Patent Document ID: 20080204447
Application ID: 11678102
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for modeling and animating a trajectory of an object in a three-dimensional (3D) space, the object moving along the trajectory with unidirectionally progressing time, wherein said 3D space is specified by an origin O (0, 0, 0) and an XYZ coordinate system comprising an x-axis, a y-axis, and a z-axis, wherein a 3D point comprises a triplet (x, y, z) indicating a position of the object in the 3D space, x representing a distance of the position along the x-axis, y representing a distance of the position along the y-axis, and z representing a distance of the position along the z-axis, wherein the trajectory comprises at least one course, each course being displayed as a 3D model mesh comprising multiple vertices, wherein said each course comprises at least one segment representing a display unit of the 3D model mesh, wherein each segment comprises two 3D points ordered in time and successive segments ordered in time in accordance with said unidirectionally progressing time, said method comprising for each segment: generating at least three vertices for a first 3D point of said two 3D points comprising the segment, said at least three vertices not being collinear so that said at least three vertices jointly specify a plane such that a normal vector of the specified plane is parallel to a vector directed from the first 3D point of the segment to a second 3D point of the segment; and adding the generated at least three vertices to the 3D model mesh stored in a storage device, so that the generated at least three vertices can be subsequently displayed as an extension of the 3D model mesh.