Rendering operations using sparse volumetric data

• Main Authors: Caulfield, Sam, Baugh, Gary Garfield Barrington, Moloney, David Macdara
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 18.08.2020
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTER SYSTEMS BASED ON SPECIFIC COMPUTATIONAL MODELS; COMPUTING; CONTROLLING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL; MEASURING; MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; NAVIGATION; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY; PHYSICS; REGULATING; SURVEYING; SYSTEMS FOR CONTROLLING OR REGULATING NON-ELECTRIC VARIABLES; TESTING

A ray is cast into a volume described by a volumetric data structure, which describes the volume at a plurality of levels of detail. A first entry in the volumetric data structure includes a first set of bits representing voxels at a lowest one of the plurality of levels of detail, and values of the first set of bits indicate whether a corresponding one of the voxels is at least partially occupied by respective geometry. A set of second entries in the volumetric data structure describe voxels at a second level of detail, which represent subvolumes of the voxels at the first lowest level of detail. The ray is determined to pass through a particular subset of the voxels at the first level of detail and at least a particular one of the particular subset of voxels is determined to be occupied by geometry.