Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
it's far better, if you want to grab something from the Internet, to grab the original
paper on the subject.
Having promised principles, we offer two right away, courtesy of Michael
Littman:
T
HE KNOW YOUR PROBLEM PRINCIPLE
:
Know what problem you are solv-
ing.
T
HE APPROXIMATE THE SOLUTION PRINCIPLE
:
Approximate the solution,
not the problem.
Both are good guides for research in general, but for graphics in particular,
where there are so many widely used approximations that it's sometimes easy
to forget what the approximation is approximating, working with the unapproxi-
mated entity may lead to a far clearer path to a solution to your problem.
The academic side of computer graphics is dominated by SIGGRAPH, the Asso-
ciation for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graph-
ics and Interactive Techniques; the annual SIGGRAPH conference is the premier
venue for the presentation of new results in computer graphics, as well as a large
commercial trade show and several colocated conferences in related areas. The
SIGGRAPH proceedings, published by the ACM, are the most important refer-
ence works that a practitioner in the field can have. In recent years these have
been published as an issue of the ACM Transactions on Graphics.
Computer graphics is also an industry, of course, and it has had an enor-
mous impact in the areas of film, television, advertising, and games. It has also
changed the way we look at information in medicine, architecture, industrial pro-
cess control, network operations, and our day-to-day lives as we see weather maps
and other information visualizations. Perhaps most significantly, the graphical
user interfaces (GUIs) on our telephones, computers, automobile dashboards, and
many home electronics devices are all enabled by computer graphics.
Computer graphics has rapidly shifted from a novelty to an everyday phenomenon.
Even throwaway devices, like the handheld digital games that parents give to chil-
dren to keep them occupied on airplane trips, have graphical displays and inter-
faces. This corresponds to two phenomena: First visual perception is powerful,
and visual communication is incredibly rapid, so designers of devices of all kinds
want to use it, and second, the cost to manufacture computer-based devices is
decreasing rapidly. (Roy Smith [Smi], discussing in the 1980s various claims that
a GPS unit was so complex that it could never cost less than $1000, said, “Any-
thing made of silicon will someday cost five dollars.” It's a good rule of thumb.)
As graphics has become more prevalent, user expectations have risen. Video
games display many millions of polygons per second, and special effects in
films are now so good that
they're no longer readily distinguishable from
