Chapter 1

102045611-Computer
Graphics and Design
Contents

• Introduction to computer graphics

• Basic terms
• Characteristics of computer graphics
• Application areas of computer graphics
Introduction to computer graphics

• It refers to creation, storage and manipulation of pictures and images

using a digital computer.
• Effective tool for presenting information.
Basic Terms

1) Digital Image: A 2x2 representation consisting of an 2D array of

dots or picture elements is termed as digital image.
It consists of discrete pixels or picture elements.
2) Pixel: The smallest unit of a screen addressable by the computer.
3) Resolution: The number of pixel per unit length (in horizontal and
vertical direction) is called resolution of an image.
It is usually quoted as width x height with the units in pixels.
• eg. 3 x 2 inch image at resolution 300 contains 540,000 pixels.
4) Aspect Ratio: The ratio of image’s width to its height measured in
unit length (or no. of pixels) is referred as aspect ratio.
eg. Aspect ratio of an image having width=3 inches and height=2
inches is 1.5
• Aspect ratio of the image having resolution
1024 x 768 is same as that of 640 x 480.
i.e. aspect ratio is 4/3.
Characteristics of computer
graphics
• Interactive nature and preview capability.
- create drawing as per requirement.
• Impressive to look and user friendly.
• Can do work faster.
eg. Coloring, hatching, shading.
• Production of high quality graphics packages are not cheap.
- reasons:
-development of graphics package consume much time.
-hardware to run the package is quite expensive involving
large storage, very high resolution monitors, fast machines with
math co-processors.
Applications of Computer
Graphics
• Computer Aided Design (CAD)
• Presentation Graphics
• Computer Art
• Entertainment (animation, games, …)
• Education & Training
• Visualization (scientific & business)
• Image Processing
• Graphical User Interfaces
1.Computer Aided Design (CAD)
• Used in design of buildings, automobiles, aircraft, watercraft, spacecraft,
computers, textiles & many other products
• Objects are displayed in wire frame outline form ( overall shape and internal
features of an object).
• Software packages provide multi-window environment.( It shows enlarged
sections or different views of an object.
• Graphics design package provides standard shapes
(useful for repeated placements).
• Circuits and networks constructed with repeated
graphical shapes. Also personalized symbols can be
created.
• Animations are also used in CAD applications
• Realistic displays of architectural design permits
simulated “walk” through the rooms (virtual -reality
systems)
• Graphics for Engineering and Architectural System
• Design of Building, Automobile, Aircraft, Machine etc.

AutoCAD 2002 Interior Design

 2.Presentation Graphics
• Used to produce illustrations for reports or generate
slides for use with projectors
• Commonly used to summarize financial, statistical,
mathematical, scientific, economic data for research
reports, managerial reports & customer information
bulletins
• Examples : Bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, surface
graphs, time chart
• 2D graphics combined with geographical informations.
• Graphs and charts can be displayed in 2D and also in 3D
to provide additional information.
Examples of presentation
graphics
Examples of presentation
graphics
Examples of presentation graphics
• Time chart used in task planning.
• It is used in project management to schedule and monitor the
progress of project.
 3.Computer Art

• Used in fine art & commercial art

• Includes artist’s paintbrush programs, paint packages, CAD packages and
animation packages
• These packages provides facilities for designing object shapes & specifying object
motions.
• Examples : Cartoon drawing, paintings, product advertisements, logo design
Electronic art:
• In paint brush program: pressure sensitive stylus is used to produce
electronic painting.
• It creates variable line widths, brush sizes and color gradation.
• Fine artists use variety of other computer Technologies to produce
images. They are combination of 3D modelling packages, texture
mapping, drawing programs and CAD software.
Automatic art: Paintings produced on a pen plotter can create
automatic art.
Mathematical art: Artists uses a combination of mathematical
functions , fractal procedures, mathematic s/w, inkjet printers and
other systems to create variety of 2D and 3D shapes.
Commercial art: Methods are used for creating logo and other
design, page layouts combining text and graphics and TV
advertisements.
Animations are used in advertising.
• Graphics for Artist

Metacreation Painter
Examples :
• Electronic painting
• Picture painted electronically on
a graphics tablet (digitizer) using a stylus
• Cordless, pressure sensitive stylus
• Morphing
• A graphics method in which one object is
transformed into another
4.Entertainment
• Movie Industry
• Used in motion pictures, music
videos, and television shows.
• Used in making of cartoon
animation films.
Graphics objects are combined with the actors and live
scenes.

Slide information from Leonard McMillian's slides

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~mcmillan/comp136/Lecture1/
compgraf.html
Computer Graphics is about
animation (films)

•Graphics and image processing techniques are used for

morphing.
• Game Industry
• Focus on interactivity
• Cost effective solutions
• Avoiding computations and
other tricks
5.Education & Training

• Computer generated models of physical, financial and economic

systems are used as educational aids.
• Models of physical systems, physiological systems, population trends,
or equipment such as color-coded diagram help trainees understand
the operation of the system
Simulation

• Computer-Generated Models of Physical, Financial and Economic

Systems for Educational Aids

Flight Simulator Mars Rover Simulator

Specialized systems used
for training applications
 simulators for practice
sessions or training of ship
captains
 aircraft pilots
 heavy equipment operators
 air traffic-control personnel
Training
6.Visualization
• Scientific Visualization
• Producing graphical representations for scientific, engineering, and
medical data sets and processes is called scientific visualization.
Scientific Visualization

• Scientific and Information visualization are branches of computer

graphics and user interface design that are concerned with
presenting data to users, by means of images.
• For example, scientists interpret potentially huge quantities of
laboratory or simulation data or the results from sensors out in the
field to aid reasoning, hypothesis building and cognition.
• Desktop programs capable of presenting interactive models of
molecules and microbiological entities are becoming relatively
common (Molecular graphics).
• Medical imaging is a huge application domain for scientific
visualization with an emphasis on enhancing imaging results
graphically, e.g. using pseudo-coloring or overlaying of plots.
Scientific Visualisation

To view below and

above our visual range
• Business Visualization is used in connection with data sets related to
commerce, industry and other non-scientific areas
• Techniques used- color coding, contour plots, graphs, charts, surface
renderings & visualizations of volume interiors.
• Image processing techniques are combined with computer graphics to
produce many of the data visualizations
7. Image Processing
• CG- Computer is used to create a picture
• Image Processing – applies techniques to modify or
interpret existing pictures such as photographs and TV
scans
• Medical applications
• Picture enhancements
• Tomography
• Simulations of operations
• Ultrasonics & nuclear medicine scanners
• Two Applications of image processing
• Improving picture quality
• Machine perception of visual information (Robotics)
Basic principle of tomography:
superposition free tomographic cross sections
S1 and S2 compared with the projected image P
• To apply image processing methods
• Digitize a photograph (or picture) into an image file
• Apply digital methods to rearrange picture parts to
• enhance color separations
• Improve quality of shading
• Tomography – technique of X-ray photography that allows
cross-sectional views of physiological systems to be
displayed
• Computed X-ray tomography (CT) and position emission
tomography ( PET) use projection methods to reconstruct
cross sections from digital data
• Computer-Aided Surgery is a medical application technique
to model and study physical functions to design artificial
limbs and to plan & practice surgery
8.Graphical User Interfaces

• Major component – Window manager (multiple-window

areas)
• To make a particular window active, click in that window
(using an interactive pointing device)
• Interfaces display – menus & icons
• Icons – graphical symbol designed to look like the processing
option it represents
• Advantages of icons – less screen space, easily understood
• Menus contain lists of textual descriptions & icons
Graphics Software

Graphics Software

General Programming Special purpose

package application package
1) General Programming package:
- It provides extensive set of graphics functions that can be used
in a high level programming languages such as C or FORTRAN.
- eg: GL( Graphics Library) on silicon Graphics equipment.
-Basic functions in a general purpose package includes:
a) generating picture components ( straight lines, polygons,
circles and other figures).
 b) setting color and intensity values.
c) selecting views & applying transformations.
- General graphics package are designed to be used with cartesian
coordinate specifications. If the coordinate values for a picture are
specified in some other reference frame (spherical, hyperbole, etc…),
they must be converted to cartesian coordinates before they can be
input to the graphics package.
2) Special purpose application packages:
-application graphics packages are designed for nonprogrammers, so
that users can generate displays without worrying about how graphics
operations work.
-The interface to the graphics routines in such packages allows users
to communicate with the programs in their own terms.
- eg: -artist's painting programs
-various business, medical, and CAD systems.
- Special purpose graphics packages may allow use of other
coordinate frames that are appropriate to the application.
Coordinate system
• Modeling coordinates ( local coordinates or master coordinates):
We can construct the shape of individual objects, such as trees
or furniture, in a scene within separate coordinate reference frames
called modeling coordinates, or sometimes local coordinates or master
coordinates.
• World coordinates:
Once individual object shapes have been specified, we can
place the objects into appropriate positions within the scene using a
reference frame called world coordinates.
• Device coordinates ( Screen coordinates):
Finally, the world-coordinate description of the scene is
transferred to one or more output-device reference frames for display.
These display coordinate systems are referred to as device
coordinates or screen coordinates in the case of a video monitor.
• Normalized Device coordinates:
Generally, a graphics system first converts world-coordinate positions
to normalized device coordinates, in the range from 0 to 1, before final
conversion to specific device coordinates. This makes the system
independent of the various devices that might be used at a particular
workstation.
• An initial modeling-coordinate position transferred to
a device coordinate position with the sequence:

The modeling and world-coordinate positions in this

transformation can be any floating-point values;
normalized coordinates satisfy the inequalities:
Graphics Functions

• A general-purpose graphics package provides users with a

variety of functions for creating and manipulating pictures.
• Functions in graphics programming packages can be
divided into the following categories:
output primitives,
attributes,
geometric and modeling transformations,
viewing transformations,
structure operations,
input functions, and
control operations.
Output primitives:
• The basic building blocks for pictures are referred to as output
primitives.
• They include character strings and geometric entities, such as
points, straight lines, curved Lines, filled areas (polygons, circles,
etc.), and shapes defined with arrays of color points.
• Routines for generating output primitives provide the basic tools for
constructing pictures.
Attributes:
• Attributes are the properties of the output primitives;
that is, an attribute describes “how a particular
primitive is to be displayed”.
• They include
- intensity and color specifications,
- line styles,
- text styles, and
- area-filling patterns.
• Functions within this category can be used to set
attributes for an individual primitive class or for groups
of output primitives.
Geometric transformations:
• We can change the size, position, or orientation of an object within
a scene using geometric transformations.
Modeling transformations:
• Similar modeling transformations are used to construct a scene
using object descriptions given in modeling coordinates.
Viewing transformation:
• Given the primitive and attribute definition of a picture in world
coordinates, a graphics package projects a selected view of the picture
on an output device.
• Viewing transformations are used to specify the view that is to be
presented and the portion of the output display area that is to be
used.
• Pictures can be subdivided into component parts, called structures or
segments or objects, depending on the software package in use.
• Each structure defines one logical unit of the picture. A scene with
several objects could reference each individual object in a separate
named structure.
• Routines for processing structures carry out operations such as the
creation. modification, and transformation of structures.
• Input functions:
Interactive graphics ,applications use various
kinds of input devices, such as a mouse, a tablet, or
a joystick. Input functions are used to control and
process the data flow from these interactive
devices.
• Control operations:
A graphics package contains a number of
housekeeping tasks, such as clearing a display
screen and initializing parameters. Such functions
are categorized as control operations.
Software Standards

• The primary goal of standardized graphics software

is portability.
When packages are designed with standard
graphics functions, software can be moved easily
from one hardware system to another and used in
different implementations and applications.
Without standards, programs designed for one
hardware system often cannot be transferred to
another system without extensive rewriting of the
programs.
1) GKS-Graphics Kernel System – first graphics package – accepted by
ISO & ANSI
-Although GKS was originally designed as a two-dimensional
graphics package, a three-dimensional GKS extension was
subsequently developed.
2) PHIGS (Programmer’s Hierarchical Interactive
Graphics Standard)-accepted by ISO & ANSI.
• extension of GKS
• Increased capabilities for
-object modeling,
-color specifications,
-surface rendering, and
-picture manipulations are provided In PHIGS.
3) PHIGS + (Expanded package)
Subsequently, an extension of PHIGS, called PHIGS+, was
developed to provide three dimensional surface shading
capabilities not available in PHIGS.
• Standard graphics functions are defined as a set of specifications
that is independent of any programming language.
• A language binding is then defined for a particular high-level
programming language. This binding gives the syntax for accessing
the various standard graphics functions from this language.
• For example, the general form of the PHIGS (and
GKS) function for specifying a sequence of n-1
connected two-dimensional straight Iine segments
is

• In Fortran:
CALL GPL(N, X, Y) // Where X & Y are 1-D
array of coordinate values for line endpoints.
• In C:
ppolyline(n, pts); // where pts is a list of
coordinates end point positions.
Limitations of PHIGS:
• Although PHIGS presents a specification for basic
graphics functions, it does not provide a standard methodology for
a graphics interface to output devices.
• Nor does it specify methods for storing and transmitting pictures.
• Separate standards have been developed for these areas.
• Computer Graphics Interface (CGI) system:
Standardization for device interface methods is given in the
(CGI) system.
• Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) system: It specifies
standards for archiving and transporting pictures.