Display list control stream grouping in tile based 3D computer graphics system

摘要

A method and apparatus are provided for rendering a 3 dimensional computer graphics image. The image is subdivided into a plurality of rectangular areas and primitives which may be visible in the image are assigned to respective ones of a plurality of primitive blocks. A determination is made as to which primitive blocks contain primitives which intersect each rectangular area. The rectangular areas are then grouped into a plurality of fixed size groups and control stream data for each of the fixed size groups is derived, this control stream data including data which determines which primitive blocks are required to render the rectangular areas in each respective first fixed size group. The control stream data is then used to render the image for display.

主权项

1. A method for rendering a computer graphics image of a 3-D scene in a computer graphics system configured to use a rendering space which is divided into a plurality of tiles, wherein the plurality of tiles are grouped into a plurality of tile groups, the method comprising:
grouping primitives of said 3-D scene into primitive blocks; for each tile group, generating a control stream data list indicating which primitive blocks contain at least one primitive that overlaps a tile said tile group, said control stream data lists comprising a plurality of control data block groups each containing a plurality of control data blocks, wherein a first control data block of a control data block group includes an array of control pointers pointing to start addresses of subsequent control data blocks in said control data block group and a start address of a subsequent control data block group in said control stream data list; for each tile of a tile group for which a primitive block is indicated in the control stream data list for that tile group, accessing control stream data from the control stream data list for that tile group, determining which control data blocks in said control stream data list should be used to render that tile, which control data blocks in said control stream data list should not be used to render that tile, and using said control pointers to selectively access control stream data from control data blocks to render said tile of the image.