Computer Graphics

 Computer graphics is concerned with the

generation, representation, manipulation and display
of pictures with the aid of a computer.
 Typical graphics system comprises of a host
computer with support of fast processor,large
memory, frame buffer and
 Display Devices (color monitors)
 Input Devices (mouse, keyboard, joystick, trackball, touch
screen etc.)
 Output Devices (LCD panels, printers, plotters etc)

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Conceptual frame work for
interactive graphics

Application Application Graphics

Model Program System

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 Pixels & Resolution
 Pixels
 Graphic images are made up of tiny dots called
pixels.
 Each pixel has a particular address on the screen.
 Resolution
 It is defined as the maximum number of pixels or
dots can be displayed on the screen.
 Examples:800 by 600 pixels,1024 by 768 pixels,1152
by 864 pixels etc.

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 Aspect Ratio
 The aspect ratio of an image describes the proportional relationship
between its width and its height.
 It is represented as two numbers separated by a colon as
4(Width):3(Height), 16:9 etc.
 A square has the smallest possible aspect ratio 1:1.

For an ellipse, the aspect ratio

denotes the ratio of the major axis
to the minor axis.
An ellipse with an aspect ratio 1:1
is a circle 5
BIT DEPTH COLOR RESOLUTION CALCULATION

1-bit 2 colors 21 (2)

2-bit 4 colors 22 (2x2)

3-bit 8 colors 23 (2x2x2)

4-bit 16 colors 24 (2x2x2x2)

5-bit 32 colors 25 (2x2x2x2x2)

6-bit 64 colors 26 (2x2x2x2x2x2)

7-bit 128 colors 27 (2x2x2x2x2x2x2)

8-bit 256 colors 28 (2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2)

16-bit 65,536 colors 216

24-bit 16,777,215 colors 224

 Display Devices
CRT, EGA/CGA/VGA/SVGA monitors,
plotters, laser printers, films, flat-panel
devices, video digitizers, scanners,
LCD panels, keyboard, joystick,
mouse, touch screen, track ball etc.
Commonly used display device is the MONITOR or CRT MONITOR
Types of CRT Display Devices
 DVST( Direct View Storage Tube)
 Calligraphic or Random Scan Display System
 Refresh and Raster Scan Display System

Commonality between these three devices is they all are based on

CRT technology

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 CRT Technology

Operation an electron gun with an accelerating anode

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 Operation an electron gun with an accelerating anode

In a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), the heating filament which is responsible

to heat up the cathode element of the CRT that is what generates the
electrons or when heating filament heat up the cathode electrons
simply boil off from the cathode and these electrons are guided by
the set of devices which are cylindrical in nature and helps the
electron beam to reach to the screen.

Emitted electron beam must have the following properties:

1. It must be accurately focused so that it produce the sharp spot of
light where it strikes the phosphor.
2. It must have high velocity since brightness depends on the velocity
of the beam.
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 Operation an electron gun with an accelerating anode

Three functions
Control Grid
Focusing Anode
Accelerating Anode

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 What does the control grid do?
 When you observe a picture on screen in some
parts of the picture may be bright or some picture
may be dark.
 This brightness or darkness is the illumination or
intensity on the screen is basically controlled by the
intensity of the beam which strikes the particular
point on the screen
 This intensity of the screen is controlled by
controlling intensity of the electrons or electron
beam coming out of the cathode.
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 What does the control grid do?
 Electron beam coming out of the cathode is
negatively (-ve) charged.
 Control grid is also negatively (-ve) charged. It is
a high –ve voltage applied to the control grid
 If both are –vely charged so they repel each
other.
 The amount of voltage at the control grid will
essentially allow a certain amount of electrons to
pass through the control grid
 So, the number of electrons pass through the
control grid is controlled by the voltage applied
on the control grid.

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 What does the control grid do?
 So, if you reduce the amount of voltage on
the control grid, you will allow large number
of electrons to pass through the control grid
and the intensity of beam will be higher so,
the illumination or intensity on the screen
will also be higher.
 and vice-versa

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Focusing Anode & Accelerating
Anode ,unlike the control grid
these are +vely charged or +ve
voltage
 Focusing Anode & Accelerating Anode

 Focusing Anode
 Helps to focus the electron beam on the particular
location of the screen
 Accelerating Anode
 It is required to strike the electron beam on to the
screen with a very high speed or velocity to emit
light.

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 Till now you can see the electron beam is
going straight and will be able to hit the
centre of the screen
 But the screen is the rectangular matrix.
 To create a picture, this beam should move
all over the screen.
 So, you need horizontal deflection as well as
vertical deflection so that you can cover the
entire screen.
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Basic Design of Magnetic Deflection CRT

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 Magnetic Deflection

 This beam is deflected by magnetic

deflection coils which is available on the top
and bottom and also on other side of the CRT
 Magnetic deflection coils generates the
magnetic field which deviate the electron
beam.

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20
22
 Refreshing
Redraw the picture repeatedly by quickly
directing the electron beam back over the
same points. This is called refreshing
 Basic Operation
 The beam of electrons emitted by an electron
gun passes through focusing and deflection
system that directs the beam toward specified
positions on the phosphor coated screen
 The phosphor glows when electron beam strikes
it.
 Because light emitted by the phosphor fades
very rapidly, a steady picture is maintained by
tracing it out repeatedly. This is called
refreshing

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Refresh Rate
 Refresh rate of a CRT is the number of times per
second the image is redrawn.
 It is typically 60 per second for raster displays.
 Refresh rate to avoid flickering – 60 Hz.
 A flicker free picture appears constant or steady to the
viewer.
 Reducing the refresh rate increases flicker
 As the refresh rate decreases, flicker develops because
the eye can no longer integrate the individual light
impulses coming from a pixel.

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Critical Fusion Frequency
 The refresh rate above which a picture stops
flickering and fuses into a steady image is
called Critical Fusion Frequency (CFF).
 Very high intensity images requires refresh
rate of 80 to 90 Hz.

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 Note: Refresh rate of raster scan display is
usually at least 60 frames per second and is
independent of picture complexity
 Refresh rate of vector systems depends
directly on the picture complexity (no. of lines,
points and characters)
 Greater the complexity, longer the time taken
by a single refresh cycle and lower the
refresh rate.
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DVST (Direct view storage tube)

Collector
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 DVST
 The DVST behaves like a CRT with long persistence.
 A line remains visible for up to an hour before it starts to
fade.
 The writing beam does not write directly on the phosphor
but a fine mesh wire grid coated with dielectric (electrical
insulator)
 A pattern of +ve charges is deposited on the grid
 A continuous flood of electrons is emitted by the electron
gun.
 These flood electron transfers the pattern of charges from
the grid to the phosphor.
 Just behind the storage mesh is a second grid which is
called a collector which makes the flow of flood electrons
smooth.
 Where there is +ve charge on the mesh the electrons are 29
attracted and pass through it to strike the phosphor.
 Advantages
 It offers the flat screen
 It is a CRT with long persistence phosphor
 It provides flicker free display
 No refreshing is necessary

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 Limitations
 Very limited interactive support
 Modifying any part of the image requires redrawing the
entire image. So, animation is ruled out in case of DVST.
 Change in the image requires to generate a new charge
distribution in the DVST
 Slow processing of drawing - (typically a few seconds
are necessary for a complex picture)
 Erasing takes about 0.5 seconds. Selected parts of the
picture can't be erased. All lines and characters must be
erased.
 Only single intensity is possible. The DVST can’t display
multiple colors.
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RASTER SCAN
DISPLAY
 Raster Scan Display
 Used in television screens
 Unlike DVST and random scan display which were line
drawing, refresh CRT is point- plotting device.
 Raster displays stores the display primitives (lines,
characters, shaded & patterned areas) in refresh buffer.
 The image is displayed on the screen as a succession of
scan lines where each scan line is made up of several
pixels.
 The picture definition is stored in the memory are called
the Refresh Buffer or Frame Buffer as rectangular matrix
containing intensity value for each dot or pixel on the
screen.
 The refresh buffer stores the drawing primitives in terms of
points and pixel components.
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 Raster Scan Display

 As the electron beam moves across each row, the beam intensity is
turned on or off depending on the value of each pixel.
 In a simple black and white system, each screen point is either on or
off i.e. only one pixel is needed.
 For complex systems displaying several colors, additional bits are
required i.e. high color quality system use 24 bits per pixel.
 Frame buffer which uses one bit per pixel is called bitmap
 Frame buffer which uses multiple bits per pixel is called pix-map
 Entire image is scanned out sequentially by the video controller( one
raster line at a time)
 Raster lines are scanned from top to bottom and then back to top
 Causes the effect of jaggies or staircase effects
 It is suitable for realistic display of scenes containing different color
patterns and shading.

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HORIZONTAL RETRACE & VERTICAL RETRACE

 At the end of each scan line, the electron

beam returns to the left side of the screen
to begin displaying the next scan line. The
return to the left of the screen, after
refreshing each scan line is called the
horizontal retrace.
 And at the end of each frame, the electron
beam returns to the top left corner of the
screen to begin the next frame is called
the vertical retrace
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Fig. shows horizontal and vertical retrace

 Starting at the top-left of the screen and

going to the bottom-right, the electron beam
is turned on a line at a time (1), then turned
off to go back to the next line (2), then off
once again to go back up to the top (3).

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 37
Raster scan display system draws a discrete set of points
 Rasterisation

(a) General Lines (b) Special Cases

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 CPU Peripherals

System
bus

System Video
CRT
memory controller

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Architecture of a Simple Raster Graphics System
 CPU Peripherals

System
bus

System Frame Video

memory buffer CRT
controller
Architecture of a Simple Raster Graphics System with a fixed portion 40
of the system memory reserved for the frame buffer
 Raster Scan
Generator
Scan
Conversion
Y-Register X-Register horizontal/ CRT
vertical
deflection

Memory Address Pixel

Intensity
value(s)

DATA

MEMORY
Logical Organization of the video controller 41
 Logical Organization of the video controller

 Assume that the frame buffer is addressed in x 0 to

xmax and in y from 0 to ymax.
 Then ,at the start of a refresh cycle, the X register is set
to zero and Y register is set to ymax (the top scan line).
 As the first scan line is generated, the X address is
incremented up through xmax.
 Each pixel value is fetched and is used to control the
intensity of the CRT beam.
 After the first scan line, the X address is reset to zero
and the Y address is decremented by one.
 The process continues until the last scan line (y=0) is
generated
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 ARCHITECTURE
OF
RASTER SCAN DISPLAY
(WITH DISPLAY PROCESSOR)

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 PERIPHERAL DEVICE
CPU

DISPLAY
PROCESSOR SYSTEM MEMORY

DISPLAY
FRAME
PROCESSOR VIDEO CONTROLLER CRT
MEMORY BUFFER

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45
 Random Scan Display
 Also called vector, stroke, line drawing displays.
 In random scan display the electron beam is directed only to those
parts of screen where picture is to be drawn.
 Order of deflection is dictated by the arbitrary order of the display
commands.
 The picture is drawn one line at a time and therefore these monitors
are also called as “Vector Displays”.
 The picture definition is stored as a set of line drawing commands in
an area of memory called as “Refresh Buffer” or “Refresh Display
File”.
 To display a specified picture the system cycles through a set of
commands stored in a display file.
 After all commands are processed , the system cycle back to the
first line command to refresh cycle.
 Refresh rate is 30-60times/sec.
 It is suitable for line drawing applications but can’t display realistic
shaded pictures or scenes.
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 COLOR CRT MONITORS

• Colored pictures can be displayed using a

combination of phosphors that emit different color
light.
• Commonly used techniques for display of colors
are:
-> Beam Penetration
-> Shadow Mask

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 BEAM PENETRATION

• Uses multilayer phosphor.

• Used with random scan display.
• Two layers of phosphor (usually red and
green) are coated on inner side of CRT
screen.

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• Electron Beam intensity decides the displayed
color.
• High potential electron beam excite the green
phosphor.
• Low potential electron beam excite red phosphor.
• Intermediate beam gives combinations of green and
red light i.e. orange and yellow.

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ADVANTAGE

• Inexpensive Method.

DISADVANTAGES

• Limited colors are possible.

• Poor picture quality.
• Difficulty in changing electron beam potential
by large amount.

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EXCITES RED PHOSPHOR

SCREEN

GREEN PHOSPHOR

RED PHOSPHOR

ELECTRON BEAM

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 Shadow Mask
Shadow mask method is used in majority of color
TV set and computer monitors.
It can display wide range of colors.
This method is commonly used in raster scan
displays.
Construction:
•It has red, green & blue color dots at each pixel
position on the screen (forms a delta)
It also has three electron guns one for each color dot
(forms a delta)
A shadow-mask grid is placed just behind the
phosphor-coated screen with holes, corresponding to
each pixel on screen. 52
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 Shadow Mask
 A metal plate or shadow mask is placed just behind
the phosphor screen.
 The plate has small holes.
 The guns placed shape of a triangle.
 These electron guns group in delta
 They are responsible for RED, BLUE & GREEN
components of light i.e. output of the CRT.
 The electron beam from all the three guns are
brought to the same point of focus on the shadow
mask
 The phosphor is laid down in groups of three spots
red, blue and green such that each spot is struck
by electrons from appropriate gun.

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 By modulating the beam current the light
output in each of the three color components
can be controlled
 Different phosphor light can be combined to
get a range of colors

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 Advantage:
 produce realistic images
 also produced different colors
 and shadows scenes.
 Disadvantages
 low resolution
 expensive
 electron beam directed to whole screen

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 Inherent Memory Devices
 To avoid repeated refreshing, inherent
memory contents are used.
 These devices store picture information
inside the CRT.
 There are three types of inherent memory
devices
 DVST
 Plasma Panel display
 Laser Scan Display

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 Flat Panel Displays
 Less volume, weight and power requirement
 Used in flat and thin TV monitors , laptops,
calculators ,handheld devices, advertising boards
and notice boards etc.
 Flat panel displays comes in two categories:
 Emissive Displays: They convert electrical energy into
light energy. E.g. Plasma Panel Display.
 Non Emissive Displays: They use optical effects to
convert sunlight or light from other sources into graphical
patterns. E.g. Liquid Crystal Display

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 Electroluminescent Display
•Electroluminescent display is an example of emissive
displays.
•It consists of two glass sheets placed very close to each

other.
•A series of vertical electrodes are attached on inner glass

sheet and horizontally on other sheet.

•Electroluminescent substances are a kind of phosphor.

Electroluminescent phosphors emit light after absorbing

electricity.
•The region between glass plates is filled with phosphor

such as-:
• Phosphor doped with manganese.
• Zinc sulphide doped with manganese.
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Thin film Electroluminescent display
device 61
 Electroluminescent Display

• When a sufficient high voltage is applied to a pair of

crossing electrodes, the phosphor becomes a
conductor in the area of intersection of the
two electrodes.
• Electric energy is then absorbed by the
manganese atoms, which then releases
energy as a spot of light.

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 ADVANTAGES:

 Recently blue, red, and green electroluminescent

materials have been developed that offer the potential
for long life and full color electroluminescent displays.
 It has high resolution display.

DISADVANTAGES:

 High power consumption.

 Expensive and bulky.

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 Plasma panel Display
 It consists of two glass sheets placed face to face and very close
to each other.
 The region between them is filled with a mixture of neon based
gas.
 Thin and closely spaced gold electrodes are attached vertically
on the inner side of one sheet and horizontally on another sheet
When a sufficiently high voltage is applied the gas dissociates,
i.e. electrons are stripped from the atoms. The dissociated gas is
called a plasma, hence the name plasma display.
When the electrons recombine, energy is released in the form of
photons; and the gas glows .
This glow can be sustained by maintaining a high frequency
alternating voltage across the cell.

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 Plasma panel Display
 A cell can be switched on by momentarily
increasing the sustaining voltage and
switched off by lowering the signal.
 The signal amplitude is chosen so correctly ,
cells that have not been fired will not be
affected.

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 Plasma panel Display
 Advantages:
 It allows both selective writing and selective erase
 It produces a steady image which is free from flicker.
 It is less bulky than CRT.

 Disadvantages:
 It is monochromatic
 It has poor resolution
 It has complex addressing and wiring requirements

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LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY (LCDs)

 LCDs are commonly used in small systems,

such as calculators, laptop computers. these
are the non emissive devices.
 The term liquid crystal refers to the fact that
these compounds have a crystalline
arrangement of molecules, yet they flow like a
liquid.
 Flat panel displays commonly used nematic
(thread like) liquid crystal compounds that tend
to keep the long axes of the rod shape
molecules aligned.

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 Two glass plates, each containing a light – polarizer
at right angles to the other plate, sandwich the liquid
crystal material.
 Rows of horizontal transparent conductors are built
into one glass plate and columns of vertical
conductors are put into the other plate
 The intersection of two conductors defines a pixel
position.
 The polarized light passing through the material is
twisted so that it will pass through the opposite
polarizer.
 The light is then reflected back to the viewer.
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 To turn off the pixel we apply the voltage to
the two intersecting conductors to align the
molecules so that the light is not twisted.
 This type of flat panel displays is referred to
as passive-matrix LCD.
 Colors can be displayed by using different
materials and by placing a triad of color
pixels at each screen loactions.

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 Another method for construction LCDs is to
place a transistor at each pixel location using
thin- film transistor technology.
 The transistors are used to control the
voltage at pixel locations and prevent charge
from gradually leaking out of the liquid crystal
cells.
 These devices are called Active Matrix
Displays
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construction

 LCD is made up of six layers.

 The front layer is the first layer is a vertical
polarizer.
 Second layer with thin grid wire electrode
deposited on the surface adjoining the crystals.
 Third is a thin liquid crystal layer .
 Fourth is a layer with horizontal grid wires on
the surface.
 Fifth layer is the horizontal polarizer .
 Last one is reflector.

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 .
.

Reflector Horizontal Horizontal Liquid crystal Vertical Vertical

polarizer grid wire layer grid polarizer
wire

.
.
Matrix form

Pixel
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 LASER SCAN DISPLAY
• Laser scan display is one of the few high resolution large screen
display devices.

• It has been used in displaying maps, high quality text and elaborate
ckt diagrams.

• In laser scan display , a laser is deflected by a pair of mirrors so

that it traces out the desired image on a sheet of photo chromic
film. The material usually transparent but light from the laser leaves
a dark trace on it.

• A light projection system is used to project light onto a large

screen. The image thus deposited on the film.

• To produce a fresh image the display simply winds the role of film
to bring a blank region under the laser, the mirrors deflecting the
laser are extremely small and are controlled by the electrical
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signals received from the display controller.
75
 Interlacing
 Each frame has two fields, each containing half the
picture.
 Fields are interlaced and interwoven.
 Fields are presented alternately every other 1/60 th of
a second.
 One field contain odd lines(1,3,5,7,…….)
 One field contain even lines(0,2,4,6,…….)
 Interlacing scan lines on a raster scan display.
 First all points on even numbered (solid) scan lines
are displayed, then all points along the odd numbers
(dashed) lines are displayed.
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0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

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