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Ray tracing method and apparatus for projecting rays through an object represented by a set of infinite surfaces
| Details |
Inventors: Ashton, Martin;
Assignee: Videologic Limited (Hertfordshire, GB)
Primary Examiner: Feild; Joseph H.
Assistant Examiner: Buchel; Rudolph
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Flynn, Thiel, Boutell & Tanis, P.C.
A method and apparatus for shading three-dimensional images for display on a screen by displaying each object as a group of infinite surfaces, projecting rays into the image, determining the location of the intersection of each ray with each surface and determining whether any intersected surface is visible at an elementary, pixel, level. Shading that occurs as a in-image light projection is analyzed by designating the generated light as a light volume determining the intersection of the ray with the light volume, and shading the pixel point as a function of the relationship between the visible surface and the light volume. The rate of shading is enhanced by dividing the screen into a number of sub-regions and determining the location of the intersection of each object contained with the sub-region through the rays projected into the sub region. The size of the sub-regions is set by determining a bounding volume for each object on the display screen and subdividing the display based on the bounding volumes. The apparatus that performs this shading has a plurality of groups of processing elements; each group of processing elements has its own cache for storing and defining surfaces of the image. The apparatus determines depth values for the surfaces of the image based on data contained in the cache for first group of processors and then determines depth values based on the data contained in the cache for the second group of processors. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION Preferred embodiments of the present invention enable a highly integrated, low cost, high performance real time three-dimensional graphics system to be produced.
Preferably the invention is embodied in a scalable regular pipeline structure which is highly suitable for cost effective VLSI (very large scale integration) implementation.
Using such a scalable approach means that a 3D graphics rendering system may be provided on a single chip.
Refinements to the system enable features such as shadows, anti-aliasing, soft shadows, transparency, depth of field effects, motion blur, curved surfaces, and direct implementation of constructive solid geometry (CSG) to be supported.
Some of these features, e.
g.
real time shadow generation, are extremely difficult to implement using Z-buffer techniques and therefore very few high performance systems actually implement them.
The approach taken by the present invention enables features such as shadows to be implemented in relatively straightforward manner.
The present invention is based on the use of a ray casting technique for rendering of three-dimensional images rather than conventional polygon based rendering techniques.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention objects are each represented by a set of surfaces which are stored as sets of data.
An image plane is deemed to lie between a viewer and the scene to be viewed and this is comprised of a plurality of elementary areas (pixels).
A ray is assumed to pass from the viewpoint through an elementary area of the screen into the scene to be viewed and will intersect various surfaces which represent an object in the scene.
By analysis of these intersections and their distances from the viewer we can determine whether any surface is visible and thus whether that pixel should be rendered with a particular shade.
Using this approach requires a continuous stream of similar calculations to be performed.
The set of surfaces for each object in the scene have to be tested at each pixel and the shade assigned to the closest visible surface is given to that pixel
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