[Algorithms] Pixar patent

[Peter W. <Pet...@vi...>]

> A related question is how to calculate texture coords (and 
> other attributes) when creating subdiv surfaces. I just use
> linear - seems to work OK with my data, but others prefer to
> use other methods, such as use the subdiv surface method,
> but on the attributes data. This gives excellent results BUT
> it is possibly covered by a sneaky Pixar patent. It's still
> unclear exactly what this patent covers (as with all patents,
> it's extremely vague), but there may be some prior art that
> we can hide behind :-)

For anybody else who's interested, the patent number is 6,037,949, and you
can look at the patent at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

As Tom said, after reading it I'm still unclear exactly what it's supposed
to cover. It seems to claim any interpolation of values across a subdivided
surface, which if true is pretty sneaky.

Peter