Lecture 4: Filled Area Primitives

Shobhanjana Kalita,
Dept. of CSE, Tezpur University
Filled Area Primitives

2 basic approaches to area filling on raster systems

Determine overlap intervals for scan lines that cross the area

Typically used in general graphics packages to fill polygons,
circles, ellipses, and other simple curves.

Start from a given interior position and paint outward from
this point until we encounter the specified boundary
conditions

Useful with more complex boundaries and in interactive
painting systems
Scan Line Polygon Fill

Scan line is one line, or row, in a raster scanning pattern

Such as a line of video on a cathode ray tube (CRT) display of a
television set or computer monitor

For each scan line crossing a polygon, the area-fill algorithm
locates the intersection points of the scan line with the
polygon edges

sorted from left to right, and corresponding frame-buffer
positions between each intersection pair are set to fill colour
Scan Line Polygon Fill

In case of odd
number of
intersections, count
the point which is a
vertex as two points
Scan Line Polygon Fill

To resolve, shorten some polygon edges to split those
vertices that should be counted as one intersection

Process non-horizontal edges around the polygon boundary
in the order specified, clockwise or counter-clockwise

As we process each edge, check to determine whether that
edge and the next non-horizontal edge have either
monotonically increasing or decreasing endpoint y values

If so, the lower edge can be shortened to ensure that only one
intersection point is generated for the scan line going
through the common vertex joining the two edges
 Scan Line Polygon Fill

Scan-conversion take advantage of various coherence properties of

a scene that is to be displayed
Coherence is simply that the properties of one part of a scene are
related in some way to other parts of the scene so that the
relationship can be used to reduce processing
Inside Outside Tests

Area-filling algorithms and other graphics processes often
need to identify interior regions of objects

Odd Even rule:

By conceptually drawing a line from any position P to a distant
point outside the coordinate extents of the object and counting
the number of edge crossings along the line.

If the number of polygon edges crossed by this line is odd, then
P is an interior point. Otherwise, P is an exterior point

Nonzero winding number:

Count the number of times the polygon edges wind around a
particular point in the counter-clockwise direction - called the
winding number

Interior points of a two-dimensional object are defined to be
those that have a nonzero value for the winding number
Inside Outside Tests
Boundary Fill Algorithm

Scan line algorithm for regions with curved boundaries
require more work because intersection calculations involve
non-linear boundaries

Another approach to area filling is to start at a point inside a
region and paint the interior outward toward the boundary

If the boundary is specified in a single colour, the fill
algorithm proceeds outward pixel by pixel until the
boundary colour is encountered
Boundary Fill Algorithm

It accepts as input the coordinates of an interior point (x, y),
a fill colour, and a boundary colour

Starting from (x, y), the procedure tests neighbouring
positions to determine whether they are of the boundary
colour.

If not, they are painted with the fill colour, and their
neighbours are tested.

This process continues until all pixels up to the boundary
colour for the area have been tested
Boundary Fill Algorithm

2 methods for processing neighbouring
pixels from a current test position

four neighbouring points - are right, left,
above, and below – 4 connected

eight neighbouring points – right, left, above,
below and four diagonal positions – 8 connected
Boundary Fill Algorithm

Recursive boundary-fill algorithms may not fill regions correctly if

some interior pixels are already displayed in the fill colour.

Encountering a pixel with the fill colour can cause a recursive branch
to terminate, leaving other interior pixels unfilled.

To avoid this, first change the colour of any interior pixels that are
initially set to the fill colour before applying the boundary-fill
procedure.
Flood Fill Algorithm

To fill in an area that is not defined within a single colour
boundary

Paint areas by replacing a specified interior colour instead of
searching for a particular boundary colour – flood-fill
algorithm

Start from a specified interior point (x, y) and reassign all
pixel values that are currently set to a given interior colour
with the desired fill colour.

If the area that we want to paint has more than one interior
colour, we can first reassign pixel values so that all interior
points have the same colour.

Using either a 4-connected or 8-connected approach, we then
step through pixel positions until all interior points have been
repainted
Flood Fill Algorithm
Character Generation

Letters, numbers, and other characters can be displayed in a
variety of sizes and styles

Overall design style for a set (or family) of characters is
called a typeface (or font)

Serif vs sans-serif

Serif type has small lines or accents at the ends of the main
character strokes (readable), while sans-serif type does not have
accents (legible)

Monospace vs proportional

Monospace font all have the same width, while in proportional
font, character width varies
 Character Generation

Two representations are used for storing
computer fonts – Bitmapped and outline

Bitmap font :Set up a pattern of binary
values on a rectangular grid; also referred
to as a raster font.

Simple to define and display: map the character grids to a
frame-buffer position.

Require more storage space because each variation (size and
format) must be saved in a font cache

Size and other variations, such as bold and italic, if obtained
from one bitmap font set, results are not good
Character Generation

Outline font: Describe character shapes using straight-line
and curve sections.

Require less storage because each variation
does not require a distinct font cache

Boldface, italic, different sizes can be obtained
by manipulation curve definition for the
character outlines

It does take more time to process the outline
fonts because they must be scan-converted into
the frame buffer
Attributes

Any parameter that affects the way a primitive is to be
displayed is referred to as an attribute parameter

Colour and size – determine the fundamental
characteristics

Depth information for three-dimensional viewing and
visibility or detectability options – display under special
conditions
Attributes

Self-study

Color Models – RGB, Grayscale

Point attributes – size

Line attributes – width, style