Patent ID: 6937250

Claim:
A method for mapping a texture onto a surface of a computer generated object represented by a plurality of pixels, comprising: dividing a texture map into blocks, the texture map comprising a plurality of texels, each texel having an associated value; determining two block values for each block, wherein the block values are representative of the values of texels in the block, and wherein determining two block values for each block further comprises: calculating a tensor of inertia from texel values; determining an eigenvector having a smallest eigenvalue from the tensor; multiplying the smallest eigenvalue eigenvector with the texel values; and splitting the texel values in two groups by comparing a result of the multiplication with a threshold value; compressing the texture map by assigning to each texel one of the two block values associated with the block of which it is part; and mapping the compressed texture map onto the surface of the computer generated object.