Techniques for animating complex scenes

• US 20060262121A1
• Filed: 04/27/2006
• Published: 11/23/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/10/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Pixar (The Walt Disney Company)
• Original Assignee: Pixar (The Walt Disney Company)
• Inventors: da Silva, Marco Jorge, Grassia, Frank Sebastian, Demoreuille, Peter Bernard
• Granted Patent: US 7,714,869 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/473
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 13/00 Animation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2210/61 Scene description

Abstract

Techniques that enable users (e.g., animators) to accurately animate models in a scene without having to load all the models involved in the scene concurrently in computer memory. For a particular model that a user wishes to animate, only a minimal set of models involved in the scene that are needed for the particular model to evaluate correctly are determined and loaded into computer memory. Additionally, if a particular model is to be unloaded from computer memory, then all models that depend, either directly or indirectly, on the particular model and that are loaded in memory are also unloaded from memory in order to avoid incorrect animation.

Claims

1-17. -17. (canceled)

18. A computer-implemented method of facilitating animation of a first model from a plurality of models, the method comprising:

determining, using a first representation, a set of models from the plurality of models upon which the first model depends, the first representation comprising a plurality of nodes and links between the nodes, the nodes representing inputs and outputs of the plurality of models and the links representing dependencies between the inputs and the outputs, wherein the plurality of models comprises at least one model that is not included in the set of models; and

loading the first model and the set of models in computer memory.