Streaming hierarchy traversal renderer
US8957896B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 11, 2012 |
| Grant date | Feb 17, 2015 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Mar 15, 2033 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06T2210/52
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A method is provided for a streaming hierarchy traversal renderer with particular application for feature films and other demanding content creation using scenes of high complexity that cannot fit in memory. The renderer organizes scene geometry into a spatial hierarchy, generates directional queries to be traced in the spatial hierarchy, performs a streaming hierarchy traversal over the directional queries, and uses the results of the directional queries to shade or render the scene. The traversal performs a single pass over the directional queries for splitting into one child stream of directional queries for each child node at each scene node in the hierarchy. A prioritized traversal of the hierarchy may also be carried out using various cost-metrics for optimized parallelism. The rendering may also bounce the directional queries to provide multi-pass global illumination.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.