UNIT 1

Computer Graphics System And Output Primitives

 Introduction
• What is Computer Graphics:
• Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of
computers.
or
• Computer graphics refers to a technology that generates images on a
computer screen.
• Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film,
video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many
specialized applications.
• It involves the modeling - creation, manipulation, storage and
rendering- converting, processing of visual content using computers.
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• CAD
• Presentation Graphics
• Computer Art
• Entertainment
• Education and training
• Information Visualization
• Image Processing
• Graphical user interfaces
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• Computer Aided Design(CAD):
• A major use of computer graphics is in design processes, particularly for engineering
and architectural systems, but almost all products are now computer designed.
• Generally referred to as CAD, computer-aided design methods are now routinely used
in the design of buildings, automobiles, aircraft, watercraft, spacecraft, computers,
textiles, and many, many other products.
• For some design applications; object are first displayed in a wireframe outline form
that shows the overall shape and internal features of objects.
• Wireframe displays also allow designers to quickly see the effects of interactive
adjustments to design shapes.
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• Presentation Graphics
• Used to produce illustrations for reports or to generate 35-mm slides or
transparencies for use with projectors.
• Presentation graphics is commonly used to summarize financial, statistical,
mathematical, scientific, and economic data for research reports, manage rail
reports, consumer information bulletins, and other types of reports. Workstation
devices and service bureaus exist for converting screen displays into 35-mm slides or
overhead transparencies for use in presentations.
• Typical examples of presentation graphics are bar charts, line graphs, surface graphs,
pie charts, and other displays showing relationships between multiple parameter.
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• COMPUTER ART
• Computer graphics methods are widely used in both fine art and commercial art applications.
• Artists use a variety of computer methods, including special-purpose hardware, artist's
paintbrush, other paint packages, specially developed software, symbolic mathematics packages,
CAD packages, desktop publishing software, and animation packages that provide families for
desiring object shapes and specifying object motions.
• A paintbrush program that allows artists to "paint" pictures on the screen of a video monitor.
Actually, the picture is usually painted electronically on a graphics tablet (digitizer) using a stylus,
which can simulate different brush strokes, brush widths, and colors
• Animations are also used frequently in advertising, and television commercials are produced
frame by frame, where each frame of the motion is rendered and saved as an image file. In each
success save frame, the motion is simulated by moving objet positions slightly from their
positions in the previous frame. When all frames in the animation sequence have been rendered,
the frames are transfer to film or stored in a video buffer for playback.
• A common graphics method employed in many commercials is morphing, where one object is
transformed (metamorphosed) into another. This method has been used to convert oil can into
an automobile engine, an automobile into a tiger.
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• COMPUTER ART
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• ENTERTAINMENT
• Computer graphics methods am now commonly used in making motion pictures,
music videos, and television shows.
• Sometimes the graphics scenes are displayed by themselves, and sometimes graphics
objects are combined with the actors and live scenes.
• Music videos use graphics in several ways. Graphics objects can be combined with the
live action or graphics and image processing techniques can be used to produce a
transformation of one person or object into another (morphing).
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• EDUCATION AND TRAINING
• For some training applications, special systems are designed.
• Examples of such specialized systems are the simulators for practice sessions or
training of ship captains, aircraft pilots, heavy-equipment operators, and air traffic
control personnel.
• Most simulators provide graphics screens for visual operation.
• Automobile-driving simulator is used to investigate the behavior of drivers in critical
situations. The drivers' reactions are then used as a basis for optimizing vehicle design
to maximize traffic safety.
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• VISUALIZATION
• Scientists, engineers, medical personnel, business analysts, and others often need to
analyze large amounts of information or to study the behavior of certain processes.
• Numerical simulations carried out on supercomputers frequently produce data files
containing thousands and even millions of data values.
• Similarly, satellite cameras and other sources are amassing large data files faster than
they can be interpreted. Scanning these large sets of number to determine trends and
relationships is a tedious and ineffective process. But if the data are converted to a visual
form, the trends and patterns are often immediately apparent.
• E-commerce: In the e-commerce industry, data visualization aids in understanding
customer behavior, optimizing marketing campaigns, and enhancing personalized
recommendations. Analysis can include customer segmentation, purchase patterns, and
conversion rates. For instance, e-commerce companies can use data visualization to
analyze customer browsing and purchasing data to identify customer segments and
target them with tailored marketing campaigns, resulting in improved conversion rates
and customer satisfaction.
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• Image Processing
• Although methods used in computer graphics and Image processing overlap, the two areas
are concerned with fundamentally different operations.
• In computer graphics, a computer is used to create a picture. Image processing, on the other
Hand applies techniques to modify or interpret existing picture, such as photographs and TV
scans.
• Two principal applications of image processing are (1) improving picture quality and (2)
machine perception of visual information, as used in robotics.
• To apply image processing methods, we first digitize a photograph or other picture into an
image file. Then digital methods can be applied to rearrange picture parts, to enhance color
separations, or to improve the quality of shading.
• Medical applications also make extensive use of image processing techniques for picture
enhancements, in tomography and in simulations of operations. Tomography is a technique of
X-ray photography that allows cross-sectional views of physiological systems to be displayed.
• Both computed X-ray tomography (CT) and position emission tomography (PET) use projection
methods to reconstruct cross sections from digital data
 Applications of Computer Graphics
• GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES
• It is common now for software packages to provide a graphical interface.
• A major component of a graphical interface is a window manager that allows a user
to display multiple-window areas.
• Each window can contain a different process that can contain graphical or no graphical
displays. To make a particular window active, we simply click in that window using an
interactive pointing device.
• Interfaces also display menus and icons for fast selection of processing options or
parameter values.
• An icon is a graphical symbol that is designed to look like the processing option it
represents. The advantages of icons are that they take up less screen space than
corresponding textual descriptions and they can be understood more quickly if well
designed. Menus contain lists of textual descriptions and icons.
 Graphics Software
• In computer graphics, graphics software refers to a program or collection of
programs that enable a person to manipulate visual images on a computer.
• Types:
• General Programming packages: These are used in high-level programming languages
such as C or Fortran. They use set of graphics functions to generate picture
components like straight line, polygon etc.
• Special purpose application packages: These are designed for non programmers, so
that user can displays without worrying about how graphic operation works like CAD.
• Example:
• Corel DRAW
• Photoshop
• Microsoft Paint
 Video Display Devices
• Raster-Scan Displays
• The most common type of graphics monitor employing a CRT is the raster-
scan display, based on television technology.
• In a raster-scan system, the electron beam is swept across the screen, one
row at a time from top to bottom.
• As the electron beam moves across each row, the beam intensity is turned on
and off to create a pattern of illuminated spots. Picture definition is stored in
a memory area called the refresh buffer or frame buffer.
• This memory area holds the set of intensity values for all the screen points.
Stored intensity values are then retrieved from the refresh buffer and
"painted" on the screen one row (scan line) at a time.
• Each screen point is referred to as a pixel or pel (picture element).
 Video Display Devices
• Raster-Scan Displays
• Intensity range for pixel positions depends on the capability of the raster system.
• In a simple black-and-white system, each screen point is either on or off, so only one
bit per pixel is needed to control the intensity of screen positions.
• For a bi-level system, a bit value of 1 indicates that the electron beam is to be turned
on at that position, and a value of 0 indicates that the beam intensity is to be off.
• Additional bits are needed when color and intensity variations can be displayed. Up to
24 bits per pixel are included in high-quality systems, which can require several
megabytes of storage for the frame buffer, depending on the resolution of the system.
• A system with 24 bits per pixel and a screen resolution of 1024 X 1024 requires 3
megabytes of storage for the frame buffer.
• On a black-and-white system with one bit per pixeI, the frame buffer is commonly
called a bitmap. For systems with multiple bits per pixel, the frame buffer is often
referred to as a pixmap
 Video Display Devices
• Raster-Scan Displays
 Video Display Devices
• Raster-Scan Displays
• In computer graphics, refresh rate is the number of times per second a display
updates the image it shows. Higher refresh rates can result in smoother motion and
reduced motion blur.
• Refreshing on raster-scan displays is carried out at the rate of 60 to 80 frames per
second, although some systems are designed for higher refresh rates.
• Sometimes, refresh rates are described in units of cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz),
where a cycle corresponds to one frame.
• 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 of the electron beam.
• And at the end of each frame the electron beam returns (vertical retrace) to the top
left comer of the screen to begin the next frame.
 Video Display Devices
• Raster-Scan Displays
• On some raster-scan systems (and in TV sets), each frame is displayed in two passes
using an interlaced refresh procedure.
• In the first pass, the beam sweeps across every other scan line from top to bottom.
Then after the vertical retrace, the beam sweeps out the remaining scan lines .
• Interlacing of the scan lines in this way allows us to see the entire screen displayed in
one-half the time it would have taken to sweep across all the lines at once from top to
bottom.
• Interlacing is primarily used with slower refreshing rates.
• It is effective method to reduce flickering.
• It's also used in raster scan displays to improve performance by reducing the amount
of data that needs to be processed at any given time.
 Video Display Devices
• Random-Scan Displays
• When operated as a random-scan display unit, a CRT has the electron beam directed only to the parts of the
screen where a picture is to be drawn.
• Random scan monitors draw a picture one line at a time and for this reason are also referred to as vector
displays (or stroke-writing or calligraphic displays).
• Refresh rate on a random-scan system depends on the number of lines to be displayed. Picture definition is
now stored as a set of line drawing commands in an area of memory referred to as the refresh display file.
• Sometimes the refresh display file is called the display list, display program, or simply the refresh buffer.
• To display a specified picture, the system cycles through the set of commands in the display file, drawing
each component line in turn. After all line drawing commands have been processed, the system cycles back
to the first line command in the list.
• Random-scan displays are designed to draw all the component lines of a picture 30 to 60 times each second.
• When a small set of lines is to be displayed, each refresh cycle is delayed to avoid refresh rates greater than
60 frames per second. Otherwise, faster refreshing of the set of lines could bum out the phosphor.
• Random-scan systems are designed for line drawing applications and cannot display realistic shaded scenes.
Since picture definition is stored as a set of line drawing instructions and not as a set of intensity values for
all screen points
 Video Display Devices
S.No Raster Scan Random Scan
1. The resolution of raster scan is lower than The resolution is higher than raster scan.
random scan. Because Picture definition is stored as set of
line drawing commands.
2. It is affordable as compared to the random It is more expensive.
scan.
4. In raster scan, we prefer interlacing. In random scans, we don’t prefer interlacing.

6. In a raster scan, the entire screen is In a random scan, only an area of the screen
scanned. with a picture is displayed.

7. Suitable for displaying realistic image. Not recommended for displaying realistic
image.
8. Example of raster scan is TV Sets. Example of random scan is Pen Plotter
 Cathode Ray Tube(CRT)
• A beam of electrons (cathode rays), emitted by an electron gun, passes
through focusing and deflection systems that direct the beam toward
specified positions on the phosphor-coated screen.
• The phosphor then emits a small spot of light at each position contacted
by the electron beam.
• Because the light emitted by the phosphor fades very rapidly, some
method is needed for maintaining the screen picture.
• One way to keep the phosphor glowing is to redraw the picture
repeatedly by quickly directing the electron beam back over the same
points. This type of display is called a refresh CRT
 Cathode Ray Tube(CRT)
• The primary components of an electron gun in a CRT are the heated metal(filament),cathode and a
control grid.

• Heat is supplied to the cathode by directing a current through a coil of wire, called the filament, inside
the cylindrical cathode structure.
• This causes electrons to be ‘boiled off" the hot cathode surface. In the vacuum inside the CRT
envelope, the free negatively charged electrons are then accelerated toward the phosphor coating by
a high positive voltage.
 Cathode Ray Tube(CRT)
• Intensity of the electron beam is controlled by setting voltage levels on the control grid, which is a
metal cylinder that fits over the cathode.
• A high negative voltage applied to the control grid will shut off the beam by repelling electrons and
stopping them from passing through the small hole at the end of the control grid structure.
• A smaller negative voltage on the control grid simply decreases the number of electrons passing
through.
• Since the amount of light emitted by the phosphor coating depends on the number of electrons
striking the screen, we control the brightness of a display by varying the voltage on the control grid.
• The focusing system
• The focusing system in a CRT is needed to force the electron beam to converge into a small spot as it
strikes the phosphor. Otherwise, the electrons would repel each other, and the beam would spread
out as it approaches the screen.
 Cathode Ray Tube(CRT)
• The distance that the electron beam must travel to different points on the screen varies because the
radius of curvature for most CRTs is greater than the distance from the focusing system to the screen
center.
• Therefore, the electron beam will be focused properly only at the center of the screen.
• As the beam moves to the outer edges of the screen, displayed images become blurred. To
compensate for this, the system can adjust the focusing according to the screen position of the beam.
• Accelerating Anode:
• It consists of two metal plates mounted perpendicularly to the beam axis with two holes at their
centre through which the beam pass. It is maintained at sufficient high relative potential to accelerate
the beam to necessary velocity.
 Cathode Ray Tube(CRT)
• Deflection System:
• Cathode-ray tubes are now commonly constructed with magnetic deflection coils mounted on the
outside of the CRT envelope.
• Two pairs of coils are used, with the coils in each pair mounted on opposite sides of the neck of the
CRT envelope. One pair is mounted on the top and bottom of the neck, and the other pair is mounted
on opposite sides of the neck.
• Horizontal deflection is accomplished with one pair of coils, and vertical deflection by the other pair.
• The proper deflection amounts are attained by adjusting the current through the coils.
• Phosphor:
• Spots of light are produced on the screen by the transfer of the CRT beam energy to the phosphor
• Glowing spot that quickly fades away after a short period of time.
 Cathode Ray Tube(CRT)
• Properties of phosphor:
• Persistence: How long they continue to emit light (that is, have excited electrons returning to the
ground state) after the CRT beam is removed.
• Persistence is defined as the time it takes the emitted light from the screen to decay to one-tenth of
its original intensity.
• Lower persistence phosphors require higher refresh rates to maintain a picture on the screen without
flicker and its good for animation.
• A phosphor with low persistence is useful for animation; a high-persistence phosphor is useful for
displaying highly complex, static pictures.
 Factors affecting CRT
• Resolution:
• The maximum number of points that can be displayed without overlap on a CRT is referred to as the
resolution.
• A more precise definition of resolution is the number of points per centimeter that can be plotted
horizontally and vertically, although it is often simply stated as the total number of points in each
direction.
• Typical resolution on high-quality systems is 1280 X 1024, with higher resolutions available on many
systems.
• Aspect ratio: Another property of video monitors is aspect ratio. This number gives the ratio of
vertical points to horizontal points necessary to produce equal-length lines in both directions on the
screen. (Sometimes aspect ratio is stated in terms of the ratio of horizontal to vertical points.)
• An aspect ratio of 3/4 means that a vertical line plotted with three points has the same length as a
horizontal line plotted with four points.
 Color CRT Monitor
• A CRT monitor displays color pictures by using a combination of phosphors that emit different-colored light.
• By combining the emitted light from the different phosphors, a range of colors can be generated. The two
basic techniques for producing color displays with a CRT are the beam-penetration method and the
shadow-mask method.
• Beam-Penetration method
• The beam-penetration method for displaying color pictures has been used with random-scan monitors.
• Two layers of phosphor, usually red and green, are coated onto the inside of the CRT screen, and the
displayed color depends on how far the electron beam penetrates into the phosphor layers.
• A beam of slow electrons excites only the outer red layer. A beam of very fast electrons penetrates through
the red layer and excites the inner green layer.
• At intermediate beam speeds, combinations of red and green light are emitted to show two additional
colors, orange and yellow.
• The speed of the electrons, and hence the screen color at any point, is controlled by the beam-acceleration
voltage.
• Beam penetration has been an inexpensive way to produce color in random-scan monitors, but only four
colors are possible, and the quality of pictures is not as good as with other methods
 Color CRT Monitor

• Shadow-mask methods:
• Shadow-mask methods are commonly used in raster scan systems (including color TV) because they
produce a much wider range of colors than the beam penetration method.
• A shadow-mask CRT has three phosphor color dots at each pixel position.
• One phosphor dot emits a red light, another emits a green light, and the third emits a blue light.
• This type of CRT has three electron guns, one for each color dot, and a shadow-mask grid just behind
the phosphor-coated screen.
• The three electron beams are deflected and focused as a group onto the shadow mask, which
contains a series of holes aligned with the phosphor-dot patterns.
• When the three beams pass through a hole in the shadow mask, they activate a dot triangle, which
appears as a small color spot on the screen.
• The phosphor dots in the triangles are arranged so that each electron beam can activate only its
corresponding color dot when it passes through the shadow mask.
 Color CRT Monitor

• Shadow-mask methods:
 Color CRT Monitor

• Shadow-mask methods:
• We obtain color variations in a shadow-mask CRT by varying the intensity levels of the three electron
beams.
• By turning off the red and green guns, we get only the color coming from the blue phosphor. Other
combinations of beam intensities produce a small light spot for each pixel position, since our eyes
tend to merge the three colors into one composite.
• The color we see depends on the amount of excitation of the red, green, and blue phosphors.
• A white (or gray) area is the result of activating all three dots with equal intensity.
• Yellow is produced with the green and red dots only, magenta is produced with the blue and red dots,
and cyan shows up when blue and green are activated equally.
• In some low-cost systems, the electron beam can only be set to on or off, limiting displays to eight
colors.
• More sophisticated systems can set intermediate intensity levels for the electron beams, allowing
several million different colors to be generated.
 Display Processors

• Its is an interpreter or piece of hardware that convert display processor code into pictures. There are
two types of display processors.
• Raster Scan Display Processor
• Random Scan Display Processors
• Raster Scan System:
• Interactive raster graphics systems typically employ several processing units. In addition to the central
processing unit, or CPU, a special-purpose processor, called the video controller or display controller,
is used to control the operation of the display device.
 Display Processors

• Major task of display processors:

• Digitizing picture definition in an application program into a set of pixel-intensity values for storage in
frame buffer
• Digitizing means capturing an analog signal in digital form.
• This digitization process is called scan conversion.
• Scan converting a straight-line segment, for example, means that we have to locate the pixel positions
closest to the line path and store the intensity for each position in the frame buffer.
• A fixed area of the memory is reserved for frame buffer and video controller is given direct access to
the frame buffer.
• Display processor are typically designed to interface with interactive input devices such as mouse.
 Display Processors
• RANDOM-SCAN SYSTEMS:
• An application program is input and stored in the system memory along with a graphics package.
• Graphics commands in the application program are translated by the graphics package into a display
file stored in the system memory.
• This display file is then accessed by the display processor to refresh the screen.
• The display processor cycles through each command in the display file program once during every
refresh cycle.
• Sometimes the display processor in a random-scan system is referred to as a display processing unit or
a graphics controller.
 Color Mapping
• In computer graphics, color mapping is a process that involves using a
look-up table to map values from image memory to display values. This
table is placed between the video display generator and the image
memory.
• Color Model is a mathematical model that describes the way color can
be represented as tuple of numbers typically as three or four values or
color components.
• A color model is a specification of 3-D coordinate system.
• The different types of color models are.
• RGB
• CMY
 Color Mapping
• RGB
• The RGB color model is one of the most widely used color representation
method in computer graphics. It use a color coordinate system with three
primary colors: R(red), G(green), B(blue).
• Each primary color can take an intensity value ranging from 0(lowest) to
1(highest). Mixing these three primary colors at different intensity levels
produces a variety of colors.
• Example: Green plus Blue is Cyan
• The collection of all the colors obtained by such a linear combination of red,
green and blue forms the cube shaped RGB color space.
• It uses Cartesian coordinate system.
Color Mapping
 Color Mapping
• CMY
• The coordinate system of CMY model use the three primaries’
complementary colors: C(cray), M(magenta) and Y(yellow).
• The CMY color model use a subtraction process and this concept is
used in the printer.
• In CMY model, we begin with white and take away the appropriate
primary components to yield a desired color.
• If we subtract red from white, what remains consists of green and
blue which is cyan.
 Color Mapping
• CMY
 Instruction Set
• The application programs and graphics subroutine package reside in main memory and
executed on the general CPU.
• The graphic packages creates the display program DPU instructions and tells the DPU
where to start the program.
• Then DPU asynchronously executes the display programs until it is told to stop by the
graphic package.
• The Display processing unit(DPU) or graphics controller has instruction set and
instruction address register, which goes through the classic function fetch, decode and
execute cycle found in any computer.
• The programs executed by the DPU is in main memory, which is shared by general CPU.
• The JUMP instruction at the end of the display programs transfer the control back to its
start, so that display continues to be refreshed without CPU intervention.