Nonlinear Projections - Transformations and Projections in Computer Graphics - page 167

horizontal lines are curved mostly around the center of the drawing, as discussed in the
answer to Exercise 4.10. This figure is also an example of the four-point continuous
perspective discussed in Section 4.8.
Figure 4.24: Cylindrical Panoramic Projection (courtesy of Dick Termes).
Almost everything in Dick Termes' world is round—the sun breaking through morning
haze, the tennis ball he batted back and forth before breakfast, and the four geodesic
domes in which he lives and works.
For more than 36 years, Termes has eschewed traditional flat canvases to create his
art on polycarbonate globes he calls “Termespheres.” He came up with the idea while
completing his master's degree at the University of Wyoming in the late 1960s, and
it has been his passion ever since. Termes estimates he has painted more than 300
major spheres so far—about a third of those by commission—and his work is displayed
internationally from North Pole High School in Alaska to the Sphere Museum in Tokyo,
Japan.
“In art, the most important thing to find is an original thing to do,” he says. “There
have been lots of paintings done over thousands of years, most on flat surfaces. The
sphere adds a whole new set of geometries that fits with the real world better than a
flat surface. Three-dimensional space is what we live in.”
—David Eisenhauer, University of Wyoming Magazine
Figure 4.25a (courtesy of Ari Salomon [helloari 05]) shows three examples of cylin-
drical panoramas. Each was made by taking several overlapping photographs and stitch-
ing them with appropriate software. Part (a), a bathroom in Paris, France, is vertical. It
was made by taking pictures with a 20% overlap and tilting the camera to point higher
and higher between images. It is obvious that the vertical lines are curved while the
horizontal lines remain straight (but not completely parallel since the camera was held
by hand during the shots). Part (b) is a street scene in Tel-Aviv, Israel. After watching
this image for a few seconds and trying to “digest” it, it becomes clear that we are
looking at three parallel streets (even though they seem to diverge). On the right-hand
side, we see cars going toward the center of the image (away from our viewpoint). On