Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
something about polygon meshes, you hope there will be a chapter that has all
the polygon-mesh information in it, for instance. Then again, a book that treated
each subject in its entirety before moving on to any other would have you make
your first pictures at the end of an entire semester of study, at the earliest!
We have compromised: In this introductory chapter, we've given you some
very informal information about light, perception, the representation of shapes,
and the interaction of light with shapes so that you can understand how to make
some pictures right away. When you
do
make pictures with these sloppy models of
things, the pictures won't be very good. Sure, your picture of a boxy robot will be
recognizable as a boxy robot, but in looking at it critically, you'll soon realize that
there's no way you could make a
real
robot shape (from cardboard, tape, and paint,
say) and photograph it with a
real
camera and end up with anything like the picture
you've made. It's not photorealistic. But making those first pictures will give you
experience with creating models, with certain applications of linear algebra, with
polygonal meshes, and with some key ideas for rendering, all of which will make
you better able to understand and experiment with richer or more accurate models
of light, reflection, objects, etc., as you encounter them.
The next few chapters introduce Microsoft's Windows Presentation Founda-
tion (WPF), a framework for writing graphics programs, some basic ideas from
rendering, an introduction to visual perception, and quite a lot of mathematics
that's useful throughout graphics.
Chapter 2 introduces the 2D aspects of WPF to get you familiar with drawing
simple 2D shapes. WPF uses a declarative specification of graphics—in contrast
to more traditional APIs—which is valuable both because it provides a higher
level of abstraction and because its interpretive nature makes it very useful for
rapid prototyping. Modeling in WPF is based on a hierarchical representation of
shapes that's widely used in almost all graphics APIs.
Chapter 3 describes a program for making very simple pictures of very simple
3D shapes so that you can understand from the start how simple graphics can be.
Chapter 4 describes two WPF programs that you'll use when conducting experi-
ments in graphics throughout much of the remainder of the topic.
Chapter 5, which covers perception, describes some of the most pertinent
aspects of the human visual system.
In Chapter 6 we present an introduction to the 3D aspects of WPF, which
also informally introduces the geometric tools used for shape modeling, and the
application of the simple models of how light and objects interact that we have
described in this chapter. It also continues the description of hierarchical models
of compound shapes introduced in Chapter 2.
With the experience of using both the 2D and 3D versions of WPF, you will be
prepared for Chapter 7's review of mathematical essentials for graphics. Chapters
8 through 13 introduce the linear algebra that lies at the core of a great deal of
computer graphics, together with certain data structures that represent the topol-
ogy and geometry from which we make images.
Following this, we again discuss (in Chapter 14) the conventional approxima-
tions to reality—the models—that are used in many basic graphics systems. We
describe models of light, of shape, of material, and of how light is transported in a
scene, in each case with more detail than in this chapter. This rather long chapter
not only prepares you for the later material on rendering, shape representation,
and material representation, but also introduces many topics that are essential for
understanding legacy programs.
