Patent ID: 6570565
Filing Date: 2003-05-27
Classification: G06T

Abstract:
A 3D graphic accelerator, comprising:a geometrical processing section for geometrically processing inputted primitives; a control section for determining as to existence of any transparent primitives or dominance/rarity of opaque primitives among said geometrically processed primitives; an object-order rendering section for rendering a part or all of said opaque primitives among said geometrically processed primitives in an object-order style; an image-order rendering section for rendering all of said transparent primitives or/and a part of said opaque primitives among said geometrically processed primitives in an image-order style; a memory including a plurality of frame buffers for storing information from said object-order rendering section, and a plurality of buckets for storing information from said image-order rendering section; wherein if said control section determines an existence of one or more of: transparent primitives and a dominance of opaque primitives among said geometrically processed primitives, then (a) and (e) following occur: (a) said image-order rendering section performs a step of bucket-sorting for storing information on a part of said opaque primitives and at least one transparent primitive in a corresponding first bucket of said plurality of buckets; and (b) said object-order rendering section performs a step of rendering remainders of said opaque primitives in a first frame buffer of said plurality of frame buffers for storing the information thereon in a first of said plurality of frame buffers; (c) said control section performs a step of determining as to completion of said bucket-sorting and object-order rendering; (d) said image-order rendering section performs a step of rendering a part of said bucketed opaque primitives or transparent primitives in said image-order style, if said steps of bucket-sorting and object-order rendering are determined to have been completed; and (e) comparing the information rendered in said image-order style with the information rendered in said object-order style to store a resultant value in said first frame buffer.