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SCO 305 - COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Computer graphics is an art of drawing pictures, lines, charts, etc using computers with the help
of programming. Computer graphics is made up of number of pixels.

Pixel is the smallest graphical picture or unit represented on the computer screen.

Interactive Computer Graphics: Interactive Computer Graphics involves a two way


communication between computer and user. Here the observer is given some control over the
image by providing him with an input device for example the video game controller of the ping
pong game. This helps him to signal his request to the computer.

The computer on receiving signals from the input device can modify the displayed picture
appropriately. To the user it appears that the picture is changing instantaneously in response to
his commands. He can give a series of commands, each one generating a graphical response
from the computer. In this way he maintains a conversation, or dialogue, with the computer.

Non Interactive Computer Graphics: In non interactive computer graphics otherwise known as
passive computer graphics. it is the computer graphics in which user does not have any kind of
control over the image. Image is merely the product of static stored program and will work
according to the instructions given in the program linearly. The image is totally under the
control of program instructions not under the user. Example: screen savers.

The following are also considered graphics applications: -

i. Paint programs: Allow you to create rough freehand drawings. The images are stored as
bit maps and can easily be edited. It is a graphics program that enables you to draw
pictures on the display screen which is represented as bit maps (bit-mapped
graphics). In contrast, draw programs use vector graphics (object-oriented images),
which scale better.
ii. Illustration/design programs: Supports more advanced features than paint programs,
particularly for drawing curved lines. The images are usually stored in vector-based
formats. Illustration/design programs are often called draw programs. Presentation
graphics software: Lets you create bar charts, pie charts, graphics, and other types of
images for slide shows and reports. The charts can be based on data imported from
spreadsheet applications.
iii. Animation software: Enables you to chain and sequence a series of images to simulate
movement. Each image is like a frame in a movie. It can be defined as a simulation of

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movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames. A cartoon on


television is one example of animation. Animation on computers is one of the chief
ingredients of multimedia presentations. There are many software applications that
enable you to create animations that you can display on a computer monitor.

There is a difference between animation and video. Whereas video takes continuous motion
and breaks it up into discrete frames, <<while>> animation starts with independent pictures
and puts them together to form the illusion of continuous motion.

iv. CAD software: Enables architects and engineers to draft designs. It is the acronym for
computer-aided design. A CAD system is a combination of hardware and software
that enables engineers and architects to design everything from furniture to
airplanes. In addition to the software, CAD systems require a high-quality graphics
monitor; a mouse, light pen, or digitizing tablet for drawing; and a special printer or
plotter for printing design specifications.
v. Desktop publishing: Provides a full set of word-processing features as well as fine
control over placement of text and graphics, so that you can create newsletters,
advertisements, books, and other types of documents. It means by using a personal
computer or workstation high-quality printed documents can be produced. A
desktop publishing system allows you to use different typefaces, specify various
margins and justifications, and embed illustrations and graphs directly into the text.
The most powerful desktop publishing systems enable you to create illustrations;
while less powerful systems let you insert illustrations created by other programs.

A particularly important feature of desktop publishing systems is that they enable you to see on
the display screen exactly how the document will appear when printed. Systems that support
this feature are called WYSIWYGs (what you see is what you get). Until recently, hardware costs
made desktop publishing systems impractical for most uses. But as the prices of personal
computers and printers have fallen, desktop publishing systems have become increasingly
popular for producing newsletters, brochures, books, and other documents that formerly
required a typesetter.

Applications of Computer Graphics


As ancient says a pixel is worth thousand words, graphics is essential everywhere to
understand the things, concepts, etc easily. Computer graphics is useful in almost all part of our
life.

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1. Design and Drawing: In almost all areas of engineering, be it civil, mechanical, electronic
etc., drawings are of prime importance. In fact, drawing is said to be the language of
engineers. The ability of computers to store complex drawings and display them on
demand was one of the major attractions for using computers in graphic mode.
However, these were further advantages.
Most of these drawings were the result of engineering calculations. In fact, programs
can be written to make these calculations and the results can be used to draw diagrams
on the screen. If changes are to be made, one can get back to the design formulae and
so on. Thus, the area of design and drawing was one of the earliest and most useful
applications of graphics.

2. Animation: what brought the computers pretty close to the average individuals is the
concept of animation moving pictures. It is the well-known principle of moving pictures
that a succession of related pictures, when flashed with sufficient speed will make the
succession of pictures appear to be moving. In movies, a sequence of such pictures is
shot and are displayed with sufficient speed to make them appear moving. Computers
can do it in another way.
The properties of the picture can be modified at a fairly fast rate to make it appear
moving. For example, if a hand is to be moved, say, the successive positions of the hand
at different periods of time can be computed and pictures showing the position of the
hand at these positions can be flashed on the screen. This led to the concept of
animation or moving pictures. In the initial stages, animation was mainly used in
computer games.
You can enlarge, reduce, rotate, twist, morph (make one picture gradually change to
another like an advertisement showing a cheetah change into a motor bike) and do a
whole lot of other things.

3. Multimedia applications: The use of sound cards to make computers produce sound
effect led to other uses of graphics. The concept of virtual reality, where in one can be
taken through an unreal experience, like going through an unbuilt house (to see how it
feels inside, once it is built) are possible by the use of computer graphics technology.
In fact the ability of computers to convert electronic signals (0 & 1) to data and then on
to figures and pictures has made it possible for us to get photographs of distant planets
like mars being reproduced here on the earth in almost real time.

4. Simulation: The other revolutionary change that graphics made was in the area of
simulation. Basically simulation is a mockup of an environment elsewhere to study or
experience it. The availability of easily interactive devices made it possible to build
simulators.
One example is of flight simulators, wherein the trainee, sitting in front of a computer,
can operate on the interactive devices as if he were operating on the flight controls and
the changes he is expected to see outside his window are made to appear on the

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screen, so that he can master the skills of flight operations before actually trying his
hand on the actual flights.

5. The graphic capabilities of computers are used in a very large variety of areas like
criminology (to recreate faces of victims, assailants etc.) medical fields (recreating
pictures of internal cavities, using signals sent by miniature cameras), recreation of
Satellite pictures etc.

The Difficulties for Displaying Pictures


The concept of graphics of displaying pictures is lot more complicated than what has been
described so far - evaluate the points using the equations, store them in a file and use raster
graphics methods or use simple line drawing algorithms (Vector).
i) Stair case effects: Note that the pixel values are always integers (0,0) (0,1) (0,2) - - - - - --
- -, but an algorithm to draw/manipulate pictures need not always return integer values.
Suppose the point at which two line meet, say is at (1.4, 2.7). What do we do? Common
sense suggests that we round off the values, by using any of the standard algorithms.
But another value of 1.6 say gets rounded off to 2 and a value of 3.1 also gets rounded
of to 3. So, what do we have? The pointer 1.4 and 1.6, which should be very close to
each other, appear to be separated by a distance of 1 and not 0.2 in our figure, i.e. the
smoothness of a figure joining these points is lost. Alternately, the points 2.7 and 3.1,
instead of appearing to be different, appear to be the same in our picture. A number of
such adjustments makes the figure looks like a jagged one instead of a smooth picture.

ii) Response time: Especially when talking of animation, the speed at which new calculations
are made and the speed at which the screen can interact are extremely important.
Imagine a running bus, shown on the screen. Each new position of the bus (and its
surroundings, if needed) is to be calculated and sent to the screen and the screen
should delete the earlier position of the bus and display its new position.
All this should happen at a speed that convinces the viewer that the vehicle is actually
moving at the prescribed speed, otherwise a running vehicle would appear like a
"walking" bus or worse a "piecewise movement bus. For this, most the speed of the
algorithm and the speed of the display devices are extremely important. Further, the
entire operation should appear smooth and not jerky otherwise, especially in simulation
applications, the effects can be dangers.

iii) What happens when the size of the picture exceeds the size of the screen?
Obviously, some areas of the picture are to be cut off. But this involves certain
considerations and needs to be addressed by software.

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iv) Can the user create pictures directly on the screen? - Definitely all pictures cannot be
thought of in terms of regular geometric figures and hence in terms of equations? Now,
seeing a particular picture on the screen, the viewer wants to change it slightly, say
bend it slightly here, stretch it their etc. This may not suit any regular equation? How
should the system handle it?

Terms used in Computer Graphics


1. coordinate
A computer is a mapping system, or grid, complete with the ability to pinpoint any location or
coordinate in the application window. This grid is laid out in the common x,y format-x being the
horizontal units of measure starting from the left side of the screen, and y being the units
starting from the top of the screen.
It's easy to see that 0,0 would be the upper left corner of the screen.
In the painting and drawing world, knowing these coordinates is very helpful-to say the least-
and it's essential in a lot of instances. Nearly all graphic and page layout applications give you a
separate window which shows the coordinates of where your cursor is located at any given
moment.
By watching your coordinates you can move, create, shape, or select objects or portions thereof
with great precision.

2. Monochrome
If an item is monochrome, that means it uses only one color on a differently colored
background. In a monochrome monitor, these pixels have only one color phosphor. The picture
is created with, say, black dots (or lines) against a white background.
A monochrome image pixel can have two values, on (white) or off (black), and this can be
represented by 1-bit as either 0 or 1. Most printers are monochrome, meaning they only print
black toner on white paper.
If an image is One-bit that means 1-bit of information is sent to the pixel on the screen. That bit
can turn the pixel on (white) or off (black). All 1-bit images are black-and-white. On a
monochrome monitor, the pixels can't deal with more than just that one bit of data so that's all
you can ever get is black and white.

3. Rendering
Since large drawings cannot fit in their entirety on display screens, they can either be
compressed to fit, thereby obscuring details and creating clutter, or only a portion of the total
drawing can be displayed. The portion of a 2D or 3D object to be displayed is chosen through
specification of a rectangular window that limits what part of the drawing can be seen.

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A 2D window is usually defined by choosing a maximum and minimum value for its x- and y-
coordinates, or by specifying the center of the window and giving its maximum relative height
and width. Simple subtractions or comparisons suffice to determine whether a point is in view.
For lines and polygons, a clipping operation is performed that discards those parts that fall
outside of the window. Only those parts that remain inside the window are

4. bitmap
A bitmap is an image or shape of any kind-a picture, a text character, a photo-that's composed
of a collection of tiny individual dots (Pixels). A wild landscape on your screen is a bitmapped
graphic, or simply a bitmap. Remember that whatever you see on the screen is composed of
tiny dots called pixels. When you make a big swipe across the screen in a paint program with
your computerized "brush," all that really happens is that you turn some of those pixels on and
some off.

5. Aspect ratio
Aspect ratio is a fancy (elaborate) term for "proportion," or the ratio of width to height. For
instance, if a direction in a software manual tells you to "hold down the Shift key while you
resize a graphic in order to maintain the aspect ratio," it simply means that if you don't hold
down the Shift key you will stretch the image out of proportion.
The aspect ratio of the screen determines the most efficient screen RESOLUTIONS and the most
desirable shape for individual PIXELS, all of which may have to change upon the introduction of
HIGH DEFINITION TELEVISION.

6. Grayscale
On a grayscale monitor, each pixel can accept from 1 to 8 bits of data, which will show from 1
to 256 shades of gray.
If there are 2 bits per pixel, there are four possible combinations of on and off: on/on, off/off,
on/off, and off/on. Each of these combinations displays a different shade of gray (including
black and white).
If there are 4 bits per pixel (24), you will have 16 levels of gray
If there are 8 bits per pixel, there are 256 possible combinations (28). This is the maximum
number of grays possible on any grayscale monitor, which is plenty because our eyes can't
distinguish more than that number of grays anyway.

7. 32-bit color
On a color monitor, each pixel has three dots arranged in a triad-red, green, and one blue dot.
Each dot can deal with a maximum of 8 bits, which makes a total of 24 bits per pixel. With the
possibility of combining the 256 levels of color in each of the three color dots, 24-bit color gives
you the awesome potential of 16.7 million colors on your screen (256 times 3). Many of these

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colors differ so slightly that even the most acute observer couldn't tell the difference between
them.

8. double buffering
A technique called double buffering permits one set of data to be used while another is
collected. It is used with graphics displays, where one frame buffer holds the current screen
image while another acquires the bits that will make up the next image. When it is ready, the
buffers are switched, the new screen is displayed, and the process continues.
This reduces the minimum time between successive frames to the time required to switch
buffers, rather than the time required to RENDER a whole frame, so avoiding a lengthy dark
space between frames.
In a typical situation, a processor will be capable of producing data several orders of magnitude
faster than a peripheral can accept it. In order to make most efficient use of the processor, the
data will be placed in a buffer and its location made known to the peripheral. The peripheral
then proceeds to empty the buffer while the processor is freed for other work.

9. CMYK
The acronym CMYK (pronounced as the individual letters: C M Y K) stands for the process colors
cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. These four process colors are the transparent ink colors that
a commercial press uses to recreate the illusion of a full-color photograph or illustration on the
printed page. If you look at any printed color image in a magazine, especially if you look at it
through a magnifying glass (a "loupe"), you will see separate dots of ink in each of the four
colors. These four colors, in varying intensities determined by the dot size and space around the
dot, combine together to create the wide range of colors you appear to see.
To get these four colors from the full-color image, the image must be separated into the varying
percentages of each of the colors. There are several very sophisticated methods of doing this,
and the result is a four color separation.

10. Compression
The processing of a set of data in order to reduce its size. Compression may be performed both
to reduce the amount of storage space occupied (say, to fit the data onto a single CD) and to
reduce the time it takes to transmit (say, over a slow telephone line). Compressed data must be
decompressed by reversing the process before it can be read or modified.
When you compress computerized information, you make it smaller (taking up less space on
the disk), meaning that less data is needed to represent exactly the same information. Using a
compression utility, you can compress files stored on disk so that they take up less disk space
and leave more space for other files. Some programs have the ability to compress data that's

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being held in memory, allowing the computer to keep more data in memory and thus spend
less time retrieving data from the disk.

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