Henry P Moreton

6504537, Jan 7, 2003

Sep 5, 2000

09/655103

Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA
Douglas H. Rogers - Sunnyvale CA

NVIDIA Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1530

345423

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for decomposing surfaces for rendering purposes during computer graphics processing. Initially, an interior mesh of primitives is defined in a surface to be rendered. Next, a plurality of surrounding meshes is defined along sides of the interior mesh. The exterior sides of the surrounding meshes each include a plurality of equally sized segments and at least one fractional segment that is a fraction of the equally sized segments. With this configuration, a pattern of triangles is used that permits the number of triangles to be varied continuously from frame to frame while accommodating incremental evaluation techniques such as forward differencing without visual artifacts such as popping.

6597356, Jul 22, 2003

Nov 21, 2000

09/718890

Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA
Justin Legakis - Davis CA
Douglas H. Rogers - Sunnyvale CA

Nvidia Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1720

345423, 345421, 345426, 345427

An integrated graphics pipeline system is provided for graphics processing. Such system includes a tessellation module that is positioned on a single semiconductor platform for receiving data for tessellation purposes. Tessellation refers to the process of decomposing either a complex surface such as a sphere or surface patch into simpler primitives such as triangles or quadrilaterals, or a triangle into multiple smaller triangles. Also included on the single semiconductor platform is a transform module adapted to transform the tessellated data from a first space to a second space. Coupled to the transform module is a lighting module which is positioned on the single semiconductor platform for performing lighting operations on the data received from the transform module. Also included is a rasterizer coupled to the lighting module and positioned on the single semiconductor platform for rendering the data received from the lighting module.

6600488, Jul 29, 2003

Nov 4, 2002

10/287988

Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA
Douglas H. Rogers - Sunnyvale CA

NVIDIA Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1530

345423

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for decomposing surfaces for rendering purposes during computer graphics processing. Initially, an interior mesh of primitives is defined in a surface to be rendered. Next, a plurality of surrounding meshes is defined along sides of the interior mesh. The exterior sides of the surrounding meshes each include a plurality of equally sized segments and at least one fractional segment that is a fraction of the equally sized segments. With this configuration, a pattern of triangles is used that permits the number of triangles to be varied continuously from frame to frame while accommodating incremental evaluation techniques such as forward differencing without visual artifacts such as popping.

6624811, Sep 23, 2003

Aug 31, 2000

09/652866

Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA
Justin Legakis - Davis CA

NVIDIA Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1720

345423, 345611

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for decomposing surfaces using guard curves for rendering purposes during computer graphics processing. Initially, a patch is received. Thereafter, a plurality of strip curves associated with the patch is defined in a first predetermined direction. As such, areas are defined by the strip curves which are adapted for being decomposed into a plurality of primitives. Next, at least one guard curve associated with the patch is generated. The guard curve is positioned along ends of the strip curves and in a second predetermined direction perpendicular with respect to the first predetermined direction.

6704010, Mar 9, 2004

Sep 5, 2000

09/655105

Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA

NVIDIA Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1700

345423, 345506

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for converting triangular patches into a form suitable for being rendered using a graphics pipeline adapted to render quadrilateral patches. First, a triangular patch is received. The received triangular patch is then divided into a plurality of quadrilateral patches. Such quadrilateral patches are suitable for being processed by a graphics pipeline specifically equipped to render quadrilateral patches.

6724394, Apr 20, 2004

Jun 19, 2001

09/885242

Harold Robert Feldman Zatz - Mountain View CA
Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA
John Erik Lindholm - Cupertino CA

NVIDIA Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1540

345581, 345421, 345426, 345582

A system and associated method are provided for processing pixel data in a graphics pipeline. Included is a triangle module coupled to a rasterizer for calculating a plurality of equations using pixel data received from the rasterizer. Also provided is a shader core module coupled to the rasterizer for receiving the pixel data therefrom. The shader core module is further coupled to the triangle module for receiving the equations therefrom. The shader core module functions to execute floating point calculations and generating texture coordinates using the pixel data. Coupled to the shader core module is a texture module. The texture module is capable of looking up texture values using the texture coordinates. Associated therewith is a shader back end module coupled to the texture module and the triangle module. The shader back end module is capable of converting the texture values to an appropriate floating point representation and generating color values using the equations.

6731298, May 4, 2004

Oct 2, 2000

09/678111

Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA
John Erik Lindholm - Cupertino CA
Matthew N. Papakipos - Palo Alto CA
Harold Robert Feldman Zatz - Mountain View CA

NVIDIA Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1140

345584, 345582

A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for computer graphics processing. First, pixel data is received including a depth-value. Thereafter, the depth-value is modified based on a depth-component of an algorithm. An operation is subsequently performed on the pixel data taking into account the modified depth-value.

6738062, May 18, 2004

Apr 20, 2001

09/839422

Henry P. Moreton - Woodside CA

NVIDIA Corporation - Santa Clara CA

G06T 1720

345423, 345420

A representation is provided for displacement mapping. Included are a coarse first mesh, and a fine second mesh with a topology substantially similar to a topology of the first mesh. The second mesh includes a plurality of scalar values which each represent an offset between various points on the first mesh and the second mesh.