System and method for performing ray tracing node traversal in image rendering

摘要

A method for performing a ray tracing node traversal operation in an image rendering process includes traversing a plurality of nodes within spatial hierarchy that represents a scene which is to be rendered, the spatial hierarchy including two or more hierarchy levels, each hierarchy level including one or more nodes. A number representing the number of nodes traversed in each one of a plurality of different hierarchy levels is stored, wherein each number is represented by at least one bit in a multi-bit binary sequence.