Memory efficient surface normal compression
US6249286A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Oct 31, 1998 |
| Grant date | Jun 19, 2001 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Oct 31, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T9/001
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A high performance method for the compression of floating point format surface normals and the inverse method for the decompression of those compressed surface normals. Each of the three vector components of the surface normal is compressed by subtracting a constant from the floating point format value, then extracting a predefined field, and finally storing the extracted field. Decompression of the compressed surface normal requires first converting the three stored vector components into floating-point format and then adding a predefined constant to each. The compressed and decompressed surface normals may be of unit length or not as specified by the user.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.