Patent ID: 8125493

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for generating a texture from a resulting visual image, the computer-implemented method comprising the steps of: receiving, at a computing device, a plurality of images and a geometry corresponding to a physical object; mapping, on the computing device, the geometry to each of the plurality of images; aligning, on the computing device, the plurality of images with one another in accordance with placement of the geometry in each of the plurality of images; generating, with a processing unit of the computing device, a plurality of nodes, with each node in the plurality of nodes corresponding to a portion of pixels in one of the plurality of images; generating, with the processing unit, edges between ones of the plurality of nodes, such that an edge between a first node corresponding to a first portion of one of the plurality of images and a second node corresponding to a second portion of one of the plurality of images indicates that the first portion and the second portion can be neighboring portions in the resulting visual image constructing, with the processing unit, a graph comprising the plurality of nodes and the edges such that each possible way of forming the resulting visual image is represented by paths from a starting node to an ending node of the constructed graph along the edges; computing, with the processing unit, costs for at least some of the edges, wherein a computed cost for the edge between the first node corresponding to the first portion and the second node corresponding to the second portion is based on an associated cost of placing of the first portion and the second portion next to each other in the resulting visual image; computing, with the processing unit, costs for at least some of the plurality of nodes in accordance with a likelihood of a corresponding portion of one of the plurality of images being included in the resulting visual image; determining, with the processing unit, a path from the starting node to the ending node in the graph having a smallest total cost, the path representing an ordering of portions from the plurality of images; constructing, on the computing device, the resulting visual image from the ordering of portions represented by the determined path having the smallest total cost; and generating, on the computing device, the texture using the resulting visual image.