The use of projective geometry in computer graphics (Q1202029)

The book is devoted to all programmers who are familiar with computer graphics, especially to those who did not apply in their work methods of projective geometry. On the base of his own experiences in computer graphics, the author tries to make the reader sure that the Euclidean plane together with the method of orthogonal coordinates system are not the best tools for creating computer graphics. In contrary he shows that, in many cases, using an Euclidean plane with points at infinity and a homogeneous coordinates system one can get much better results. The book contains eight chapters: Introduction, Projective geometry in general, Practical use of four-dimensional geometry, Modelling clip, Projective algorithms, conclusions, directions for further research, An unsolved problem: shaded \(B\)-spline surfaces. In Chapter 3, giving the idea of the central projection of a segment, the author writes: ``It is therefore disappointing that this problem has not been widely addressed by the computer graphics textbooks. In fact, none of the traditional works on computer graphics \dots or even the brand new \dots mention the existence of the problem at all. It is therefore not surprising that a number of commercially available 3D graphics system fail to handle the problem correctly; \dots''. In this chapter, the author describes, among other problems, the \(W\)-Clip method and gives its comparison with the \(UW\)-Clip method. The full mathematical analysis of the modelling clip problem with solutions --- for the most general case too --- is described in chapter 4. In chapter 5, the mathematical tools, based on the notion of double ratio, are developed and the algorithmic methods are presented for the case of such primitives as cell arrays, filled patterned areas and stroke precision characters. The references contain around 80 items concerning to the subject of the book and published in the last few years.