Apparatus performing vertical and horizontal mapping of texture on polygonal area of displayed object

A texture mapping apparatus for applying a texture pattern to a polygonal area of an object presented in a display plane, the display plane being defined to extend in lateral and longitudinal directions orthogonal to each other, the apparatus comprising:

• memory means defined with a texture plane corresponding to the display plane for recording in the texture plane pattern data representative of the texture pattern;
• zone operation means for truncating the polygonal area sequentially in the longitudinal direction to determine a set of parallel zones which extend along the lateral direction in the display plane, and to subsequently determine a set of corresponding zones in the texture plane;
• segment operation means for interpolatively dividing each of the parallel zones in the longitudinal direction to determine a stripe of lateral segments which lie along the lateral direction within each parallel zone of the display plane, and to subsequently determine a group of corresponding segments within the corresponding zone of the texture plane;
• point operation means for interpolatively dividing each of the lateral segments in the lateral direction to determine an array of display points arranged within the polygonal area in the display plane, and to subsequently determine an array of texture points in the texture plane, corresponding to the display points;
• and
• allocation means for reading out the pattern data recorded at the respective texture points from the memory means, and for allocating the read pattern data to the corresponding display points to map the texture pattern to the polygonal area,
• wherein the zone operation means includes means for selecting a pair of sides from the polygonal area to determine therebetween each parallel zone having either of a triangular shape and a trapezoidal shape, which has at least two vertexes coincident with two of four end points of the two selected sides, and
• the segment operation means includes means for determining the stripe of the lateral segments based on the selected pair of sides of the polygonal area.