A hardware-based traversal coprocessor provides acceleration of tree traversal operations searching for intersections between primitives represented in a tree data structure and a ray. The primitives may include triangles used in generating a virtual scene. The hardware-based traversal coprocessor is configured to properly handle numerically challenging computations at or near edges and/or vertices of primitives and/or ensure that a single intersection is reported when a ray intersects a surface formed by primitives at or near edges and/or vertices of the primitives.

A fully-connected neural network may be configured for execution by a processor as a fully-fused neural network by limiting slow global memory accesses to reading and writing inputs to and outputs from the fully-connected neural network. The computational cost of fully-connected neural networks scale quadratically with its width, whereas its memory traffic scales linearly. Modern graphics processing units typically have much greater computational throughput compared with memory bandwidth, so that for narrow, fully-connected neural networks, the linear memory traffic is the bottleneck. The key to improving performance of the fully-connected neural network is to minimize traffic to slow “global” memory (off-chip memory and high-level caches) and to fully utilize fast on-chip memory (low-level caches, “shared” memory, and registers), which is achieved by the fully-fused approach. A real-time neural radiance caching technique for path-traced global illumination is implemented using the fully-fused neural network for caching scattered radiance components of global illumination.

Methods and systems for real-time visualization of building structures are disclosed. A computing system may calculate physical illumination characteristics for each of a plurality of predefined virtual external building-surface elements layered in simulation at specified surface locations of a virtual three-dimensional (3D) model of a building structure, wherein the virtual 3D model is constructed based on data descriptive of the building structure. Each of the plurality of predefined virtual external building-surface elements may be associated with its calculated illumination characteristics in a database. A spatially-manipulable rendered image of the building structure may displayed on an interactive display in real-time based on the virtual 3D model. On the interactive display device, one or more of the plurality of the predefined virtual external building-surface elements may be rendered in real-time at respectively specified locations on the rendered image. On the interactive display device, illumination of each of the one or more of the plurality of the predefined virtual external building-surface elements may be simulated in real-time based on its associated calculated illumination characteristics, its respectively specified location on the rendered image, and a specification of environmental illumination conditions.

Described is a conventional 3D data models typically stored in a vertex buffer are processed so that all geometry is combined to one big geometry per node as an VBO. The vertex contains position (x,y,z), Normal (x,y,z), but also an Object ID for each object. Further, a metadata database is created where all additional information is stored, and if there are multiple geometries in the same object, multiple Object IDs to the same metadata entry are added under primitives. By extracting metadata and Materials, it is made possible to handle a node as a single Vertex Buffer Object (VBO).

A graphics processing unit (GPU) includes one or more processor cores adapted to execute a software-implemented shader program, and one or more hardware-implemented ray tracing units (RTU) adapted to traverse an acceleration structure to calculate intersections of rays with bounding volumes and graphics primitives. The RTU implements traversal logic to traverse the acceleration structure, stack management, and other tasks to relieve burden on the shader, communicating intersections to the shader which then calculates whether the intersection hit a transparent or opaque portion of the object intersected. Thus, one or more processing cores within the GPU perform accelerated ray tracing by offloading aspects of processing to the RTU, which traverses the acceleration structure within which the 3D environment is represented.

One embodiment of a computer-implemented method for processing ray tracing operations in parallel includes receiving a plurality of rays and a corresponding set of importance sampling instructions for each ray included in the plurality of rays for processing, wherein each ray represents a path from a light source to at least one point within a three-dimensional (3D) environment, and each corresponding set of importance sampling instruction is based at least in part on one or more material properties associated with at least one surface of at least one object included in the 3D environment; assigning each ray included in the plurality of rays to a different processing core included in a plurality of processing cores; and for each ray included in the plurality of rays, causing the processing core assigned to the ray to execute the corresponding set of importance sampling instructions on the ray to generate a direction for a secondary ray that is produced when the ray intersects a surface of an object within the 3D environment.

A method, executable by a processor, of generating an augmented tooth 3D digital model of a given tooth is disclosed. The method includes obtaining a preliminary tooth 3D digital model of the given tooth, and then generating the augmented tooth 3D digital model therefrom by obtaining data of a longitudinal axis of the given tooth, and data indicative of a tooth gingiva segmentation contour between the crown and root portions; determining for each root vertex, a respective new position relative to the longitudinal axis in which the respective new position is defined by a shift distance value and a shift direction vector; moving each of the root vertices to their respective new position by applying their respective shift distance values along their respective shift direction vector to generate the augmented tooth 3D digital model; and storing the augmented tooth 3D digital model for determining an orthodontic treatment for the subject.

Disclosed herein is a web-based videoconference system that allows for video avatars to navigate within a virtual environment. Various methods for efficient modeling, rendering, and shading are disclosed herein.

Disclosed herein is a web-based videoconference system that allows for video avatars to navigate within a virtual environment. Various methods for efficient modeling, rendering, and shading are disclosed herein.

A method comprises: obtaining object model data defining an object or objects to be built by a three-dimensional printing apparatus; determining an effect of carrying out a post-build process on the object or objects, wherein the determining uses the object model data and a computer-implemented evaluation of the post-build process and is carried out prior to building the object or objects, identify portions of the object or objects that would not be processable by the cleaning process; and outputting an indication of non-processability of portions of the object or objects are determined not to be processable by the post-build process.