CSE- 4105

Basic Line DDA

Digital Differential Analyser
Basic of line
• A line segment in a scene is defined by the
coordinate positions of the line end-points
y

(7, 5)
5

2
(2, 2)

2 7 x
Basic of line
• Line drawing is accomplished by calculating
intermediate positions along the line path
between specified end points.
• Y=mX+B
• A slope of 2 means that every 1-unit change in X
yields a 2-unit change in Y.

B
Line Equations
• Let’s quickly review the equations involved in
drawing lines

y  m x  b
y
where:
y2  y1
y2 m
x2  x1
y1 b  y1  m  x1

x1 x2 x
Algorithm
• Start at the pixel for the left-hand endpoint x1
• Step along the pixels horizontally until reach the right-hand
end point x2
• For each value of x compute corresponding y value
• Round this value to nearest integer to select the nearest pixel

Basic Algorithm:
For x= x1 to x2
y=mx+b
PlotPixel(x,round(y))
End;

Problems: Lot of computation and inefficient.

For each iteration: 1 float multiplication, 1 addition, 1 round
A Very Simple Solution

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
 y2  y1
m b  y1  m  x1
A Very Simple Solution x2  x1

y  m x  b
y
(7, 5) • First work out m and b:
5

52 3
m  3
b  2 2 
4
2 72 5 5 5
(2, 2)

2 3 4 5 6 7 x 3 4 3
Now for each x value work out the y value: y(3)   3   2
5 5 5
3 4 1 3 4 4 3 4 2
y(4)   4   3 y(5)   5   3 y(6)   6   4
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
How do we choose which pixels to turn on?
A Very Simple Solution
• Now just round off the results and turn on these
pixels to draw our line

3
7 y(3)  2  3
6 5
5 1
y(4)  3  3
4 5
3 4
2 y(5)  3  4
1 5
0 2
y(6)  4  4
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 5
Considerations
• Considerations to keep in mind:
• The line has to look good
• Avoid jaggies

• It has to be lightening fast!

• How many lines need to be drawn in a
typical scene?
• This is going to come back to bite us again
and again
A Very Simple Solution
• However, this approach is just way too slow
• In particular look out for:
• The equation y = mx + b requires the multiplication of
m by x
• Rounding off the resulting y coordinates
• We need a faster solution

Problems: Lot of computation and inefficient.

For each iteration: 1 float multiplication, 1 addition, 1 round
Line Equations
• The equation of a simple line is: yi  m  xi  b
• Modify the equation:
yi 1  m  xi 1  b
 m( xi  1)  b
 mxi  m  b
Replace by yi  (mxi  b)  m
 yi  m
The DDA Algorithm
• The digital differential analyzer (DDA)
algorithm takes an incremental approach in order
to speed up scan conversion

• Simply calculate yk+1 based on yk

The DDA Algorithm (cont…)

• Consider the list of points that we determined for the

line in our previous example:
• (2, 2), (3, 23/5), (4, 31/5), (5, 34/5), (6, 42/5), (7, 5)
• Notice that as the x coordinates go up by one, the y
coordinates simply go up by the slope of the line
• This is the key insight in the DDA algorithm

Basic Algorithm:
For x= x1 to x2
PlotPixel(x,round(y))
y=y+m
End;
 The DDA Algorithm (cont…)
• When the slope of the line is between -1 and 1 begin at the first
point in the line and, by incrementing the x coordinate by 1,
calculate the corresponding y coordinates as follows:

yk 1  yk  m
• When the slope is outside these limits, increment the y coordinate
by 1 and calculate the corresponding x coordinates as follows:

1
xk 1  xk 
m
 If m: -1,1
{
if m:0,1
dX=1
if m:0,-1
dX=-1
increment X coordinate ,X i+1=Xi+dX
}
Otherwise
{
if m>1
dY=1
if m<-1
dY=-1
increment Y coordinate , Y i+1=Yi+dY
}

dy=-1 dx=-1 dx=1 dy=1

increment Y coordinate increment X coordinate increment Y coordinate
Slope value: … -2 -1 0 0 1 2 ….
DDA Algorithm
• Digital Differential Analyzer
• 0 < Slope <= 1
• Unit x interval = 1

• Slope >= -1
• Unit y interval = 1
DDA Algorithm
• Digital Differential Analyzer

• -1 <= Slope < 0

• Unit x interval = -1

• Slope < -1
• Unit y interval = -1
Practice Example…
Practice
Line Drawing using DDA:

Compute the slope and the first 10 pixels of the

following line segments

1. (200,700), (100,-200)
2. (200,700), (-500, 500)
3. (200, 700), (350,1000)
4. (-150, 300), (-50,-300)
5. (300,75), (100, 50)
The DDA Algorithm Summary
• The DDA algorithm is much faster than our
previous attempt
• In particular, there are no longer any multiplications
involved
• However, there are still two big issues:
• Accumulation of round-off errors can make the pixelated
line drift away from what was intended
• The rounding operations and floating point arithmetic
involved are time consuming
• The DDA algorithm is pretty good – but we can do
better
• Next we’ll look at the Bresenham line algorithm.
Thank You