CSci 480 Lecture Notes

(Fall) Week One, Monday: Introducing Computer Graphics

Course Objectives

  • Give a solid foundation in introductory computer graphics.
  • Provide valuable graphics programming experiences in the term projects.
  • Ensure a fair and accurate measurement of student performance.

    • Policies

    Grading is based on accumulated points.

    Late homework and project assignments will penalized 10% of original potential value per day.

    Rules of ethical conduct will be respected.

    Related Courses

  • Programming and Multimedia on the World Wide Web (Csci 351)
  • Computer Animation (CNTV 452)
  • Interactive Entertainment and Multimedia (CNTV 483)
  • Computer Imaging in the Arts (FA 310 and FA 410)
  • Geometric Modeling (CSci 482 and CSci 582)
  • Computer Vision (CSci 574)
  • Specification and Design of User Interface Software (CSci 588)

    • 1.1 A Few Uses of Computer Graphics

  • User interfaces.
  • Interactive plotting in business, science, and technology.
  • Cartography.
  • Medicine.
  • Computer-aided drafting and design.
  • Multimedia systems.
  • Simulation and animation for scientific visulation and entertainment.

    • 1.2 A Brief History of Computer Graphics

    Teletypes and line printers: boxology.

    1963: Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad drawing system. Data structures for symbol hierarchies, interaction techniques using keyboard and light pen.

    1964: General Motors DAC system. 1980: Personal computers popularized bitmap graphics. Xerox Star, Apple Lisa, windowing systems. Display technology: vector vs. raster. Scan conversion, aliasing.

    1.3 The Advantages of Interactive Graphics

    A natural communication means, 2D and 3D. Motion dynamics (flight simulator). Update dynamics (changes in shape or other properties of objects being viewed). High bandwidth user interaction. A window on the computer.

    1.4 Conceptual Framework for Interactive Graphics

    Application model <--> Application program <--> Graphics system <--> Hardware

    1.4.1 Application Modeling

    Model database. Primitives: points, lines, curves, polygons, surfaces, solids. Text and numeric attributes.

    1.4.2 Display of the Model

    Extract applicable portion of model from database, convert to display format.

    1.4.3 Interaction Handling

    Event-driven loop: wait for user action, handle action, wait...

    Application Examples

  • WYSIWYG documents.
  • Image processing.
  • Movie animation: Toy Story, Terminator, Jurasic Park, Matrix.
  • Art.
  • CAD.

    • This page established August 30, 1998; last updated September 12, 1999.