Hybrid Graphics Pipeline and Effect Engine for Ray Tracing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current graphics processing systems are unable to efficiently incorporate ray tracing for real-time graphics rendering due to its high computational cost, which hinders the achievement of photorealistic visual quality at a reasonable cost.
Innovation Solution
A graphics system that utilizes an effect engine in conjunction with a graphics pipeline to perform high computational complexity operations such as ray tracing in parallel with pipeline operations, allowing for accelerated rendering through an application programming interface (API) that directs specific graphical objects to the effect engine for execution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If ray tracing is used to render photorealistic effects, then visual quality is improved, but computational cost increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the graphics processing into two distinct paths: a traditional rasterization pipeline for standard rendering tasks and a separate ray tracing pipeline for photorealistic effects. This segmentation allows each pipeline to be optimized independently, enabling photorealistic rendering only where needed rather than applying computationally intensive ray tracing to all graphical objects, thus reducing overall computational cost while maintaining visual quality where required.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements partial ray tracing by applying ray tracing algorithms only to specific graphical objects or scenes that require photorealistic effects, rather than universally applying ray tracing to all rendering tasks. The system dynamically determines which objects benefit from ray tracing and processes them accordingly, performing the computationally intensive operation partially rather than excessively, thereby balancing visual quality improvement with computational cost management.
2Manufacturing precision
If ray tracing is applied to all graphical objects, then visual realism is improved, but rendering time increases to days or weeks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the rendering process into two parallel pipelines: a fast rasterization pipeline for real-time rendering and a ray tracing pipeline for photorealistic effects. By segmenting the workload, the system achieves visual realism for specific objects without requiring all objects to undergo time-consuming ray tracing, thus reducing overall rendering time from days/weeks to real-time performance while maintaining visual realism where needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent enables continuous real-time rendering by maintaining an active rasterization pipeline that continuously processes graphical objects at real-time frame rates, while selectively invoking ray tracing only when and where photorealistic effects are required. This continuity ensures that rendering never stops, combining the speed of rasterization with the quality of ray tracing, thereby eliminating the days-or-weeks rendering times associated with full ray tracing while preserving visual realism.
3Productivity
If a separate effect engine is introduced to handle high complexity operations, then rendering acceleration is achieved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an effect engine as an intermediary component that sits between the traditional graphics pipeline and the ray tracing algorithms. This intermediary effect engine receives rendering tasks, determines which objects require photorealistic effects, and selectively invokes ray tracing only when necessary. By acting as a mediator, the effect engine accelerates rendering through intelligent task routing without requiring the entire graphics system to be redesigned for ray tracing, thus achieving rendering acceleration while limiting the increase in device complexity to a manageable, targeted component.
Data Source
AI summary
A graphics system includes an effect engine and a graphics pipeline. The graphics pipeline performs pipeline operations on graphical objects in a frame. The graphics pipeline includes at least a fragment shader stage. An application programming interface (API) provides an instruction that specifies a subset of the graphical objects in the frame for the effect engine to execute. When detecting the instruction, the graphics pipeline invokes the effect engine to perform a predefined set of graphics operations on the subset of the graphical objects in the frame. The predefined set of graphics operations has a higher computational complexity than the pipeline operations.