Abstract: A video display device including an integrated atypical/typical defect compensation circuit is disclosed. The video display device includes a display panel, a memory storing atypical/typical defect information used to compensate atypical/typical defect regions of the display panel, and an integrated atypical/typical compensation circuit including a first compensator for compensating input data to be displayed on the atypical/typical defect regions, using the atypical/typical defect information from the memory, and a second compensator for finely compensating the data compensated by the first compensator, using first and second dithering patterns. The compensation circuit supplies data to be displayed on normal regions, without compensation.

Abstract: A fragment shader and method of operation are provided for a hybrid ray tracing system. The method includes determining whether a fragment is to be rasterized or raytraced. If a determination is made that the fragment is to be rasterized, a predetermined value for the fragment is stored into a rasterization target, the predetermined value indicating that the fragment is to be excluded from raytracing operations. If a determination is made that the fragment is to be raytraced, a primitive identifier of the fragment is stored into a rasterization target.

Abstract: A DDA 34 notifies the coordinates of a rasterized pixel to an exclusive control part 40, acquires a unique identification number associated with the pixel position from the exclusive control part 40, and adds the identification number to pixel data and supplies it to a shader 20. A plurality of shader pipes 22 in the shader 20 perform arithmetic processing for rendering pixels in parallel, and writes the processing results to a frame buffer 50. When performing an arithmetic instruction that requires exclusive control over a pixel, each shader pipe 22 issues a request to lock the pixel by notifying the identification information added to that pixel to the exclusive control part 40. If the lock request is accepted, the shader pipe 22 performs the arithmetic processing on that pixel. If the lock request is rejected, the shader pipe suspends and puts the arithmetic processing on that pixel into a wait state, and executes arithmetic processing on another pixel in the interim.

Abstract: Methods, devices, program products and systems are disclosed for displaying multiple virtual universe avatar states. Each of a plurality of avatar states of a first avatar of a first virtual universe user are stored in a storage medium as a function of a time of each state. A first avatar is displayed in a current state to a second user of an engaging second avatar, the engaging instigating a selecting and a retrieving of a subset of plurality of states from the storage medium, each of the subset states different from each other and the current state. Selected subset states are visually displayed to the second user, each of the displayed states visually distinct from another and the current state. The first avatar current state is stored in the storage medium associated with the engagement.

Abstract: An animation authoring apparatus and method of authoring an animation including a storyboard editor to provide a storyboard editing screen, to interact with a user to edit a storyboard, and to store the edited storyboard, a parser to parse syntax of the edited storyboard, and a rendering engine to convert the edited storyboard into a graphic animation based on the parsed syntax of the edited storyboard.

Abstract: Described herein is an animation authoring apparatus and method thereof for authoring an animation. The apparatus includes a storyboard editor that provides a storyboard editing display that a user may interact with to edit a storyboard, and to store the edited storyboard. The apparatus further includes a parser to parse syntax of the edited storyboard, and a rendering engine to convert the edited storyboard into a graphic animation based on the parsed syntax of the edited storyboard.

Abstract: Wrinkles are produced by computing directional stress, whether compression or stretching, for each pixel within each face of the mesh representing the skin, and then perturbing a surface normal based on the computed stress at each pixel in that face of the mesh. Directional stress at a given frame in an animation is determined, in general, by comparing the current state of the mesh at that frame (called a “current pose”) to the original state of the mesh (called a “rest pose”). An artist specifies a wrinkle pattern by defining a texture that is mapped to the surface, using conventional techniques. A gradient texture is created from this wrinkle texture by computing the gradient at each pixel in the wrinkle texture. For each location in a face of the surface, the vector from the gradient texture is mapped to the corresponding face of the rest pose skin model and the current pose skin model, to produce two surface vectors.

Abstract: What is disclosed is a novel system and method for content-aware resizing of a digital image. To take advantage of the characteristics of various importance maps generated for the image using different operators such as, for example, gradient, entropy, probabilistic operators, and the like, a method is provided herein for combining generated pixel importance maps. The present method uses a weighted combination of pixel importance maps—one corresponding to each image operator, to produce a hybrid map for all the image. The image can then be resized based on this hybrid map. The present method provides a high degree of image resizing flexibility and has broad applicability across differing classes of images and applications such as display, printing, packaging, and other document image processing software performing document layout, image personalization, and the like.

Abstract: A mobile telephone displays an image of a payment card in connection with a contactless payment function implemented in the mobile telephone. The mobile telephone constructs the payment card image from separate image elements. Data which represents at least some of the image elements is stored in an image data format which includes at least some dedicated storage fields for the various image elements.