Patent Publication Number: US-2007100592-A1

Title: Virtual sampling system

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION  
      The invention relates to systems used to design footwear. More particularly, the invention provides methods and systems for creating virtual representations of footwear utilizing design element images obtained from libraries.  
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
      Conventional processes used for designing articles of footwear can be expensive and time consuming. When a designer wishes to create an article of footwear with a new material, the designer typically must first obtain the material and then create a physical prototype of the article of footwear. Even when the material is available, creating a physical prototype of the article of footwear may take several weeks because of the number of parts of a typical article of footwear. After the prototype is created, the designer may then wish to modify the design to use different materials, textures or colors. Each modification requires the designer to obtain the necessary materials and construct a prototype article of footwear.  
      As the design of an article of footwear becomes more complex, the costs and time required to design the article of footwear increase. Athletic footwear, for example, may contain several layered sections that may be made of a variety of materials having assorted colors and textures. A significant portion of the time spent by designers when using conventional design processes to design articles of footwear can involve obtaining materials and creating prototypes of the article of footwear that incorporate the various design elements.  
      Therefore, there is a need in the art for design systems and methods that allow designers of footwear to obtain design results without going through the time consuming and expensive process of obtaining materials and creating prototypes.  
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
      One or more of the above-mentioned needs in the art are satisfied by the disclosed virtual sampling systems and methods. Images of articles of footwear are obtained. The images are used to create a simulated three dimensional structure of an article of footwear. Images of design elements, such as materials, textures, etc., and colors used to create articles of footwear are stored in libraries. During the design process, a designer may retrieve images of design elements from the libraries and apply the design elements to the simulated three dimensional structure of the article of footwear to create a virtual design of an article of footwear. One of more images of the design may then be displayed on a display device for viewing by the designer. The designer may then make modifications to the virtual design by selecting different design element images.  
      In certain embodiments of the invention, the present invention can be partially or wholly implemented with a computer-readable medium, for example, by storing computer-executable instructions or modules, or by utilizing computer-readable data structures.  
      Of course, the methods and systems of the above-referenced embodiments may also include other additional elements, steps, computer-executable instructions, or computer-readable data structures.  
      The details of these and other embodiments of the present invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
      The present invention is illustrated by way of example and not limited in the accompanying figures in which like reference numerals indicate similar elements and in which:  
       FIG. 1  illustrates a system for creating a virtual representation of an article of footwear, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;  
       FIG. 1A  illustrates a client-server system for creating a virtual representation of an article of footwear, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;  
       FIG. 2  illustrates an image of a gray article of footwear, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;  
       FIG. 3  illustrates a virtual representation of an article of footwear designed in accordance with aspects of the invention;  
       FIG. 4  illustrates an image of an article of footwear that includes a three dimensional wire frame; and  
       FIG. 5  illustrates a method of creating a virtual representation of an article of footwear, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION  
       FIG. 1  illustrates a system for creating a virtual representation of an article of footwear in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. A capture device  102 , such as a digital camera or scanner may be used to create a digital image of an article of footwear  104 . In one embodiment, article of footwear  104  has a monochromatic color scheme, such as college gray. San Fang Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. of Taiwan manufactures a 1.2 millimeter mega synthetic leather material that may be used to create gray footwear.  
      Capture device  102  may also be used to create digital images of one or more footwear sections  106 . Footwear sections may include midsole, upper, outsole and other footwear sections. Digital images of a variety of materials, such as materials  108 ,  110  and  112  may also be created. Materials  108 ,  110  and  112  may have textures, colors or other attributes that make them suitable for use with footwear.  
      Images captured by capture device  102  may be stored in a variety of different libraries, such as materials library  116  and footwear library  118 . Image editing software (not shown) may be used to edit captured images before the images are stored in libraries. For example, image editing software may be used to place images in a standard format, size and resolution. Color palette library  114  may contain a collection of color data that corresponds to a collection of colors that may be used when designing footwear. The color data may be stored as hexadecimal data that represents individual colors. In an alternative embodiment, a spectrophometer could be used to capture color data from samples. Materials library  116  may contain a collection of images of materials that may be used to construct footwear and footwear library  118  may contain images of footwear and sections of footwear. One skilled in the art will appreciate that additional or fewer libraries may be used to implement various aspects of the invention. Moreover, additional libraries may contain images of other design elements used in the design of footwear. Libraries  114 ,  116  and  118  may be located on a server computer device, a design computer device or separate computer devices. One or more of libraries  114 ,  116  and  118  may also be combined into a single library.  
      Capture device  102  may be linked to libraries  114 ,  116  and  118  via a network  128 . Network  128  may be implemented (accessed) with a wide area network, such as the Internet, or a local area network. Of course, a computer device (not shown) may be connected to capture device  102  and may receive images and format the images for transport across network  120  to libraries  114 ,  116  and  118 . Libraries  114 ,  116  and/or  118  may obtain data from sources other than capture device  102 . For example, a material image source  122  and a footwear image source  124  may provide images to libraries  114 ,  116  and  118 . In one embodiment of the invention, material image source  122  may be implemented with a vendor that provides materials that are suitable for use in constructing footwear. The vendor may transmit images via network  120  to materials library  116 , where the images may be retrieved by a footwear designer. Similarly, footwear image source  124  may be implemented with a vendor that provides various footwear elements.  
      Libraries  114 ,  116  and  118  may be connected to or stored on one or more computer devices used to design footwear, such as image creation station  125 . In one embodiment, libraries  114 ,  116  and  118  are connected to image creation station  125  via a network  128 . Network  128  may be the same as or form a portion of network  120 . Image creation station  125  may include a processor, memory, keyboard, pointing device and other conventional computer device components. Image creation station  125  may also include computer-executable instructions stored on computer-readable media, such as an optical disk, magnetic memory or physical memory, for allowing image creation station  125  to be used to design footwear.  
      A masking module  129  may be included to define boundaries between the elements of an image of an article of footwear. For example,  FIG. 2  illustrates an image  200  of a gray article of footwear. Image  200  may have been generated by capture device  102 . Image  200  includes several distinct sections, such as sections  202  and  204 . Masking module  129  defines the boundaries between each section, so that in subsequent design steps, colors, materials and other design elements are applied to the correct sections. For example,  FIG. 3  illustrates a virtual representation of an article of footwear  300  designed in accordance with aspects of the invention and includes distinct sections  302  and  304  that correspond to sections  202  and  204 , respectively. Masking module  129  ensures that a material applied to section  304  is not also applied to section  302  and a color applied to section  302  is not applied to section  304 .  
      A three dimensional image module  130  may be included to create a simulated three dimensional model of a two dimensional image. For example,  FIG. 4  illustrates an image of an article of footwear  400  that includes a three dimensional wire frame  402 . Wire frame  402  corresponds to the shape of the article of footwear and may be used when applying colors, materials and other design elements to the article of footwear to ensure that the resulting virtual representation has a three dimensional appearance. Three dimensional image module  130  may create a wire frame that holds image resolution information. As the wire frame is created, three dimensional image module  130  may adjust the image resolution to correspond to the shape of the article of footwear. Adjustments may include stretching and compressing so that as an image of a material or other design element is applied to the simulated three dimensional model, the applied image is distorted to the shape of the wire frame.  
      An image manipulation module  132  may be included to allow a designer to add images of materials, colors and other design elements to a monochromatic image of an article of footwear to create a virtual representation of an article of footwear. A variety of commercially available software products may be purchased to perform the functions of masking module  129 , three dimensional image module  130  and image manipulation module  132 . Scene  7 , Inc. of Novato, California, for example, sells imaging software that performs these functions.  
      Image creation station  125  may be connected to a display device  134  that displays a graphical user interface  136  used to design footwear. Graphical user interface  136  may include an image of an article of footwear and user selectable elements that allow a designer to select a footwear design element, such as a color, a texture, a material, or footwear section and apply the design element to the image of the article of footwear.  
       FIG. 1A  illustrates an alternative client-server system for creating a virtual representation of an article of footwear, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. The elements that are similar to the elements shown in  FIG. 1  are labeled the same and will not be described again. Color palette library  114 , materials library  116  and footwear library  118  may be stored in or accessed by an image production server  138 . Image authoring station  126  may be used to edit images and create new images that are stored in libraries such as palette library  114 , materials library  116  and footwear library  118 . After a user designs an article of footwear on graphical user interface  136 , image authoring station  126  or another computer device may collect the information used to create the article of footwear displayed on the graphical user interface and transmit the information to an image rendering server  140 . Image rendering server  140  may then access images and color data of the necessary design elements and render a virtual representation of an article of footwear. For example, a URL string identifying all of the design elements used to create the article of footwear displayed on graphical user interface  136  may be transmitted to image rendering server  140 . Image rendering server  140  may then parse the URL string, access the necessary images of design elements from one or more libraries via image production server  138  and render a virtual representation of an article of footwear in the form of a TIFF, JPEG or PNG file.  
      One skilled in the art will appreciate that aspects of the invention are not limited to specific network configurations. The functionality described above may be implemented with a variety of client and/or server applications. For example, the system shown in  FIG. 1A  may be modified so that masking module  129 , three dimensional image module  130  and image manipulation module  132  are included in image rendering server  140 . Other embodiments of the invention may be entirely workstation based.  
       FIG. 5  illustrates a method of creating a virtual representation of an article of footwear, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. First, in step  502  an image of an article of footwear is received. The image may be received at image authoring station  126  and may be received from capture device  102 , footwear library  118  or some other source. Next, in step  504  the image of the article of footwear is masked. As described above, masking an image includes defining boundaries between sections of the image so that footwear design elements may be applied to the appropriate sections. A simulated three-dimensional structure of the article of footwear may then be created in step  506 .  FIG. 4  shows a wire frame  402  that is used to simulate a three-dimensional structure. Footwear design elements are then retrieved from at least one library in step  508 . As mentioned above, footwear design elements may include images of materials and textures, color data or other elements used in the design of footwear. Finally, in step  510  the footwear design elements are applied to the three-dimensional structure of the article of footwear to create a virtual representation of an article of footwear. Applying the footwear design elements to a three-dimensional structure results in an image that resembles an actual article of footwear and provides the designer with a representation of how an actual article of footwear would appear.  
      One skilled in the art will appreciate that additional steps may be added to the process shown in  FIG. 5 . For example, after viewing the virtual representation of an article of footwear, the designer may replace and/or add design elements to the virtual representation to create a different design. This process may be repeated numerous times until a suitable design is obtained. Moreover, once a design is obtained, the virtual representation of the article of footwear as well as a listing of the colors, materials, textures and anything other design elements used in the design may be transmitted across a computer network to initiate the creation of a prototype article of footwear.  
      Aspects of the invention may be used when designing products other than footwear. For example, the design systems and method described above may be used in the design of jackets, hats and other articles of clothing.  
      While the invention has been described with respect to specific examples including presently preferred modes of carrying out the invention, those skilled in the art will appreciate that there are numerous variations and permutations of the above described systems and techniques that fall within the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.