Patent ID: 7256800

Claim:
A computer readable medium storing instructions for causing a computer to define surface properties of an object whose structure is defined by a set of vertices by performing the steps of: receiving the set of vertices including position information and an index of layers storing a plurality of interacting layers for each vertex in the set of vertices, wherein each interacting layer includes an enable flag indicating whether or not the interacting layer should be processed and a layer interaction definition specifying an operation used to process the interacting layer processing the plurality of interacting layers for each vertex of the set of vertices to produce vertex layer stacks that define the surface properties of the object, each vertex layer stack including vertex layer values representing physical properties for each one of the interacting layers in the plurality of interacting layers; and wherein the step of processing the plurality of interacting layers for each vertex of the set of vertices is performed by starting with a lowest layer in the plurality of interacting layers and modifying the vertex layer values for a first domain specified in the plurality of interacting layers for each higher layer in the plurality of interacting layers before modifying the vertex layer values for another domain specified in the plurality of interacting layers.