METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SUPERSAMPLING BASED ON THE LOCAL RATE OF CHANGE IN TEXTURE

A method and an apparatus for high quality texture mapping. Multi-resolutional texture data for a destination pixel is supersampled at horizontal and vertical screen space sampling rates based on the local rate of change at a texture coordinate. Two-dimensional and/or three-dimensional multi-resolutional texture data is sampled. The calculated local rates of change in texture can be scaled, independently, to allow the effect of each texture dimension upon the horizontal and vertical screen space sampling rates to be controlled separately. Three examples for calculating screen space sampling rates according to the present invention are provided based on a maximum texture gradient, an optimized maximum texture gradient, or a minimum sampling routine which ensures sampling when footprint area collapses to a line. Unnecessary calculations and delays encountered in supersampling an entire display image uniformly are avoided. An excellent filter is obtained for live video texture mapping in real-time.