Geometry shadow maps with per-fragment atomics
US10255717B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Nov 1, 2016 |
| Grant date | Apr 9, 2019 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 8, 2037 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T15/80
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Embodiments of the present invention are directed to techniques for improving the efficiency of shadow mapping by using highly optimized hardware-accelerated rasterizers. Embodiments of the present invention use a shader (such as a fragment or compute shader) to construct advanced shadow maps which store a list of polygons that intersect each pixel, and synchronizing read/write operations (e.g., with atomics) to ensure consistency of the texture accesses when managing the per-texel triangle lists during creation. By using these hardware-accelerated and optimized techniques, high quality hard shadows can be produced during real-time rendering, as performed in graphics processing engines, for example. Moreover, this technique can be synchronized with other pre-fragment features that are becoming increasingly prevalent and efficient in the latest processing architectures.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.