Patent ID: 7012604

Claim:
A system for generating images of three-dimensional objects, the system comprising: one or more tracing processors; one or more shading processors; wherein each of said tracing processors is configured to (a) perform a first set of computations on a primary ray emanating from a viewpoint resulting in a ray tree and a set of one or more light trees, (b) transfer the ray tree and set of one or more light trees to one of said shading processors, and (c) repeat (a) and (b) for each ray of a plurality of primary rays emanating from the viewpoint; wherein each of said shading processors is configured to (d) receive a ray tree and set of one or more light trees from one of said tracing processors, (e) perform a second set of computations on said received ray tree and corresponding set of one or more light trees to determine a color value that determines at least a portion of a pixel in an output image, and (f) repeat (d) and (e) a plurality of times; wherein each of said tracing processors is configured to receive ray spawning code in response to one or more commands asserted by a software application executing on a host computer; wherein said first set of computations includes one or more ray spawning operations, wherein each of the tracing processors performs the ray spawning operations by executing the ray spawning code.