CHAPTER ONE

Introduction to Interactive Computer Graphics and Graphics

hardware

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Course Contents
 Chapter One
 Introduction to Interactive Computer Graphics and Graphics hardware
 What is Graphics
 Common Uses of Computer Graphics
 Brief History of Computer Graphics
 Application Area

 Graphics hardware
 Raster Display Systems
 Introduction To The 3D Graphics Pipeline
 The Z-Buffer For Hidden Surface Removal

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What is Computer Graphics
 Computer graphics is the display, storage & manipulation
of images and data for the visual representation of a system.
 Computer graphics is an art of drawing pictures, lines,
charts, etc. using computers with the help of programming.
 Computer graphics refers to the creation, storage and
manipulation of pictures and drawings using a computer.
 Computer graphics is made up of number of pixels.

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 Computer graphics has became an efficient tool for presentation of
information in such divers field as science, engineering, medical science ,
business, industry ,art, entertainment, advertisement, education and training
etc

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Cont..
 Computer Graphics is the creation of pictures with the
help of a computer.
 The end product of the computer graphics is a picture it
may be a
 business graph,
 drawing,
 engineering.
 Etc.…

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Computer Graphics
 The aim of computer graphics is to produce realistic and/or useful
images on a computer.
 For some applications the emphasis will be on realism (e.g. special
effects in films), whereas for others it will simply be on usefulness
(e.g. data visualisation).
 Computer graphics provides methods to generate images using a
computer.
 The word “image” should be understood in a more abstract sense here.
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Cont..
 An image can represent a realistic scene from the real world, but graphics
like histograms (statics diagram) or pie charts as well as the graphical
user interface of a software tool are also considered as images.
 The development of computer graphics has made computers easier to
interact with, and better for understanding and interpreting many types of
data.

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 Cont...
 Developments in computer graphics had a profound impact on many
types of media and have revolutionized animation, movies and the
video game industry.
 The term computer graphics refers to several different things:
 the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer
 the various technologies used to create and manipulate images
 the images so produced, and
 the sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally
synthesizing and manipulating visual content.
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Interactive Computer Graphics
 In interactive Computer Graphics user have some controls over the
picture, i.e., the user can make any change in the produced image

 Interactive Computer Graphics require two-way communication

between the computer and the user.
 A User can see the image and make any change by sending his
command with an input device.

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Components of Interactive graphics
 It consists of three components:
1. Frame Buffer or Digital Memory
2. A Monitor likes a home T.V. set without the tuning and
receiving electronics.
3. Display Controller or Video Controller:
 It passes the contents of the frame buffer to the monitor.

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Common Uses of Computer Graphics

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 History of Computer Graphics(Reading Assignment)
• 1950: The first graphic images are created by Ben
Laposky using an oscilloscope to generate
waveform artwork produced by manipulating
the analog electronic beams.

• 1951: Designed to support military

preparedness, Jay Forrester and Robert
Everett of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) produce the Whirlwind, a
mainframe computer with a CRT to plot blips
representing incoming aircrafts based on
radar-gathered
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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1955: Direct descendant of the Whirlwind, the SAGE (Semi- Automatic
Ground Equipment) air defense system is designed by Bert Sutherland at
MIT.
• It uses simple vector graphics to display on analog CRTs radar images
with a wireframe outline of the region being scanned, as well as the first
light pen as an input device that operators would use to pinpoint planes
flying over regions of the United States.
• It becomes a key part of the US missile defense system.

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1959: General Motors and IBM develop “DAC-1” (Design

Augmented by Computers), the first industrial CAD
system (Computer-Aided Design) used to help engineers
design cars. It allows a user to rotate and view a simple
drawings.

• 1960: The term “computer graphics” is coined by

William
A. Fetter at Boeing to describe the new design methods
for his human factors cockpit simulations. Two years later,
he will create the “First Man” digital human for cockpit
studies.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1961: Spacewar, the first video game, is developed by
MIT
student Steve Russell for the DEC PDP-1 minicomputer.
• 1963: For his doctoral thesis at MIT, Ivan Sutherland
develops Sketchpad, the first Computer-Aided Drafting
and Design (CADD) package allowing shapes to be
interactively drawn on a vector-based display monitor
using a light pen input device wired into the computer.
The light pen uses a small photoelectric cell in its tip to
emit an electronic pulse when the pen “sees” the
electron beam.

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1963: Larry Roberts develops the first effective hidden-line

removal algorithm, the precursor to various subsequent
hidden-line and hidden-surface algorithms.
• 1963: The mouse is invented by Doug Englebart at the
Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

• 1965: The digital line drawing algorithm for raster devices

developed in 1962 by Jack Bresenham at IBM is
published.

• 1966: Ivan Sutherland creates the first head-mounted

display, the Sword of Damocles, which displays separate
wireframe images, allowing depth perception.
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History of Computer Graphics
• 1967: MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies is founded by
Gyorgy Kepes.
• 1967: Don Greenberg starts a program at Cornell.

• 1968: Dave Evans joins the computer science department at the University
of Utah and forms a CG group. Sutherland also joins the University of
Utah.

• 1968: Frustrated by the lack of graphics hardware available,

Evans & Sutherland then found their own company.

• 1968: Intel is founded.

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History of Computer Graphics
• 1968: Arthur Appel at IBM introduces ray-casting, a pre- cursor to ray-tracing
which combines a hidden-surface and shadow algorithm.
• 1969: Initiated by Sam Matsa and Andy vanDam, ACM creates a special
interest group on graphics, SIGGRAPH. The first SIGGRAPH conference
held in Boulder in 1973 counts 1,200 attendees versus about 20,000
nowadays.
• 1969: At the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) of Xerox, Utah alumni Alan
Kay develops the concept of Graphical User Interface (GUI).
• 1969: The first framebuffer (with 3 bits per pixel) is built at Bell Labs, initiating
the transition from vector graphics, i.e. drawing lines between coordinates, to
raster video displays containing a value for each pixel on the screen,
transforming vector representations into raster format images.

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History of Computer Graphics
• 1971: Gouraud shading is developed by Utah student Henri Gouraud. By
interpolating intensity, visual improvements over flat shading may be
achieved at a marginal cost.

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History of Computer Graphics
• 1973: The entertainment feature film Westworld makes the first use of 2D
animation, while 3D wireframe CGI will first be used 3 years later in its sequel
Futureworld.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1974: Wolfgang Strasser in his dissertation describes the Z- Buffer, together
with Jose Encarnacao he can be seen as the fathers of CG in Germany
• 1974: Utah student Edwin (Ed) Catmull (now president of Walt Disney
Animation Studios) develops both the Z-buffer hidden-surface algorithm as
well as texture mapping.

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1974: Alexander (Alex) Schure, founder of the New York Institute of

Technology (NYIT), creates a new Computer Graphics Lab, naming Ed
Catmull director. Joined by Alvy Ray Smith and others, the team
develops interest in producing what could have been the first feature-
length CGI film, The Works, but it was never completed.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1975: Utah student Bui Tuong Phong develops a specular
illumination model. He also introduces the interpolation of normals
for shading, now known as Phong shading.

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1975: At IBM, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot introduces geometry of

fractional dimension. Fractals are used in computer graphics to create
realistic simulations of natural phenomena such as mountains, coastlines,
wood grain…

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1975: Using Bezier patches, Utah student Martin Newell creates a 3D

computer model of a physical teapot, now at the Computer Museum in
Boston. Serving as a benchmark throughout history, the Utah teapot has
become an icon of 3D computer graphics.

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1975: At the age of 19, William (Bill) Gates III dropped out of Harvard
and founds Microsoft with his friend Paul Allen.

• 1976 : The CRAY-I Super Computer is introduced and

becomes the standard for large-scale scientific computing.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple. After a visit of
Xerox’s PARC in 1979, introducing the Macintosh in 1984 which will
spark the graphical user interface revolution.

• 1977: Utah alumni Frank Crow develops solutions to the

aliasing problem, i.e. anti-aliasing.

• 1977: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences

introduces the category titled Visual Effects for the Oscars. The
Best Animated Feature Film Award will then be approved in
2001.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1977: Utah student James (Jim) Blinn (now at Microsoft Research)
presents a new illumination model that considers surface facets, and a
year later, introduces bump- mapping.

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1979: George Lucas hires Ed Catmull and many others from the NYIT,
to form Lucasfilm’s CG team in San Rafael, CA.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1980: Turner Whitted at Bell Labs (now at Microsoft Research)
introduces a general ray tracing paradigm which incorporates
reflection, refraction, antialiasing, and shadows.

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1980: The European Association for Computer Graphics is formed and

the first EUROGRAPHICS conference held in Geneva.

• 1980: The MIT Media Lab is founded by Nicholas Negroponte.

• 1980: The computer animation production studios Pacific Data

Images (PDI) is founded by Carl Rosendahl.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1981: After some work on fractals while at Boeing in 1980, Loren Carpenter is
hired by Lucasfilm and, in collaboration with Cook and Catmull, writes their
first renderer, called REYES (Renders Everything You Ever Saw). It included
the RenderMan Shading Language (Pat Hanrahan, now Stanford) and would
eventually turn into the Renderman rendering engine.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1981: IEEE Computer Society starts publishing a new journal,
Computer Graphics and Applications.
• 1982: ACM starts publishing Transactions on Graphics TOG.

• 1982: Utah alumni James (Jim) Clark founds Silicon

Graphics Inc. (SGI), a leader in producing
low-end to high-end graphics workstations and
supercomputers.
• 1982: After inventing the Postscript language, Utah alumni
John Warnock founds Adobe Systems.

• 1982: Autodesk is founded and AutoCAD

released.
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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1982: Lucasfilm computer graphics division develops a one- minute shot
for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan making the first use of fractal-
generated landscape in a film. William (Bill) Reeves leads the Genesis
Effect programming team and creates the so-called Particle Systems.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1982: Disney releases Tron, the first film with 15 minutes of fully computer
generated 3D shots including the famous Light Cycle sequence inside a
videogame. The movie is now recognized as a landmark despite its box office
failure.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1984: The first movie to use “integrated CGI” where the effects are supposed
to represent real world objects is released.
• The Last Starfighter includes CG spaceships, planets, and high-tech hardware
integrated into live-action scenes, but will also be a box office failure.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1984: Michael Cohen introduces the Cornell Box which will symbolize
the approach to physically-based rendering.

• 1984: Based on heat transfer, Cindy Goral, Kenneth Torrance, Don

Greenberg and Bennett Battaile at Cornell University introduce
Radiosity, allowing realistic renderings.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1984: Part of Lucasfilm’s team, Cornell alumni Robert (Rob) Cook
proposes an extended version of ray-tracing. Distribution ray-tracing
allows the realistic simulation of motion blur, depth of field, soft
shadows, etc…

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1984: Lucasfilm’s computer animation division creates The Adventures of
André and Wally B., the first all-CGI animated short film, followed by
Pixar’s Luxo Jr. in 1985.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1985: Ken Perlin introduces noise functions as a means of creating natural
patterns such as marble, wood, …

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1986: Utah alumni James (Jim) Kajiya (now at Microsoft Research)

introduces the Rendering Equation allowing realistic light inter-
reflections to be path-traced.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1986: The computer graphics division of Lucasfilm splits off
as a separate company focused on animated films, Pixar,
headed by Ed Catmull and purchased by Steve Jobs.

• 1986: Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), the special effects

division of Lucasfilm, starts a CGI group.

• 1986: Mental Images is founded in Berlin, bought by Nvidia

in 2007.

• 1989: REYES-based Pixar’s RenderMan system is

released and a year later its shading language by Jim
Lawson and Pat Hanrahan.
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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1991: Although 3D computer graphics debuted in earlier in Disney productions,

Beauty and the Beast is the first where hand-drawn characters appear with 3D
animated objects.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 1992: Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) releases the Open Graphics Library
(OpenGL) specification defining a standard cross-language cross-platform API
for computer graphics (now managed by Khronos, being replaced by Vulkan).

• 1993: Nvidia is founded, later attracts many engineers from SGI and other
companies to become the main graphics HW company (besides ATI and
Intel today).

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 History of Computer Graphics

• 1995: Pixar Animation Studios produce Toy Story, the first computer-
animated full-length feature film, demonstrating the possibilities of
CGI graphics in movie- making.

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History of Computer Graphics
• 1996: The 3D gaming industry sees a breakthrough with the release of Quake,
lead by John Carmack at ID Software, which used actual 3-D models in a
truly 3-D space.

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 History of Computer Graphics
• 2001: Although it fails commercially, Final Fantasy - The
Spirits Within is the first feature-length digital film that
includes a cast of photorealistic digital actors, stirring the
imagination of the press and CG community. Raises
awareness of the “uncanny valley”.

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Applications of Computer Graphics
 Computer Aided Design (CAD)
 Graphics and Charts
 Entertainment
 Education & Training
 Computer Art
 Visualization
 Image Processing
 Graphical User Interfaces
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 1. Computer Aided Design (CAD)

 Used in design of buildings, automobiles, aircraft, watercraft, spacecraft,

computers, textiles & many other products

 AutoCAD software was the first CAD program.

 Graphics design package provides standard shapes

 Animations are also used in CAD applications

 Realistic displays of architectural design.

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2. Graphs and Charts

 Help for making reports

 Summarize financial, statistical, mathematical, scientific, economic data for

research reports, managerial reports

 Presentation Slides

 Bar charts, Line graphs, Pie charts etc.

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3. Entertainment

I. Movie Industry

Used in motion pictures, music, videos, and television shows.

Used in making of cartoon animation films

Computer Graphics is about animation (films).

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Cont..

II. Game Industry

Focus on interactivity

Cost effective solutions

Avoiding computations and other tricks

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 4. Education & Training
 Computer generated models of physical, financial and economic systems
are used as educational aids.
 Models of physical systems, physiological systems, population trends, or
equipment such as color-coded diagram help trainees understand the
operation of the system.
 Specialized systems used for training applications
Simulators for practice sessions or training of ship captains
Aircraft pilots
Heavy equipment operators
Air traffic-control personnel
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 Cont..
Computer Art
Computer art typically refers to any form of graphic art or digital imagery
which is produced with the aid of a computer.
Used in Fine Art & Commercial Art
Examples: Cartoon drawing, paintings, product advertisements, logo design

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 Cont..
Visualization
 Visualization is the process of representing data graphically and interacting
with these representations in order to gain insight into the data.
 Scientific Visualization
Producing graphical representations for scientific, engineering, and medical data
sets
Scientists, engineers, medical personnel, business analysis, and others often need
to analyze large amounts of information or to study the behavior of certain
processes.


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 Cont..
Image Processing
 Image Processing applies techniques to modify or interpret existing pictures.
 There are different examples of image processing in our daily life. It is used
in:
Image enhancement.
Law Enforcement
Medical

Moving object tracking…etc.

 Image enhancement
 It is used to improve quality, remove noise from image.
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 Cont..

Law Enforcement
 Number Plate Recognition

 Fingerprint Recognition

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 Cont..
Medical
 Different types of imaging tools such as X- ray, Ultrasound uses image
processing to diagnose disease.

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 Design Graphical User Interface
 Computer graphics is used to design: Menus, icons, cursors, dialog boxes,
scrollbars, valuators, grids, 3D interface.
 Lay user can easily use the computer with the help of GUI.
 User don’t have to remember commands.
 More interactive interface.

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 Graphics of hardware

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 Display Devices

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Pixel

What is Pixel?
 Pixels are the basic building block of graphics display. We can call it picture
element.
 The pixel is a smallest size object or color spot that can be display and
addressed on a screen. Any image that is display on the monitor is made
up of thousands of pixels

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Dot

What is Dot?
The internal surface of the monitor screen is coated with Red, Green, Blue
phosphor material.The glows when struck by the stream of electronics.
The coated material is arranged into an array of millions of tiny cell. Red, Green
Blue.These colored are usually called dots.

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Aspect ratio
What is aspect Ratio?
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the number of x- pixels to number
of y – pixels
The standard aspect ratio is 4:3 or 5:4
Resolution: 1024X 768 Aspect ratio 1024:768=4:3

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 Image Resolution
 What is image Resolution?
The distance from one pixel to next pixel is called the image
resolution .
The unit image resolution is ppi(pixel per inch)
Typical display screen , image with resolution between 25ppi and 80ppi

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Screen resolution

What is screen resolution?

We can also call the screen resolution , the dot pitch
The dot pitch is the distance between adjacent set(triads) of Red , Green Blue
dots
This is also some as the shortest distance between any two dots of the same
color. i.e from Red-Red, Green-Green, Blue-Blue

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 What is Video Display devices ?

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What is CRT?
The cathode ray tube(CRT) is a vacuum tube containing an electronic gun and a
fluorescent screen, with internal or external means to a accelerate and deflect
the electronic beam used to create images in the form of light emitted from the
fluorescent screen

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The operation of CRT is very simple:
1. The electron gun emits a beam of electrons (cathode rays).

2. The electron beam passes through focusing and deflection systems that direct it towards specified positions on the phosphor-coated screen.

3. When the beam hits the screen, the phosphor emits a small spot of light at each position contacted by the electron beam.

4. It redraws the picture by directing the electron beam back over the same screen points quickly.

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 Raster Scan

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 Random Scan (Vector Scan)

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Random Scan :In this technique, the
electron beam is directed only to the part of
the screen where the picture is to be drawn
rather than scanning from left to right and
top to bottom as in raster scan.

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 Graphical Input Devices

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Quiz
 The higher number of pixels gives us a ____ image -
A. Better
B. Worst
C. Smaller
D. None of the above
 The components of Interactive computer graphics are -
A. A monitor
B. Display controller
C. Frame buffer
D. All of the above

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 The End of 1st chapter

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