Patent ID: 8797322

Claim:
A method for processing rays in a ray tracing renderer, comprising: storing attribute data for a first ray in a location of a memory; identifying a shader module to execute in response to an intersection testing result for the first ray in a 3-D scene; providing for execution of the shader module in a processor, wherein the execution results in a second ray for intersection testing; storing data for the second ray comprising a reference to the location of the memory storing attribute data for the first ray and data explicitly defining one or more attributes of the second ray; accessing attribute source information indicating which second ray attributes are to be obtained from the location of the memory storing attribute data for the first ray and which second ray attributes are explicitly defined by the data stored for the second ray; and sourcing, from the location of the memory storing attribute data for the first ray, the attributes indicated to be obtained from the location of the memory storing attribute data for the first ray by the attribute source information, for use in shading an intersection involving the second ray.