Ray tracing hardware acceleration for supporting motion blur and moving/deforming geometry
AssigneeNVIDIA Corporation
InventorsGregory Muthler, John Burgess
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Ray tracing hardware accelerators supporting motion blur and moving/deforming geometry are disclosed. For example, dynamic objects in an acceleration data structure are encoded with temporal and spatial information. The hardware includes circuitry that test ray intersections against moving/deforming geometry by applying such temporal and spatial information. Such circuitry accelerates the visibility sampling of moving geometry, including rigid body motion and object deformation, and its associated moving bounding volumes to a performance similar to that of the visibility sampling of static geometry.
Claims35
A method of operating ray tracing circuitry comprising a communications circuit, a memory access circuit, an interpolation circuit, and a bounding volume intersection testing circuit, the method comprising:
- receiving with the communications circuit, ray data specifying a ray path and a ray timing;
- accessing, with the memory access circuit, a stored motion node specifying a first bounding volume bounding a geometric primitive first position and/or shape and a second bounding volume bounding the geometric primitive second position and/or shape;
- temporally interpolating, with the interpolation circuit at the specified ray timing, an intermediate bounding volume that is spatially intermediate the first bounding volume and the second bounding volume;
- and
- testing, with the bounding volume intersection testing circuit, whether the ray path intersects the intermediate bounding volume.
A ray tracing circuit comprising:
- a communications circuit that receives ray data specifying a ray path and a ray timing;
- a memory access circuit that accesses a stored motion node specifying a first bounding volume bounding a geometric primitive first position and/or shape and a second bounding volume bounding the geometric primitive second position and/or shape;
- an interpolation circuit that temporally interpolates, at the specified ray timing, an intermediate bounding volume that is spatially intermediate the first bounding volume and the second bounding volume;
- and
- a bounding volume intersection testing circuit that tests whether the ray path intersects the intermediate bounding volume.
A non-transitory memory connected to ray tracing circuitry for testing whether a ray path intersects an intermediate bounding volume, the non-transitory memory storing information to control at least one processor to perform operations comprising:
- ray data specifying the ray path and a ray timing;
- and
- a bounding volume hierarchy comprising a motion node specifying a first bounding volume bounding a geometric primitive first position and/or shape and a second bounding volume bounding the geometric primitive second position and/or shape;
- wherein the motion node is configured to provide sufficient information to support the ray tracing circuitry temporally interpolating, at the specified ray timing, the intermediate bounding volume that is spatially intermediate the first bounding volume and the second bounding volume.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.