Gregory L Nichols

US Patent:

6647754, Nov 18, 2003

Filed:

Jul 31, 2001

Appl. No.:

09/918747

Inventors:

Ernest Bodnar - Toronto, CA
Joseph A. Ruckauf - Chicago IL
Gregory C. Nichols - Plainfield IL

Assignee:

Formtek, Inc. - Westfield MA

International Classification:

B21D 508

US Classification:

72181

Abstract:

A variable width roll forming apparatus forms a web and includes a first side plate extending substantially an entire length of the roll forming apparatus and a second side plate extending substantially an entire length of the roll forming apparatus, the first side plate and the second side plate being oriented substantially equidistant from one another. A plurality of roller die assemblies are disposed in apertures formed in the first side plate and the second side plate. An adjusting apparatus is utilized to selectively change a separation width between predetermined roller die assemblies in the first side plate and the second side plate, wherein the roll forming apparatus defines at least two differing widths between roller die assemblies disposed in the first side plate and the second side plate while maintaining the substantially equidistant spacing between the first side plate and the second side plate.

US Patent:

20130328857, Dec 12, 2013

Filed:

Jun 11, 2012

Appl. No.:

13/493902

Inventors:

Brent Burley - Monterey Park CA, US
Andrew Selle - Montrose CA, US
Christlan Eisenacher - Burbank CA, US
Gregory Nichols - North Hollywood CA, US

International Classification:

G06T 1/00

US Classification:

345418

Abstract:

A method is provided for a streaming hierarchy traversal renderer with particular application for feature films and other demanding content creation using scenes of high complexity that cannot fit in memory. The renderer organizes scene geometry into a spatial hierarchy, generates directional queries to be traced in the spatial hierarchy, performs a streaming hierarchy traversal over the directional queries, and uses the results of the directional queries to shade or render the scene. The traversal performs a single pass over the directional queries for splitting into one child stream of directional queries for each child node at each scene node in the hierarchy. A prioritized traversal of the hierarchy may also be carried out using various cost-metrics for optimized parallelism. The rendering may also bounce the directional queries to provide multi-pass global illumination.

US Patent:

20130328875, Dec 12, 2013

Filed:

Jun 11, 2012

Appl. No.:

13/493929

Inventors:

Brent Burley - Monterey Park CA, US
Andrew Selle - Montrose CA, US
Christian Eisenacher - Burbank CA, US
Gregory Nichols - North Hollywood CA, US

Assignee:

DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC. - Burbank CA

International Classification:

G06T 15/50

US Classification:

345426

Abstract:

A method is provided for integration cone tracing with particular application for feature films and other demanding content creation using scenes of high complexity requiring global illumination. Instead of using a conventional noise prone ray tracer, cones are intersected with a scene bounding hierarchy to determine intersecting scene geometry, and integration results are computed by directional sampling within the cones. As a result, the working data set may be reduced as the rendering may begin with a smaller set of cones as compared to the large number of rays required for acceptable filtering in a conventional ray tracer. Furthermore, by refining the cones during the rendering only on an as-needed basis according to an acceptable noise threshold and by sharing secondary cone bounces among primary cones, the processing workload and data set requirements may be kept to a reasonable level even for multiple global illumination passes.

US Patent:

20130329107, Dec 12, 2013

Filed:

Jun 11, 2012

Appl. No.:

13/493948

Inventors:

Brent Burley - Monterey Park CA, US
Andrew Selle - Montrose CA, US
Christian Eisenacher - Burbank CA, US
Gregory Nichols - North Hollywood CA, US

Assignee:

DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC. - Burbank CA

International Classification:

H04N 5/225

US Classification:

34833301, 34820799, 348E05024

Abstract:

A method is provided for streaming light propagation with particular application for feature films and other demanding content creation using scenes of high complexity requiring art directed global illumination. By attaching a data recording shader or equivalent functionality to any tracing based renderer that can provide multi-pass global illumination, the complete set of light bounce propagation records and the set of emissive samples for a particular rendering can be recorded to memory or disk. A user may edit the emissive samples to adjust the lighting environment, including modifying light source color and intensity and even moving and adding new emissive samples. To relight the scene, the edited emissive samples are processed through the propagation records using a streaming multiply-and-add operation amenable to high levels of parallelization, avoiding a costly re-rendering of the scene and providing a final quality result in interactive time.