Methods and systems for generating 3-dimensional computer images

摘要

There are provided methods and apparatus for generating a 3-dimensional computer image. The image includes a number of objects and is divided into separate areas. Control data to link to object data stored in a memory for each object is derived for two objects at a time. Two or more separate areas can be processed in parallel by deriving control data for the two separate areas at a time. To avoid fetching data for both areas, which is actually only applicable to one area, encoding is used in the control data. The object data can be stored on one or across two memory pages, and the control data includes one memory page address in the former case and two memory page addresses in the latter case. The object data can also be stored across two non-contiguous memory pages, by using a look-up table with contiguous portions allocated for each object's object data. When partial rendering is used, and partial depth data is stored and subsequently updated, the depth data can be stored across two memory pages using link portions in the memory pages to either indicate the end of data storage or point to the next memory page.