This month's Graphics & Rendering category includes 3 granted patents from Activision Blizzard (1), Sony (1), and Tencent (1).
The patents cover a range of rendering and geometry techniques, from runtime graphics quality switching to mesh simplification and pre-baked character deformation. Sony's patent describes a renderer that adjusts graphics quality in response to mode switch messages, frame analysis, or audio cues from the game itself. Tencent addresses mesh simplification through a flattening and retopology process, while Activision Blizzard covers a system that builds a motion graph from motion capture data and pre-bakes cloth deformation and normal maps per pose to handle character animation without runtime simulation.
Sony received 1 patent centered on how a renderer decides when to change graphics quality. Rather than inferring load from frame timing measurements, as dynamic resolution scaling typically does, the system listens for explicit signals from the application itself, whether a mode switch message, a cue derived from analyzing an image frame, or an audio event. Because the trigger carries meaning rather than just a performance reading, the renderer can correctly handle situations like a paused detail screen, where the application can communicate that a high frame rate is not needed and that full quality rendering is appropriate. The signal can also specify particular settings by name, allowing multiple rendering parameters beyond resolution to shift together in a single coordinated change.
Tencent received 1 patent addressing how to reduce the surface count of 3D object meshes, with game scene assets like trees offered as the target use case. Rather than applying decimation directly to the original 3D geometry, which the patent describes as prone to losing model detail, the method first flattens the mesh, fits a bounding box patch model around it, retopologizes that patch representation, and then reconstructs a 3D mesh from the result. The reduction therefore operates on a flattened and patched intermediate form instead of the raw geometry.
Activision Blizzard received 1 patent covering a character animation system built around a motion graph whose nodes correspond to dominant poses drawn from motion capture data, specifically the peaks and valleys of force curves rather than arbitrary captured frames. For each of those dominant poses, the system pre-bakes inverse blend shapes and normal maps for secondary assets like capes, so that cloth volume and surface detail are driven by mesh weights and shader data at runtime rather than by a live cloth simulation. This approach avoids the fixed clip libraries and hand-tagged blend windows associated with traditional animation state machines, and it also sidesteps the continuous dataset searches that motion matching requires, which means adding new captured motion does not inadvertently alter unrelated animations.
All data sourced from USPTO patent filings. Google Patents may take several weeks to index recent publications. If a link is unavailable, search for the patent number at USPTO Patent Public Search.