COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND

VISUALIZATION
UNIT –I[PART-1]
What is Computer Graphics?

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 Computer Graphics is about
animation (films)

Major driving force now

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 Games are very important in Computer
Graphics

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 Medical Imaging is another driving force

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 Computer Aided Design (CAD)too

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 Scientific Visualisation

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 Objectives
In this lecture, we explore what computer graphics is about and survey some application areas

We start with a historical introduction

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 Computer Graphics
Computer graphics deals with all aspects of creating images with a computer

◦ Hardware
◦ Software
◦ Applications

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 Example
Where did this image come from?

What hardware/software did we need to produce it?

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Preliminary Answer
Application: The object is an artist’s rendition of the sun for an animation to
be shown in a domed environment (planetarium)

Software: Maya for modeling and rendering but Maya is built on top of
OpenGL

Hardware: PC with graphics card for modeling and rendering

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Basic Graphics System

Output device

Input devices
Image formed in FB

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CRT

Can be used either as a line-drawing device (calligraphic) or to display

contents of frame buffer (raster mode)

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 Computer Graphics: 1950-
1960
Computer graphics goes back to the earliest days of computing
◦ Strip charts
◦ Pen plotters
◦ Simple displays using A/D converters to go from computer to calligraphic CRT

Cost of refresh for CRT too high

◦ Computers slow, expensive, unreliable

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 Computer Graphics:
1960-1970
Wireframe graphics
◦ Draw only lines

Sketchpad
Display Processors
Storage tube

wireframe representation
of sun object

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Sketchpad
Ivan Sutherland’s PhD thesis at MIT
◦ Recognized the potential of man-machine interaction
◦ Loop
◦ Display something
◦ User moves light pen
◦ Computer generates new display
◦ Sutherland also created many of the new common algorithms for computer graphics

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Display Processor
Rather than have the host computer try to refresh display use a special
purpose computer called a display processor (DPU)

Graphics stored in display list (display file) on display processor

Host compiles display list and sends to DPU

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Direct View Storage Tube
Created by Tektronix
◦ Did not require constant refresh
◦ Standard interface to computers
◦ Allowed for standard software
◦ Plot3D in Fortran
◦ Relatively inexpensive
◦ Opened door to use of computer graphics for CAD community

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 Computer Graphics: 1970-
1980
Raster Graphics
Beginning of graphics standards
◦ IFIPS
◦ GKS: European effort
◦ Becomes ISO 2D standard
◦ Core: North American effort
◦ 3D but fails to become ISO standard

Workstations and PCs

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Raster Graphics
Image produced as an array (the raster) of picture elements (pixels) in the frame buffer

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Raster Graphics
Allows us to go from lines and wire frame images to filled polygons

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PCs and Workstations
Although we no longer make the distinction between workstations and PCs, historically they
evolved from different roots
◦ Early workstations characterized by
◦ Networked connection: client-server model
◦ High-level of interactivity
◦ Early PCs included frame buffer as part of user memory
◦ Easy to change contents and create images

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 Computer Graphics: 1980-
1990
Realism comes to computer graphics

smooth shading environment bump mapping

mapping

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 Computer Graphics: 1980-
1990
Special purpose hardware
◦ Silicon Graphics geometry engine
◦ VLSI implementation of graphics pipeline

Industry-based standards
◦ PHIGS
◦ RenderMan

Networked graphics: X Window System

Human-Computer Interface (HCI)

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 Computer Graphics: 1990-
2000
OpenGL API
Completely computer-generated feature-length movies (Toy Story) are successful
New hardware capabilities
◦ Texture mapping
◦ Blending
◦ Accumulation, stencil buffers

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 Computer Graphics: 2000-
2010
Photorealism
Graphics cards (GPU) for PCs dominate market
◦ Nvidia, ATI

Game boxes and game players determine direction of market (Wii, Kinect, etc)
Computer graphics routine in movie industry: Maya, Lightwave
Programmable pipelines

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 Computer Graphics: 2010-
Mobile Computing
◦ iPhone

Cloud Computing
◦ Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Virtual Reality
◦ Oculus Rift

Artificial Intelligence
◦ Big Data/Deep Learning
◦ Google Car

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Queries?
THANK YOU