Computer graphics is a sub-field of computer science and is concerned with digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Although the term often refers to three-dimensional computer graphics, it also encompasses two-dimensional graphics and image processing. Computer graphics is often differentiated from the field of visualization, although the two have many similarities. 2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models (such as 2D geometric models, text, and digital images) and by techniques specific to them. ... This article is about process of creating 3D computer graphics. ... Founded in 1969, ACM SIGGRAPH is the New York-based Association for Computing Machinerys Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. ... For the field of study, see Computer graphics. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... It has been suggested that Interactive visualization be merged into this article or section. ...

A broad classification of major subfields in computer graphics might be:

1. Geometry: studies ways to represent and process surfaces
2. Animation: studies with ways to represent and manipulate motion
3. Rendering: studies algorithms to reproduce light transport
4. Imaging: studies image acquisition or image editing

The Utah teapot

This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... The Utah teapot The Utah teapot or Newell teapot is a 3D model which has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community. ...

Definition

Computer graphics broadly studies the manipulation of visual and geometric information using computational techniques. Computer graphics as an academic discipline focuses on the mathematical and computational foundations of image generation and processing rather than purely aesthetic issues.

Geometry

The subfield of geometry studies the representation of three-dimensional objects in a discrete digital setting. Because the appearance of an object depends largely on the exterior of the object, boundary representations are most common in computer graphics. Two dimensional surfaces are a good analogy for the objects most often used in graphics, though quite often these objects are non-manifold. Since surfaces are not finite, a discrete digital approximation is required: polygonal meshes (and to a lesser extent subdivision surfaces) are by far the most common representation, although point-based representations have been gaining some popularity in recent years (see the Symposium on Point-Based Graphics, for instance). These representations are Lagrangian, meaning the spatial locations of the samples are independent. In recent years, however, Eulerian surface descriptions (i.e., where spatial samples are fixed) such as level sets have been developed into a useful representation for deforming surfaces which undergo many topological changes (with fluids being the most notable example^[1]). In computer-aided design, the term boundary representation — often abbreviated as B-REP or BREP, refers to storing information about how to make a model based on its geometric and often Euler topological boundaries. ... An open surface with X-, Y-, and Z-contours shown. ... On a sphere, the sum of the angles of a triangle is not equal to 180° (see spherical trigonometry). ... A mesh is a collection of vertices and polygons that define the shape of an object in 3D computer graphics. ... A subdivision surface, in the field of 3D computer graphics, is a method of representing a smooth surface via the specification of a coarser piecewise linear polygon mesh. ... In mathematics, a level set of a real-valued function f of n variables is a set of the form { (x1,...,xn) | f(x1,...,xn) = c } where c is a constant. ... A subset of the phases of matter, fluids include liquids and gases, plasmas and, to some extent, plastic solids. ...

Subfields

• Constructive solid geometry - Process by which complicated objects are modelled with implicit geometric objects and boolean operations
• Discrete differential geometry - a nascent field which defines geometric quantities for the discrete surfaces used in computer graphics.^[2]
• Digital geometry processing - surface reconstruction, simplification, fairing, mesh repair, parameterization, remeshing, mesh generation, surface compression, and surface editing all fall under this heading.^[3][4][5]
• Point-based graphics - a recent field which focuses on points as the fundamental representation of surfaces.
• Subdivision surfaces
• Out-of-core mesh processing - another recent field which focuses on mesh datasets that do not fit in main memory.

Constructive solid geometry (CSG) is a technique used in solid modeling. ... A 3D scanner is a device that analyzes a real-world object or environment to collect data on its shape and possibly color. ... A subdivision surface, in the field of 3D computer graphics, is a method of representing a smooth surface via the specification of a coarser piecewise linear polygon mesh. ...

Animation

The subfield of animation studies descriptions for surfaces (and other phenomena) that move or deform over time. Historically most interest in this area has been focused on parametric and data-driven models, but in recent years physical simulation has experienced a renaissance due to the growing computational capacity of modern machines. Dynamical simulation, in computational physics, is the simulation of systems of objects that are free to move, usually in three dimensions according to Newtons laws of dynamics, or approximations thereto. ...

Subfields

• Performance capture
• Character animation
• Physical simulation (e.g. cloth modeling, animation of fluid dynamics, etc.)

Cloth modeling is the term used for simulating cloth within a computer program usually in the realm of Computer graphics . ... Fluid dynamics is the sub-discipline of fluid mechanics dealing with fluids (liquids and gases) in motion. ...

Rendering

Rendering converts a model into an image either by simulating light transport to get physically-based photorealistic images, or by applying some kind of style as in non-photorealistic rendering. The two basic operations in realistic rendering are transport (how much light gets from one place to another) and scattering (how surfaces interact with light). See Rendering (computer graphics) for more information. Light transport theory deals with the mathematics behind calculating the energy transfers between mediums that affect visibility. ... Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Transport

Transport describes how illumination in a scene gets from one place to another. Visibility is a major component of light transport. Visibility is a mathematical abstraction of the real-life notion of visibility and a specialization of the rendering equation. ...

Scattering

Models of scattering and shading are used to describe the appearance of a surface. Although these issues may seem like problems all on their own, they are studied almost exclusively within the context of rendering.^{[citation needed]} Shading can be broken down into two orthogonal issues, which are often studied independently:

1. scattering - how light interacts with the surface at a given point
2. shading - how material properties vary across the surface

The former problem refers to scattering, i.e., the relationship between incoming and outgoing illumination at a given point. Descriptions of scattering are usually given in terms of a bidirectional scattering distribution function or BSDF. The latter issue addresses how different types of scattering are distributed across the surface (i.e., which scattering function applies where). Descriptions of this kind are typically expressed with a program called a shader. (Note that there is some confusion since the word "shader" is sometimes used for programs that describe local geometric variation.) Scattering is a general physical process whereby some forms of radiation, such as light, sound or moving particles, for example, are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by one or more localized non-uniformities in the medium through which it passes. ... The definition of the BSDF (Bidirectional scattering distribution function) is not well standardized. ... Shaders are a set of different technologies. ...

Other subfields

• physically-based rendering - concerned with generating images according to the laws of geometric optics
• real time rendering - focuses on rendering for interactive applications, typically using specialized hardware like GPUs
• non-photorealistic rendering
• relighting - recent area concerned with quickly re-rendering scenes

See also list of optical topics. ... GPU redirects here. ... Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art. ...

History

One of the first displays of computer animation was Futureworld (1976), which included an animation of a human face and hand — produced by Ed Catmull and Fred Parke at the University of Utah. Futureworld was a 1976 sequel to the 1973 science fiction film Westworld. ... The bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these 6 frames. ... Edwin Catmull, Ph. ... -University of Utah graduate, creator of the first CGI physically-modelled human face Categories: Computer specialist stubs ... The University of Utah (also The U or the U of U or the UU), located in Salt Lake City, is the flagship public research university in the state of Utah, and one of 10 institutions that make up the Utah System of Higher Education. ...

There are several international conferences and journals where the most significant results in computer graphics are published. Among them are the SIGGRAPH and Eurographics conferences and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Graphics journal. The joint Eurographics and ACM SIGGRAPH symposium series features the major venues for the more specialized sub-fields: Symposium on Geometry Processing,Symposium on Rendering, and Symposium on Computer Animation. As in the rest of computer science, conference publications in computer graphics are generally more significant than journal publications (and subsequently have lower acceptance rates)^[6][7][8]. SIGGRAPH 2005 official logo SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group in Graphics) is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. ... Eurographics is a Europe-wide professional Computer Graphics association. ... The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the worlds first scientific and educational computing society. ...

An extensive history of computer graphics can be found at this page.

Applications

• Digital art
• Special effects
• Visual effects
• Video games

Computer-generated image created by Gilles Tran using POV-Ray 3. ... Special effects (also called SPFX or SFX) are used in the film, television, and entertainment industry to realize scenes that cannot be achieved by live action or normal means. ... Visual effects (or VFX for short) is the term given in which images or film frames are created and manipulated for film and video. ... This article is about computer and video games. ...

Connected studies

• Computer vision
• Image processing
• Computational Geometry
• Computational Topology

Computer vision is the science and technology of machines that see. ... UPIICSA IPN - Binary image Image processing is any form of information processing for which the input is an image, such as photographs or frames of video; the output is not necessarily an image, but can be for instance a set of features of the image. ... In computer science, computational geometry is the study of algorithms to solve problems stated in terms of geometry. ... Algorithmic topology, or computational topology, is a subfield of topology with an overlap with areas of computer science, in particular computational complexity theory. ...

Computer graphics research groups

Academia

The number of computer science departments with computer graphics groups has grown rapidly over the past two decades.

Industry

Industrial labs doing "blue sky" graphics research include:

• Adobe Advanced Technology Labs
• MERL
• Microsoft Research - Graphics
• NVIDIA Research

Major film studios notable for graphics research include:

• ILM
• PDI/Dreamworks Animation
• Pixar

Notable researchers in computer graphics

Jim Blinn James Blinn is a computer graphics researcher and also pioneer on this field. ... A sphere without bump mapping. ... Jack E. Bresenham is a professor of computer science. ... A line drawing algorithm is a graphical algorithm for approximating a line segment on discrete graphical media. ... Loren Carpenter (born 1947) is a computer graphics researcher and developer. ... Edwin Catmull, Ph. ... Robert L. Cook (December 10, 1952) is a computer graphics researcher and developer, and the co-creator of the RenderMan rendering software. ... Paul Debevec is a researcher in computer graphics at the University of Southern California. ... Ronald Fedkiw is a leading researcher in the field of computer graphics, focusing on topics relating to physical simulation of natural phenomena and level sets. ... James D. Foley is a professor in the College of Computing and College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. ... David Forsyth is an American computer scientist and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, born in South Africa. ... Henry Fuchs is the Federico Gil Professor of Computer Science, Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Adjunct Professor of Radiation Oncology at UNC Chapel Hill. ... Pat Hanrahan is a computer graphics researcher and professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. ... Takeo Kanade is a notable researcher in Machine Vision. ... In computer graphics, the rendering equation describes the flow of light energy throughout a scene. ... Marc Levoy is a computer graphics researcher and Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. ... James F. OBrien is a computer graphics researcher and professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. ... Dr. Ken Perlin is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Director of the Media Research Laboratory, both at New York University. ... A Polish mathematician who has advanced the idea that fibonacci numbers in nature can be in part understood as the expression of certain algebraic constraints on free groups, specifically as certain Lindenmeyer grammars. ... William Pember Reeves (10 February 1857 - 16 May 1932) was a New Zealand statesman, historian and poet, who promoted social reform. ... James Albert Sethian is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley and the head of the Mathematics Group[1] at the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who works in applied mathematics. ... The level set method is a numerical technique for tracking interfaces and shapes. ... Greg Turk is a researcher in the field of computer graphics. ... Andries Andy van Dam is a professor of computer science and former Vice-President for Research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. ... Lance Williams is a prominent graphics researcher who made major contributions to texture map prefiltering, shadow rendering algorithms, facial animation, and antialiasing techniques. ...

See also

Numerous sub-areas of computer graphics can be found in Category:3D computer graphics. This article is about process of creating 3D computer graphics. ... A 3D projection is a mathematical transformation used to project three dimensional points onto a two dimensional plane[1]. Often this is done to simulate the relationship of a camera to a subject, as 3D projection is often the first step in the process of representing three dimensional shapes two... Cloth modeling is the term used for simulating cloth within a computer program usually in the realm of Computer graphics . ... Cartoonish and realistic talking heads. ... Digital geometry deals with discrete sets (usually discrete point sets) considered to be digitized models or images of objects of the 2D or 3D Euclidean space. ... Digital image editing is the process of altering digital images, whether they be digital photographs or other types of digitally represented images. ... Spaceship Earth in Epcot Center at Walt Disney World is perhaps one of the most famous examples of a large scale geodesic sphere. ... Geometry Pipelines, also called Geometry Engines(GE) are the first stage in a classical Graphics Pipeline, such as the Reality Engine. ... Geometry Processing is a fast-growing area of research that uses concepts from applied mathematics, computer science, and engineering to design efficient algorithms for the acquisition, reconstruction, analysis, manipulation, simulation and transmission of complex 3D models. ... A graphical output device is a computer output device that produces visual material. ... GPU redirects here. ... The painters algorithm is one of the simplest solutions to the visibility problem in 3D computer graphics. ... SIGGRAPH 2005 official logo SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group in Graphics) is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. ... Image of the Stanford Bunny famously used in many model processing experiments The Stanford Bunny is a computer graphics test model developed by Greg Turk and Marc Levoy in 1994 at Stanford University. ... The Utah teapot The Utah teapot or Newell teapot is a 3D model which has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community. ... A Video Display Controller or VDC is an integrated circuit which is the main component in a video signal generator, a device responsible for the production of a TV video signal in a computing or game system. ...

References

External links

Look up computer graphics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation
• History of Computer Graphics series of articles