Patent ID: 8723860

Claim:
A method for generating an image from object data, comprising a plurality of objects, each object comprising at least one shape, the method comprising: a) for at least some of the plurality of objects, storing object data in a memory, the object data comprising surface data and vertex data for each shape in the object, and pointers between the surface data and the vertex data; b) for each smaller area, of a plurality of smaller areas, each smaller area contained within one of a plurality of rectangular areas in the image to be generated, deriving control data to link to the object data for each object in the smaller area, the control data listing the objects in the smaller area and comprising, for each object in the smaller area, a link to the respective object data by: i) extracting object data for two or more objects at a time from the object data stored in the memory ii) computing, for the two or more objects at a time, which of the smaller areas in the image include one or more of the objects for which the object data for the two or more objects has been extracted at i), iii) for each of the computed smaller areas at ii), deriving, for the two or more objects at a time, a set of control data linking to the object data for each of the objects included in the smaller area by describing the objects in the smaller area and comprising, for each object in the smaller area, a link to the respective object data, and iv) repeating i) to iii) until the control data for all the objects for which object data was stored in the memory has been derived; c) deriving depth data for each rectangular area from the control data and the object data; and d) deriving image data and shading data from the depth data, for display.