As I understand it, in even simpler terms he has a patent on guide curves (hairs) producing an interpolated result.
I get that maybe he was among the first to think of that and implement it in the early CG days. Kudos to him for being among the first, but in my eyes that's a *very* fundamental concept of almost any hair system and he shouldn't be getting more than a mention in the *special thanks* of the About window of any cg hair solution. If he's not innovating in that field and his own product (Shave) is falling behind the times then I'm afraid that's his problem (and I'd love him to make it better, frankly), but he shouldn't stifle anyone else's seemingly superior solutions from advancing (or selling) just because they have any form of guide paths being extrapolated into a dense population of hair segments. That attitude seems troll'ish to me. On another note, I hope he isn't granted a patent on Pose-Space Deformations (PSD) for his work on the *LBrush* product: http://www.lbrush.com/ but at the same time I do hope people purchase his product and he makes money from it directly and not via litigation with others, and hope to see new fancy shmancy kickass innovative solutions from him. On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 1:23 PM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <luceri...@gmail.com>wrote: > On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Eric Deren <eric_l...@dzignlight.com> > wrote: > > I still have yet to figure out why folks unabashedly slam Joe. Yes, > there > > are patent trolls and yes, there are serious problems with our patent > > system, but after evaluating the entire situation after the Yeti deal > > collapsed (which was unfortunate), it seems to me that, in general, Joe > is > > the "little guy" that the best parts of our decrepit patent system > support. > > > > Before the Yeti thing, his patent basically kept several large studios > from > > outright stealing his work and giving him no compensation for it. Isn't > > that the ideal situation for patents? Protecting the little guy from the > > big conglomerate corporations? > > It's because Joe has a patent that's pretty general on how to > mathematically parametrize hair on a 3d surface, which not so much > something that's he "invented" but more of a description he's figured > out of the way to replicate on a computer what nature does on your > head. It simply isn't true that everyone who writes a hair system is > necessarily stealing his work, other people could come to the same > conclusion without looking at this work. > > that's how patents are: you have <process to do something>, then you > qualify it with a specific field, and boom, you've got a patent. There > are patents for "drawing... on a computer". You can't patent drawing, > but you could do it if you qualify it with "on a computer". > > It's really a case of running to the patent office early in CG history > before anyone else could and not so much of the little guy with a > brilliant innovation that needs to be protected from evil > conglomerates. >
