Computer graphics and geometric modeling

Publication date 12 August 1999

computer graphics curves geometric transformations projections surfaces

Numerical aspects of computer graphics, image analysis, and computational geometry (65D18) Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to computer science (68-01) Computer graphics; computational geometry (digital and algorithmic aspects) (68U05)

Review text

The book is intended to provide thorough, mathematical exposition of the principles, methods, and techniques used in computer graphics. Special attention is given to topics that most texts on computer graphics either ignore or mention only briefly. The mathematical background required includes polynomials, vectors, matrices, determinants and differentiation. Most of it is covered in the Appendix, but some concepts that are used only once are discussed right where they are introduced. The book consists of ten chapters plus one appendix. In the Preface brief survey of the history of computer graphics is given together with a list of some of the most important World Wide Web resources for computer graphics. Also notation used in the book is briefly explained here. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the area and discusses basics of graphics output devices as well as the problem of bitmap scaling and bitmap rotation. Also characterization of a typical drawing program is given here. Chapter 2 is devoted to the scan-converting methods. After introducing simple scan-converting algorithm for lines a class of Digital Differential Analyzer methods is described followed by a section on parallelizing scan-converting methods for an MIMD computer. Rest of the chapter is devoted to methods for scan-converting circles, thick lines and circles, and antialiasing. Geometric transformations are discussed in the first part of Chapter 3. Basic two-dimensional transformations are described and homogeneous coordinates are introduced. Then, windowing and clipping are discussed followed by a section on three-dimensional transformations. Second part of Chapter 3 discusses projections. First, a hierarchy of linear projections is introduced and types mentioned there described in some detail. Finally nonlinear projections are discussed including fisheye, panoramic, telescopic, microscopic, and sphere projections. Curves are treated in Chapter 4. First, a discussion of points and vectors is given followed by an introduction to the concept of parametric representation of curves. Subsequently a number of practical methods for curves is described. Methods covered include Lagrange interpolation, Newton interpolation, Hermite interpolation, cubic splines, quadratic splines, cardinal splines, Catmull-Rom curves, Kochanek-Bartels splines, cubic and quadratic blending, Bézier curves, B-splines, beta-splines, and conic sections. Then, properties of a curve are discussed like the curvature and torsion of a curve. Finally it is shown how the Hough transform is used to detect straight lines in bitmap images and how the method can be extended to detect arbitrary parametric curves. Chapter 5 is devoted to surfaces. It starts with short discussion on the input of three-dimensional points, followed by description of basic concepts. Various types of surfaces are then introduced, namely polygonal, bilinear, lofted, Coons, bicubic, Catmull-Rom, Bézier, Gordon, B-spline, sweep, and surfaces of revolution. Last two sections of the chapter deal with curves on surfaces and surface normals, respectively. Several other topics related to the problem of displaying a realistically looking object on a two-dimensional output device are discussed in the second part of the book. In Chapter 6 methods of rendering are described. A simple shading model is given as well as a reflection model and Gouraud and Phong methods to smooth out the shading are presented. Then, palette optimization, ray tracing, texturing, and bump mapping are briefly discussed. Colors are treated in Chapter 7. Within it color models are described, namely the HLS color model, the HSV color model and the RGB color model. Then methods to create a mixture of several colors and the concept of complementary colors are discussed. Finally, the CIE standard is briefly presented. Computer animation is the topic discussed in Chapter 8. It starts with necessary background and description of the main problems in computer animation. Then ways to approach partial tasks associated with creating a sequence are provided including interpolating positions and interpolating orientations. As sometimes nonuniform changes of orientation and/or position are required,The book is interpolation is treated as well in a separate section. Finally morphing and free-form deformations are briefly described. Chapter 9 is devoted to approaches to image compression. It starts with variable-size codes, and run-length encoding followed by the description of fax compression. Then quadtrees are studied in some depth and progressive image compression is introduced. Fast, Efficient, Lossless Image Compression System (FELICS) and its extension to progressive compression of images (Progressive FELICS) are described followed by the multilevel progressive method (MLP). The chapter ends with sections devoted to the differential lossless image compression and wavelets, respectively. Several short topics that do not fit into any of the other chapters are grouped together to form the last chapter of the book (Chapter 10). Graphics standards, boundary fill problem, halftoning, dithering and several types of fractals are covered here as well as a brief survey of image processing techniques. In an Appendix most of the mathematical background needed for a thorough understanding of the material presented in the book is discussed. List of references and about one hundred pages of answers to exercises complete this nice, readable and very useful book.

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