Is Disney plagiarizing Takeo Igarashi?

[Víctor Paredes]

I know the title sounds harsh, but I just saw this from Disney Research:

http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/d ... tructures/
And it looks a lot similar to what Takeo Igarashi was doing several years ago:
http://www.geocities.jp/igarashi_lab/pi ... dex-e.html
First I thought Igarashi was working at Disney, but I can't find his name there. Look at the demostration movie, it's the same concept. They even create an inflable bear there. And Pillow is from 2006.
We have talked about Igarashi's work several times here. If you don't know it, I recommend you to make a research. His team has developed very interesting concepts.

[dkwroot]

I wouldn't call this plagiarism as the concept has been around for a long time. Shoe companies and clothing companies use their own custom programs to create clothing patterns from 3d models. There are also several consumer programs that do a similar job:

EasyToy: http://www.livesforce.com/index_eng.html
Pepakura: http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/

What Disney and Igarashi are doing is adding a physics engine and testing how the shapes will hold their form when placed under stress. I hope they're successful in what they're both doing and I really hope they open-source their project like they did with OpenSubDiv.