Patent ID: 8793599

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for graphically representing processing operations for layers applied to a simulated material object, the method comprising: defining a first portion of a display as a workspace for presenting first graphical elements, wherein: the first graphical elements comprise: one or more graphical elements representing data sources; and one or more graphical elements representing the processing operations that are performed using the one or more data sources as inputs to generate outputs that define layer properties for the layers applied to the simulated material object; and the one or more graphical elements representing data sources and the one or more graphical elements representing processing operations are visually represented as a node-based graph that defines a data flow; defining a second portion of the display, different from the first portion, for presenting a graphical stack comprising second graphical elements and third graphical elements, wherein: each of the second graphical elements represents one of the layers applied to the simulated material object according to an ordering of the second graphical elements in the graphical stack; each of the graphical third elements represents parameters for defining an appearance of respective layers, and the graphical third elements are collapsible presented in the graphical stack below graphical second elements representing the respective layers; and each of the layers alters an appearance of the simulated material object; and simultaneously presenting the first portion of the display and the second portion of the display on a display device, such that the outputs of the node-based graph in the first portion of the display are graphically associated with graphical third elements representing corresponding parameters in the second portion of the display.