Patent ID: 8854368

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for rendering a point sprite represented by three dimensional (3D) vertices in a cross platform environment, comprising: assigning one or more variables to a set of points representing the 3D vertices using a vertex shader, wherein the one or more variables convey information from the vertex shader to a fragment shader, and wherein the vertex shader and the fragment shader are written in the first programming language; translating the vertex shader and the fragment shader into a second programming language wherein the information included in the one or more variables is preserved to render the point sprite using the translated vertex shader and the translated fragment shader, and wherein translating the vertex shader and the fragment shader into the second programming language further comprises: identifying one or more color units in the vertex shader; storing the one or more variables in the identified one or more color units; transferring each variable from the vertex shader to the fragment shader using the identified color units; correcting for the difference between coordinate systems associated with application programming interfaces (APIs) of the first programming language and the second programming language; synthesizing a fragment coordinate variable associated with the coordinates of the point sprite in a coordinate system of the second programming language API, wherein the fragment coordinate variable identifies a position of the point sprite as displayed on a display screen; and translating a point size variable that indicates a size of the point sprite on the display screen; and generating the point sprite from the 3D vertices using the translated vertex shader and the translated fragment shader.