Patent ID: 7630580

Claim:
A method comprising: a vectorizing routine polygonizing an input image to produce an inflatable image by representing a set of pixels making up the input image as a plurality of polygons, and assigning an initial value to a z-coordinate of each pixel in the set of pixels; an extrusion routine extruding the inflatable image by applying a biased diffusion process to generate appropriate z-coordinate values for a reference point associated with each polygon of the plurality of polygons, wherein the biased diffusion process involves determining a new z-coordinate value of a particular pixel in the set of pixels based on a current z-coordinate value of the particular pixel, a diffusion coefficient, a pressure value and one or more z-coordinate values of one or more neighboring pixels in the set of pixels, and wherein pixels of the set of pixels further from an edge of the input image are more affected by the biased diffusion process; and wherein the vectorizing routine and the extrusion routine are implemented in one or more processors and one or more computer-readable media of one or more computer systems, the one or more computer-readable media having instructions representing the vectorizing routine and the extrusion routine tangibly embodied therein that are executable by the one or more processors.