Patent ID: 7027047

Claim:
A method of processing fragments of a 3D image, the method comprising: positioning a depth filter on a z-axis in a 3D space; first comparing a depth value of each of a plurality of fragments forming a first object being rasterized in the 3D space with a depth value of the depth filter; storing first object data corresponding to each of the fragments of the first object in a storage device based on a result of the first comparison; rendering the fragments of the first object and second comparing a depth value of each of a plurality of fragments forming a second object being rasterized in the 3D space with the depth value of the depth filter; removing a fragment from the fragments of the second object that overlap a fragment of the first object based on the first object data stored in the storage device and a result of the second comparison; and rendering the fragments of the first object and the fragments of the second object.