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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7659893 | Method and apparatus to ensure consistency of depth values computed in different sections of a graphics processor At least two different processing sections in a graphics processors compute Z coordinates for a sample location from a compressed Z representation. The processors are designed to ensure that Z coordinates computed in any unit in the processor are identical. In one e... | 02/09/2010 |
| 7646385 | Computer graphics rendering method and apparatus When a plurality of coplanar shapes are rendered over one another by performing a hidden surface removal operation using the Z value, a reference plane is specified, and the Z value of each point of a shape to be rendered on the reference plane is uniquely calculate... | 01/12/2010 |
| 7619625 | Culling data selection system and method A culling data selection system and method are presented in accordance with embodiments of the present invention. In one embodiment, an occlusion prediction graphics processing method is utilized to predict which pixels are eventually occluded before intermediate pr... | 11/17/2009 |
| 7616200 | System for reducing aliasing on a display device An apparatus and method of displaying a first image on a display device with a plurality of pixels assigns one of a plurality of sample patterns to each pixel on the display device. Each pixel is assigned the one of a plurality of patterns based upon its unique loca... | 11/10/2009 |
| 7602389 | Graphic processing apparatus and method A data processing system including: a memory controller; and a memory connected to said memory controller; wherein said memory controller includes a rendering circuit thereby to execute a rendering command generating display data based on graphic data provided after... | 10/13/2009 |
| 7525542 | Automatically generating appropriate near and far clipping planes for a 3D scene while guaranteeing minimum of Z-buffer precision Various technologies and techniques are disclosed that improve the automatic generation of near and far clipping planes for a 3D scene. The viewing frustum is intersected with the scene to determine the range of depth that a particular scene occupies in the viewing ... | 04/28/2009 |
| 7522166 | Video game processing method, video game processing apparatus and computer readable recording medium storing video game program A simple model for an object to be processed is obtained, and Z-values and display coordinates of vertexes of the simple model from a predetermined viewpoint are calculated. A rectangular Z-area associated with the calculated display coordinates is detected, and an ... | 04/21/2009 |
| 7518608 | Z-depth matting of particles in image rendering A method of rendering a first image having a plurality of particles. The method comprises: receiving a z-depth image that provides a z-value for each pixel in the first image; generating a single pixel particle of an opaque transparency for each pixel in the z-depth... | 04/14/2009 |
| 7453458 | Drawing method and drawing apparatus for displaying image data about a plurality of objects including semitransparent object and opaque object on computer display screen A method is provided for multi-pass semitransparent processing having three passes. The method provides for displaying image data about a plurality of objects including opaque objects and semitransparent objects on a computer display screen by using an updatable Z-b... | 11/18/2008 |
| 7450121 | Dynamic bit depth rendering A method is described of compositing a plurality of graphical objects to create an image comprising a plurality of parts, where the parts may be a run of pixels along a scanline or a region of the image. For each part of the image to be composited, the method identi... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7439973 | Ray tracing with depth buffered display An image that includes ray traced pixel data and rasterized pixel data is generated. A synergistic processing unit (SPU) uses a rendering algorithm to generate ray traced data for objects that require high-quality image rendering. The ray traced data is fragmented, ... | 10/21/2008 |
| 7439974 | System and method for fast 3-dimensional data fusion A method of volume rendering two digital images includes providing a volume-rendering computing sub-system, loading a first image volume into a memory of the volume-rendering sub-system, rendering the first image volume, wherein a 2-dimensional image is output into ... | 10/21/2008 |
| 7439983 | Method and apparatus for de-indexing geometry A pixel shader is operated to perform a first texture lookup in an index buffer to obtain a vertex index value for a geometric primitive to be displayed. The pixel shader is also operated to perform a second texture lookup in a vertex buffer to obtain vertex data, w... | 10/21/2008 |
| 7436414 | Method for accelerated determination of occlusion between polygons The invention describes a method and system for use in occlusion culling of polygons in an interactive environment, such as a game. The invention employs a boundary box to simplify the testing of occludee polygons. Occluders and occludees are also transformed into n... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7425967 | Device for processing pixel rasterization and method for processing the same The present invention relates to a device and method for processing pixel rasterization in 3-Dimensional graphic engine. According to an embodiment of the present invention, a method of processing pixel rasterizaton in 3-Dimensional graphic engine comprises the step... | 09/16/2008 |
| 7423642 | Efficient video frame capturing A method for capturing images includes associating the pixels with tiles. An input data sequence representing respective current values of the pixels of a currently-captured image frame is accepted. Within each of at least some of the tiles, the current values are c... | 09/09/2008 |
| 7420568 | System and method for packing data in different formats in a tiled graphics memory A tiled graphics memory permits graphics data to be stored in different tile formats. One application is selecting a tile format optimized for the data generated for particular graphical surfaces in different rendering modes. Consequently, the tile format can be sel... | 09/02/2008 |
| 7414624 | Apparatus and method for a frustum culling algorithm suitable for hardware implementation A method and apparatus for a frustum culling algorithm suitable for hardware implementation. In one embodiment, the method includes the separation of coordinates of a normal vector of each frustum plane of a frustum view into positive normal coordinates and negative... | 08/19/2008 |
| 7408549 | Method for hardware sorted fragment composition A graphics system including a frame buffer and a processing unit. The frame buffer contains N slots per pixel. Slots are used to store fragments. Suppose the N slots for a given pixel are occupied. In response to having received (or generated) a new fragment for the... | 08/05/2008 |
| 7400325 | Culling before setup in viewport and culling unit The VPC unit and setup unit of a graphics processing subsystem perform culling operations. The VPC unit performs culling operations on geometric primitives falling within a specific criteria, such as having a property within of a numerical range limit. This limit re... | 07/15/2008 |
| 7397478 | Various apparatuses and methods for switching between buffers using a video frame buffer flip queue A method, apparatus, and system are described in which a signal is generated to inhibit the execution of flip commands that cause a flip between buffers of a frame buffer. One or more of the flip commands and their associated instruction pointers may be preloaded in... | 07/08/2008 |
| 7388589 | System for and method of performing an opacity calculation in a 3D graphics system A system, device and method are disclosed for predicting the opacity of primitives used to produce an image using one or more equations, prior to producing an image. More specifically, the present invention relates to a 3D device adapted to produce an image comprisi... | 06/17/2008 |
| 7388583 | Method of and scaling unit for scaling a three-dimensional model A method of scaling a three-dimensional input model (200-208) into a scaled three-dimensional output model (210-224) is disclosed. The method comprises determining for portions of the three-dimensional input model respective probabilities... | 06/17/2008 |
| 7388582 | System and method for graphics culling A method is disclosed for culling an object database in a graphics processing system. In one embodiment, the method comprises encoding per-object parameters and culling parameters. The per-object parameters are encoded in texture format thereby creating at least one... | 06/17/2008 |
| 7385608 | State tracking methodology Redundant changes of tracked state issued by an application are filtered out by comparing the new state value with the old value, and if they are the same, no update is made. State changes are collected in on-chip memory and added to the bin if the state vector asso... | 06/10/2008 |
| 7382377 | Render to texture cull Method and apparatus for processing one or more fragment data. In one embodiment, the method includes processing one or more fragment data to generate one or more texture map addresses for one or more texels, determining relevance information that correspond to the ... | 06/03/2008 |
| 7382368 | Planar z representation for z compression A z buffer stores compressed z data represented in a planar format for one or more tiles. The compressed format includes a set of tile specific coefficients defining a plane equation for each z tested primitive intersecting the tile. The z buffer stores a maximum nu... | 06/03/2008 |
| 7375727 | System, method and computer program product for geometrically transforming geometric objects Z-buffer rendering of three-dimensional scenes is made more efficient through a method for occlusion culling by which occluded geometry is removed prior to rasterization. The method uses hierarchical z-buffering to reduce the quantity of image and depth information ... | 05/20/2008 |
| 7372471 | System and method for single-sample virtual coverage anti-aliasing A graphics system has a mode of operation in which primitive coverage information is generated for real sample locations and virtual sample locations for use in anti-aliasing pixels. An individual pixel has a single real sample with color information and at least on... | 05/13/2008 |
| 7369139 | Background rendering of images An apparatus includes a rendering engine to render a foreground of an image. The apparatus also includes a logic, separate from the rendering engine, to merge at least one background color with the foreground of the image. ... | 05/06/2008 |
| 7365744 | Methods and systems for image modification A method of the invention includes the steps of selecting at least a portion of an image on which to superimpose a texture and segmenting that portion of the image into a plurality of clusters. Each of the clusters is then parameterized with texture coordinates, and... | 04/29/2008 |
| 7365743 | Assignments for parallel rasterization Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, to rasterize an image by generating assignments and allocating the assignments among multiple processor threads such that no two processor threads are rasterizing concurrently into overlapping regions of a ... | 04/29/2008 |
| 7362329 | Occlusion culling for object-order volume rendering Computerized systems and methods provide occlusion culling for efficiently rendering a three dimensional image. The systems and methods calculate a set of occluder shields in a voxel dataset using a transparency value associated with each voxel of the dataset. Next,... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7362327 | Method for drawing object that changes transparency In a process where an object fades-in/fades-out, a rate of transparency change is set. A writing threshold is obtained according to the rate of change of the transparency of the object. Polygons included in the object are sequentially processed, and an α value of t... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7362780 | Avoiding compression of encrypted payload The invention proposes a method for conveying data packets in a network, comprising the steps of examining (S1, S2) whether a received data packet is encrypted, compressing (S3) the data packet in case it is examined that the data packet is not ... | 04/22/2008 |
| 7358970 | Method and apparatus for modifying depth values using pixel programs A method and apparatus for generating depth values in a programmable graphics system. Depth values are calculated under control of a pixel program using a variety of sources as inputs to programmable computation units (PCUs) in the programmable graphics system. The ... | 04/15/2008 |
| 7355598 | System and method for fast generation of high-quality maximum/minimum intensity projections A method for rendering a volumetric image includes providing a digitized volumetric image comprising a plurality of intensities corresponding to a domain of points in a 3-dimensional space, casting a ray through said volumetric image for a first pass to determine a ... | 04/08/2008 |
| 7355609 | Computing visible regions for a hierarchical view A method, apparatus, system, and signal-bearing medium that in an embodiment determines the visible regions of potentially overlapping views and writes the visible regions to an output device. The visible regions may be determined using the visible-above region asso... | 04/08/2008 |
| 7343027 | Image processing apparatus, image signal generation method, information recording medium, and image processing program By using input image signals of a plurality of frames, the motions of prescribed areas within an image based on the input image signals are detected, and then a layering is performed. An image signal of a peripheral image which occurs at the same time as an objectiv... | 03/11/2008 |
| 7339590 | Vertex processing unit supporting vertex texture mapping A graphics processing subsystem includes a vertex processing unit that allows vertex shader programs to arbitrarily access data stored in vertex texture maps. The vertex processing unit includes a vertex texture fetch unit and vertex processing engines. The vertex p... | 03/04/2008 |