mapping A system and method for environment mapping determines a computer-generated object's reflective appearance, based upon position and orientation of a camera with respect to the object's location. An embodiment of the present invention is implemented as a real-time en... | 05/08/2012 |
| 8164591 | Device, server, system and method to generate mutual photometric effects The invention concerns a device for generating mutual photometric effects and a server for delivering photometric parameters for generating mutual photometric effects and a system including such a device and such a server. The device comprises a receiver for receivi... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8164593 | Systems and methods for graphical rendering A method of rendering a graphical scene includes determining a plurality of functions that contribute to a light transport model of the scene, projecting each function of the plurality of functions into the wavelet domain, encoding basis coefficients of each functio... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8164594 | Image processing device, image processing method, program, storage medium and integrated circuit It is an object to easily, and using existing devices, perform shadow enhancement that achieves an increase in the feeling of depth of 2D video. The input image data are first converted into brightness information by a brightness information calculation portion. The... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8164592 | Systems and methods for graphical rendering A computer readable medium is configured to determine the integral of the product of a plurality of functions. The computer readable medium includes logic configured to project each function of the plurality of functions into the wavelet domain, logic configured to ... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8159490 | Shading of translucent objects Embodiments of the invention relate for rendering translucent objects. According to some embodiments, the color of a pixel of a translucent object that is not directly illuminated by a light source can be determined by decaying the illumination contributed by the li... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8159491 | Apparatus and method for tracing activities of a shader program executed on shader circuitry of a data processing apparatus A data processing apparatus and method are provided for tracing activities of a shader program executed on shader circuitry of a data processing apparatus. The data processing apparatus comprises shader circuitry which is responsive to input data for a pixel to exec... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8149238 | Method and system for adaptive maximum intensity projection ray casting The adaptive MIP ray casting system first fragments a 3-D dataset into multiple sub-volumes and constructs an octree data structure with each sub-volume being associated with one node of the octree data structure. The system then establishes a 2-D image plane and se... | 04/03/2012 |
| 8144149 | System and method for dynamically load balancing multiple shader stages in a shared pool of processing units The present disclosure is directed to novel methods and apparatus for managing or performing the dynamic allocation or reallocation of processing resources among a vertex shader, a geometry shader, and pixel shader of a graphics processing unit. In one embodiment a ... | 03/27/2012 |
| 8139061 | Floating point execution unit for calculating a one minus dot product value in a single pass A floating point execution unit calculates a one minus dot product value in a single pass. As such, the dependency that otherwise would be required to perform the calculations is eliminated, resulting in a substantially faster performance of such calculations. The f... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8139060 | Ray tracing image processing system According to embodiments of the invention, a normally recursive ray tracing algorithm may be partitioned to form an iterative ray tracing algorithm. The resulting portions of the iterative ray tracing algorithm may be executed by a plurality of processing elements. ... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8139059 | Object illumination in a virtual environment Methods and systems for displaying an image as a virtual representation of an object based upon detected external light are described. An illustrative computer-implemented method includes steps of detecting the ambient light of an environment, such as a room, at a d... | 03/20/2012 |
| 8134555 | Acquisition of surface normal maps from spherical gradient illumination An apparatus for generating a surface normal map of an object may include a plurality of light sources having intensities that are controllable so as to generate one or more gradient illumination patterns. The light sources are configured and arranged to illuminate ... | 03/13/2012 |
| 8134556 | Method and apparatus for real-time 3D viewer with ray trace on demand A computer implemented method of providing a photo-realistic view on demand of a real-time interactive three dimensional simulation, the method comprising: providing a real-time interactive three dimensional simulation; selecting a camera position; and ray tracing t... | 03/13/2012 |
| 8120608 | Constant buffering for a computational core of a programmable graphics processing unit Embodiments of systems and methods for managing a constant buffer with rendering context specific data in multithreaded parallel computational GPU core are disclosed. Briefly described, one method embodiment, among others, comprises responsive to a first shader oper... | 02/21/2012 |
| 8120609 | Method, apparatus, and computer readable medium for light energy accounting in ray tracing For ray tracing systems, described methods, media, apparatuses provide for accounting of light energy that will be collected at pixels of a 2-D representation without recursive closure of a tree of ray/primitive intersections, and also provide for adaptivity in ray ... | 02/21/2012 |
| 8115767 | Computer graphics shadow volumes using hierarchical occlusion culling Techniques, systems, arrangements, and computer program products are operable in computer graphics systems to make shadow volumes more general with respect to the meshes that can serve as occluding geometry in such computer graphics systems, as well as for accelerat... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8115766 | System and method for rendering flow and volumes A system and method for rendering flows and volumes includes the steps of generating a preintegrated table, the preintegrated table having a plurality of entries, each of the plurality of entries having color information and opacity information, generating illustrat... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8102394 | Computer graphics using meshless finite elements for light transport Computer graphics methods, systems, apparatus and computer program code (software) products comprise: constructing a sparse implicit scene representation, wherein the representation is independent of geometric encoding and complexity of the input scene description, ... | 01/24/2012 |
| 8089481 | Updating frame divisions based on ray tracing image processing system performance An image processing system may perform various tasks in an effort to evenly distribute workload amongst workload managers. According to one embodiment of the invention, the image processing system may divide a frame of pixels into different regions and assign respon... | 01/03/2012 |
| 8085267 | Stochastic addition of rays in a ray tracing image processing system According to embodiments of the invention, rays may be stochastically culled before they are issued into the three-dimensional scene. Stochastically culling rays may reduce the number of rays which need to be traced by the image processing system. Furthermore, by st... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8081184 | Pixel shader program thread assembly Systems and methods for assembling pixel shader program threads for execution based on resource limitations of a multithreaded processor may improve processing throughput. Pixels to be processed by the pixel shader program are assembled into a launch group for proce... | 12/20/2011 |
| 8072454 | Parallel processing system, method, and computer program product for selecting a ray tracing entity from a group of ray tracing entities for processing A system, method, and computer program product are provided for selecting a ray tracing entity from a group of ray tracing entities for processing by a parallel processing architecture. In operation, it is determined whether at least one thread in a parallel process... | 12/06/2011 |
| 8063902 | Method and apparatus for increasing efficiency of transmission and/or storage of rays for parallelized ray intersection testing For ray tracing, methods, apparatus, and computer readable media provide efficient transmission and/or storage of rays between ray emitters, and an intersection testing resource. Ray emitters, during emission of a plurality of rays, identify a shared attribute of ea... | 11/22/2011 |
| 8059123 | Parallel processing system, method, and computer program product for postponing the execution of primitive intersection A system, method, and computer program product are provided for postponing the execution of primitive intersection. In operation, at, least one node traversal operation and at least one primitive intersection operation is executed, utilizing a parallel processing ar... | 11/15/2011 |
| 8054309 | Game machine, game machine control method, and information storage medium for shadow rendering To provide a game machine for displaying a picture in which light from a light source causes the shadow of an object, and the shadow varies according to a change in the position of the light source, the shape (posture) of the object, and so forth, while reducing a p... | 11/08/2011 |
| 8049753 | Computer graphics methods and systems for generating images with rounded corners Methods, systems, apparatus, and computer program/software code products, operable in a computer graphics system designed to render images and to apply shading to images, enable the following: during rendering of an image, modifying the shading normal in the region ... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8044956 | Coverage adaptive multisampling One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for improving antialiasing quality, while minimizing performance degradation, by adaptively selecting between multisampling and supersampling on a per pixel basis. The resulting performance may be genera... | 10/25/2011 |
| 8040351 | Using a geometry shader to perform a hough transform A system and method uses the capabilities of a geometry shader unit within the multi-threaded graphics processor to execute a geometry shader program and perform a Hough transform. ... | 10/18/2011 |
| 8040350 | Method and system for adaptive direct volume rendering An adaptive image volume rendering system first fragments a 3-D dataset into multiple sub-volumes and constructs an octree structure, wherein each sub-volume is associated with one node on the octree. The system then establishes a 2-D image plane and selectively lau... | 10/18/2011 |
| 8031193 | Dynamic light shading in terrain rendering applications In some embodiments, a method for high-performance terrain rendering may include one or more of the following steps: (a) obtaining elevation data, (b) determining slope of a terrain surface, (c) selecting a shading model to apply to the terrain surface based upon th... | 10/04/2011 |
| 8031192 | System and method for generating additional polygons within the contours of a rendered object to control levels of detail A method for control over the level of detail within a rendered object is provided. The method may be a program embodied on a machine readable medium. The method identifies a set of parent vertices defining a polygon within a rendered object. A child vertex of the s... | 10/04/2011 |
| 8031191 | Apparatus and method for generating rendering data of images An image processing apparatus for sequentially generating rendering data of a plurality of images composing a moving image, comprising a velocity vector detecting unit for detecting a velocity vector of a block image in an image in accordance with the rendering data... | 10/04/2011 |
| 8022950 | Stochastic culling of rays with increased depth of recursion According to embodiments of the invention, rays may be stochastically culled before they are issued into the three-dimensional scene. Stochastically culling rays may reduce the number of rays which need to be traced by the image processing system. Furthermore, by st... | 09/20/2011 |
| 8018457 | Ray tracing system architectures and methods Aspects comprise systems implementing ray tracing functionality according to example architectures. In one example, rays are collected into collections against elements of an acceleration structure, which in some cases are associated with objects composing a scene b... | 09/13/2011 |
| 8013857 | Method for hybrid rasterization and raytracing with consistent programmable shading A method of generating a computer image wherein secondary raytrace vectors are calculated for the image after the image is rendered using rasterization. The secondary raytrace vectors are based on virtual camera angles that are stored during the rasterization proces... | 09/06/2011 |
