Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for efficient generation of texture coordinate displacements for implementing emboss-style bump mapping in a graphics rendering system

US6980218B1 · kind B1 · utility

6Cited by
76References
12Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateNov 28, 2000
Grant dateDec 27, 2005
Priority date
Expiry dateOct 13, 2022

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06T15/04
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A graphics system including a custom graphics and audio processor produces exciting 2D and 3D graphics and surround sound. The system includes a graphics and audio processor including a 3D graphics pipeline and an audio digital signal processor. Emboss style effects are created using fully pipelined hardware including two distinct dot-product computation units that perform a scaled model view matrix multiply without requiring the Normal input vector and which also compute dot-products between the Binormal and Tangent vectors and a light direction vector in parallel. The resulting texture coordinate displacements are provided to texture mapping hardware that performs a texture mapping operation providing texture combining in one pass. The disclosed pipelined arrangement efficiently provides interesting embossed style image effects such as raised and lowered patterns on surfaces.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.