Object Illumination in Hybrid Rasterization and Ray Traced 3-D Rendering
First Claim
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1. A 3-D rendering process, comprising:
- determining, for each frame of a sequence of frames, visible surfaces for pixels in the frame, from a respective viewpoint;
shading the pixels, the shading for at least some of the pixels comprising sampling a texture, the texture mappable to a surface visible at one or more of the pixels; and
maintaining the texture during the determining of the visible surfaces and the shading by performing sampling operations for a selection of elements in the texture and performing a combining of existing data and results of the sampling.
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Abstract
Rendering systems that can use combinations of rasterization rendering processes and ray tracing rendering processes are disclosed. In some implementations, these systems perform a rasterization pass to identify visible surfaces of pixels in an image. Some implementations may begin shading processes for visible surfaces, before the geometry is entirely processed, in which rays are emitted. Rays can be culled at various points during processing, based on determining whether the surface from which the ray was emitted is still visible. Rendering systems may implement rendering effects as disclosed.
56 Citations
27 Claims
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1. A 3-D rendering process, comprising:
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determining, for each frame of a sequence of frames, visible surfaces for pixels in the frame, from a respective viewpoint; shading the pixels, the shading for at least some of the pixels comprising sampling a texture, the texture mappable to a surface visible at one or more of the pixels; and maintaining the texture during the determining of the visible surfaces and the shading by performing sampling operations for a selection of elements in the texture and performing a combining of existing data and results of the sampling. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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23. An apparatus that implements a 3-D graphics rendering pipeline, comprising:
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a set of programmable computation units; a rasterization subsystem configured for receiving a stream of geometry elements, for each frame in a sequence of frames, and determining a respective visible geometry element for each pixel in each frame in the sequence of frames, wherein the set of programmable computation units is configurable to execute rasterization shading code for the visible geometry elements, the executing rasterization shading code capable of outputting texture sample requests; a texture sampling subsystem coupled to receive texture sample requests and to return texture data for each texture sample request based on current texture data stored in a memory, wherein a texture stored in the texture memory is mappable to a surface of a geometry element; a ray tracing subsystem configured to traverse rays through an acceleration structure to identify respective portions of geometry elements to be tested for intersection with the rays, wherein the set of programmable computation units are further configurable to execute ray shading code for intersections determined between rays and geometry elements; and a texture maintenance subsystem configured to maintain the texture by selecting elements of the texture, determining locations that map to those selected elements of the texture, emitting rays from those locations, receiving results pertaining to shading of these rays and updating elements in the texture concurrently with the execution of the rasterization subsystem. - View Dependent Claims (24, 25, 26, 27)
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Specification