System, method, and computer program product for blending textures during rendering of a computer generated image using a single texture as a mask

摘要

A variable number of textures are blended together using a single texture as a mask. At least four textures are received. Masks are extracted from one of the received textures and used to blend together the remaining textures. In an embodiment, N masks are extracted from a single texture and used to blend N+1 additional textures. In this embodiment, two of the N+1 textures are initially blended together in accordance with one of the N masks to form an image. Another texture of the N+1 textures is then blended with the image in accordance with another one of the N masks. This iterative blending process continues until all of the N+1 textures have been blended together. In another embodiment, N textures are blended together by multiplying each of the N textures by one of the N masks and adding together the results of the N multiplications.