RENDERING THREE-DIMENSIONAL OBJECTS ON A SERVER COMPUTER

• US 20090079729A1
• Filed: 09/24/2007
• Published: 03/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/24/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Pritting, Gary Allan, Saini, Shailesh, Geffner, Steven Paul
• Granted Patent: US 8,134,553 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/419
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 15/00 3D [Three Dimensional] image rendering
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2200/16 involving adaptation to the client's capabilities

Abstract

Technologies are described herein for rendering documents containing three-dimensional objects. A client computer receives a request to display a document. If a program utilized to create the document is not available to display the document, the client computer transmits a request to a server computer to render the document, including the rendering of any three-dimensional objects contained therein. In response to receiving the request, the server computer determines whether the document contains any three-dimensional objects. If the document contains three-dimensional objects, the server computer renders the three-dimensional objects. Once the three-dimensional objects have been rendered, the remaining portion of the document is also rendered. The rendered version of the document is then returned to the client computer in response to the original request to render the document. The rendered document is then displayed on the client computer by a standard viewer application.

Claims

1. A method for rendering a three-dimensional object on a server computer, the method comprising:

receiving a request to display a document;

in response to the request, determining whether an application program utilized to create the document is available to display the document; and

in response to determining that the application program utilized to create the document is not available to display the document, transmitting a request to the server computer to render the document including the rendering of any three-dimensional objects contained in the document.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a rendered version of the document from the server computer in response to the request to the server computer to render the document; and

executing a viewer application to display the rendered version of the document.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the request to the server computer to render the document comprises a request to render a single page of the document, wherein receiving a rendered version of the document from the server computer comprises receiving a rendered version of the single page of the document, and wherein executing a viewer application to display the rendered version of the document comprises executing a viewer application to display the rendered version of the single page of the document.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the rendered version of the document received from the server computer is substantially similar to a render of the document generated by the application program utilized to create the document.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the rendered version of the document comprises an image and wherein the viewer application comprises an application program operative to display the image.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the image is formatted according to a web-standard image format.

7. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform the method of claim 1.

8. A method for rendering a three-dimensional object on a server computer, the method comprising:

receiving a request to render a document;

in response to receiving the request, parsing the document to determine whether the document contains a three-dimensional object; and

in response to determining that the document contains a three-dimensional object, rendering the three-dimensional object on the server computer, rendering the document including the rendered three-dimensional object to create a rendered document, and providing the rendered document in response to the request to render the document.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising in response to determining that the document does not contain a three-dimensional object:

rendering the document; and

providing the rendered document in response to the request to render the document.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the request to render a document comprises a request to render a single page of a document, wherein parsing the document to determine whether the document contains a three-dimensional object comprises parsing the single page of the document to determine whether the page contains a three-dimensional object, wherein rendering the document including the rendered the three-dimensional object to create a rendered document comprises rendering the single page of the document including the rendered three-dimensional object to create a rendered page of the document, and wherein providing the rendered document in response to the request to render the document comprises providing the rendered page of the document in response to the request to render a single page of the document.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein the rendered document is substantially similar to a render of the document generated by an application program utilized to create the document.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein the rendered document comprises an image and wherein the image is formatted according to a world wide web (web) standard image format.

13. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform the method of claim 8.

14. A system for rendering a three-dimensional object on a server computer, the system comprising:

a first server component operative to receive a request to render a document, to parse the document to determine whether the document contains a three-dimensional object, and in response to determining that the document contains a three-dimensional object, to transmit a request to a second server component to render the three-dimensional object; and

a second server component operative to receive the request to render the three-dimensional object from the first server component, to render the three-dimensional object, and to return the rendered three-dimensional object to the first server component in response to the request.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the first server component is further operative to:

receive the rendered three-dimensional object from the second server component;

render the document including the rendered three-dimensional object to create a rendered document; and

to

provide the rendered document in response to the request to render the document.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein in response to determining that the document does not contain a three-dimensional object the first server component is further operative to:

render the document to create a rendered document; and

to

provide the rendered document in response to the request to render the document.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the first server component is executed on a first server computer and wherein the second server component is executed on a second server computer.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the first server component and the second server component are executed on a single server computer.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the rendered document is substantially similar to a render of the document generated by an application program utilized to create the document.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the rendered document comprises an image and wherein the image is formatted according to a world wide web (web) standard image format.