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Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice

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A guide to the concepts and applications of computer graphics covers such topics as interaction techniques, dialogue design, and user interface software.

1200 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1990

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Andries van Dam

9 books3 followers

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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Profile Image for Michael Finocchiaro.
Author 3 books6,201 followers
November 28, 2016
If K&R is what spawned the internet and its denizens like Facebook and Google, it is this book that created the 3D graphics industry - without it, forget your PS4, XBOX, 3DS, Pixar, DreamsWorks, etc. and thus no Avengers flicks or - god forbid - Shrek movies! Hollywood would be arguably still story driven and better but video games like GTA, Minecraft, Assassin's Creed, etc would have been impossible. I actually had acquired a rare geek-boner 1st edition but it was water damaged during a basement flood when I had to leave it in storage. Many bitter tears were shed. Fortunately, I still had the bigger 2nd edition to comfort me. I actually needed code in this book for my first real job back in '92. How the world has changed. Five stars for excellence and massive impact on gamers and movie fans alike.
Profile Image for Ivan Idris.
Author 14 books26 followers
January 15, 2012
Computer Graphics is about computer graphics and principles. This book has four authors, who are experts in their field. It has a hardcover, is richly illustrated with color plates and lots of figures. If the code had syntax highlighting, then it would have been even better.

Chapter 1 covers the basics. Chapter 2 is about SGRP (Simple Raster Graphics Package). Chapter 3 presents basic raster graphics algorithms for drawing 2D primitives.

Chapter 4 describes graphics hardware. Chapter 5 introduces geometrical transformations. Chapter 6 discusses viewing in 3D, projections and perspective.

Chapter 7 is dedicated to SPHIGS (Simple Programmer’s Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System). Chapter 8 is the first of three chapters on GUI’s. These three chapters are low on mathematics and code. Dialogue design is the title of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 examines user interface software.

Chapter 11 is about representing curves and surfaces. Finally, we get back to some code and mathematics. Chapter 12 builds on the previous chapter and continues with solid modeling. Sadly, no code in this chapter. Achromatic and colored light is the subject of chapter 13. This is a fun chapter, however, the lack of color usage in this chapter about color seems paradoxical to me.

In Chapter 14 we embark on a quest for visual realism. Chapter 15 is about visible-surface determination. Chapter 16 discusses illumination and shading.

Chapter 17 explores image manipulation and storage. Chapter 18 discusses advanced raster graphics architecture. Chapter 19 describes advanced geometric and raster algorithms.

Chapter 20 concentrates on advanced modeling techniques. Chapter 21 brings to life animation.

As I said above, this book is written by four authors. Obviously, this means that the writing style differs between chapters. Some chapters have no code or mathematics. Some chapters have one or the other. These are not my favorite chapters. The code examples are written in C or sometimes in pseudocode that looks a lot like C, so you need to have some knowledge of C.

The book is quite thorough and seems pedagogically sound. It is considered a “classic” for many reasons. Personally, I learned a lot about computer graphics algorithms. I give this book 4 stars out of 5.
Profile Image for Barack Liu.
584 reviews19 followers
January 31, 2021

309-Computer Graphics- James Foley-Tool-1995

Barack
2021/01/31

" Computer Graphics ", first published in the United States in 1995. It is mainly about the basic knowledge of interactive computer graphics. It is widely regarded as a classic reference book on computer graphics.

James Foley was born in the United States in 1942. Studied at the University of Michigan, Lehigh University. It is one of the most famous co-authors of basic textbooks in the field of computer graphics. Representative works: " Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice ", " Introduction to Computer Graphics ", etc.

Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Introduction to 2D Graphics Using WPF
3 An Ancient Renderer Made Modern
4 A 2D Graphics Test Bed
5 An Introduction to Human Visual Perception
6 Introduction to Fixed-Function 3D Graphics and Hierarchical Modeling
7 Essential Mathematics and the Geometry of 2-Space and 3-Space
8 A Simple Way to Describe Shape in 2D and 3D
9 Functions on Meshes
10 Transformations in Two Dimensions

" Graphics is a broad field; to understand it, you need information from perception, physics, mathematics,
and engineering. Building a graphics application entails user-interface work, some amount of
modeling (ie, making a representation of a shape), and rendering (the making of pictures of shapes).
Rendering is often done via a “pipeline” of operations; one can use this pipeline without understanding
every detail to make many useful programs. But if we want to render things accurately, we need
to start from a physical understanding of light. Knowing just a few properties of light prepares us to
make a first approximate renderer. "

In the animation time, we need to understand the effect of light on the animation, in time to simulate the two-dimensional world of the computer, we also need to take into account this effect. The difference in light has a significantly different perception of the visual effect of an object. When we use computers to simulate objects, only when this point is fully considered, the objects we render will have a more realistic sense.

" A graphics platform acts as the intermediary between the application and the underlying graphics
hardware, providing a layer of abstraction to shield the programmer from the details of driving the
graphics processor. As CPUs and graphics peripherals have increased in speed and memory capabilities,
the feature sets of graphics platforms have evolved to harness new hardware features and
to shoulder more of the application development burden. After a brief overview of the evolution of
2D platforms, we explore a modern package (Windows Presentation Foundation), showing how to
construct an animated 2D scene by creating and manipulating a simple hierarchical model. WPF's
declarative XML-based syntax, and the basic techniques of scene specification, will carry over to the
presentation of WPF's 3D support in Chapter 6. ”

Although many movies are now in 3D, 2D is the basis. Our understanding of 2D is not deep enough, so it will inevitably be difficult to succeed in 3D performance.

" Computer graphics is the science and art of communicating visually via a computer’s
display and its interaction devices. The visual aspect of the communication
is usually in the computer-to-human direction, with the human-to-computer
the direction being mediated by devices like the mouse, keyboard, joystick, game
controller, or touch-sensitive overlay. ”

Computer graphics, in my opinion, is actually an intersection of technology and art. It can be used not only in animation production but also in in-game production. For example, now popular with a variety of family entertainment centers, such as Switch and so on. Inside there is an impressive variety of video effects, I believe, these things are great and the associated computer graphics.

“ A narrow definition of computer graphics would state that it refers to taking a
model of the objects in a scene (a geometric description of the things in the scene
and a description of how they reflect light) and a model of the light emitted into the
scene (a mathematical description of the sources of light energy, the directions of
radiation, the distribution of light wavelengths, etc.), and then producing a representation
of a particular view of the scene (the light arriving at some imaginary eye
or camera in the scene). ”

In short, computer graphics first models an object in the physical world. Then we modeled the light in a specific scene and finally simulated the object on the computer.

" Computer graphics is a cross-disciplinary field in which
physics, mathematics, human perception, human-computer interaction, engineering,
graphic design, and art all play important roles. We use physics to model
light and to perform simulations for animation. We use mathematics to describe
the shape. "

Computer graphics, after all, is computer technology first, and then art. Computer technology as a typical engineering discipline, mathematical knowledge accumulated to a profound extent determine we can go far.

" A geometric model is a model of something
we plan to have appeared in a picture: We make a model of a car, or a house, or
an armadillo. The geometric model is enhanced with various other attributes
that describe the color or texture or reflectance of the materials involved in the
model. Starting from nothing and creating such a model is called modeling,
and the geometric-plus-other-information description that is the result is called
a model. "

We use physical models in real life is conducted object model to simulate its material, texture, physical model of the more accurate the results would be more realistic.

" A mathematical model is a model of a physical or computational process.
For instance, in Chapter 27 we describe various models of how light reflects
from glossy surfaces. We also have models of how objects move and models of
things like the image-acquisition process that happens in a digital camera. Such
models may be faithful (ie, may provide a predictive and correct mathematical
model of the phenomenon) or not; they may be physically based, derived
from first principles, or perhaps empirical or phenomenological, derived from
observations or even intuition. ”

Mathematical modeling is based on the basis of mathematics to simulate. The availability of these two simulation methods is probably a bit similar to the difference between an analog signal and a digital signal in our acoustics.

" The mathematician Abel claimed
that he managed to succeed in mathematics because he made a practice of reading
the works of the masters rather than their students, and we advise that you follow
his lead. The aforementioned real-time rendering book is written by masters of
the subject, while a random web page may be written by anyone. ”

Gu Yanwu wrote in " Book to People ", "It is said that the book compiled by today’s people is now the people’s making money. That's it. "

If we want to be a relatively more in-depth understanding of a particular area, we find information, it is best to find the field's most authoritative books of view, rather than just look at future generations according to their own understanding of some of the sporadically written analysis, that understanding may be straightforward, but also because it is only partial, short, they tend to make us of this topic to understand the depth is limited.



Profile Image for Ahmed Abd El-Hamid.
19 reviews
November 8, 2017
The Standard book of Computer Graphics Knowledge .. and although it needs some knowledge in mathematics but .. overall it contains a great amount of knowledge .. Must-Read for anyone interested in Computer Graphics
1 review1 follower
Read
January 30, 2016
want to get more knowledge to be a better teacher...
1 review
Read
July 21, 2020
good
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