Department of Computer Science & IT, Univ

of Malakand
•Course: Computer Graphics

•Credit hrs: 3 (2 :1)

•Semester: Spring 2011

•By : Dr. Sehat ullah

•Email: sehatullah@hotmail.com
Introduction to Computer Graphics

Prerequisites

• Ability of writing programs (C/C++)

• Have knowledge of data structures

• Ability to learn a programming library (OpenGL )

• Basic linear algebra, Matrix algebra and calculus

Introduction to Computer Graphics

• Computer Graphics involves technology to

accept, process, transform and present
information in a visual form that also
concerns with producing images (or
animations) using a computer
Introduction to Computer Graphics
Recommended books

Computer Graphics with OpenGL

By : Donald Hearn and M. Pauline Baker (3rd edition)

)( OpenGL Game programming

By: Kevin Hawkins and Dave Astle

Redbook of OpenGL Addison-Wesley Publishing Company

Introduction to Computer Graphics

• Definition:
• Computer Graphics involves technology to accept,
process, transform and present information in a visual
form that also concerns with producing images (or
animations) using a computer.

• QUESTION ?

• Why a teacher uses black/white board during lecture?

• Same is the purpose of modern day technologies like
multimedia, smart board etc.
Introduction to Computer Graphics

A Picture is worth than 200 words

 Introduction to Computer Graphics
• The term “computer graphics” was coined in 1960 by William Fetter to
describe the new design methods that he was developing at Boeing. He
created a series of widely reproduced images on a plotter exploring
cockpit design using a 3D model of a human body.
Introduction to Computer Graphics
Computer graphics: generating 2D images of 3D world
represented in a computer

Main tasks:

Modeling: (shape) creating and representing the geometry of

objects in the 3D world

Rendering: (light, perspective) generating 2D images of the objects

Animation: (Movement) describing how objects change in time

Introduction to Computer Graphics
Core graphics pipeline
Modeling transformation, viewing transformation, hidden surface removal,
illumination/shading/ textures, scan conversion / clipping

OpenGL
Morphing, curves and surfaces, animation
 Introduction to Computer Graphics

Applications

Entertainment

Pixar: Monster’s Inc.

Square: Final Fantasy

Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications
Entertainment
Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications

A Bug’s Life (Pixar)

 Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications

Entertainment
 Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications
• Computer graphics is widely used in Fine Arts as well as commercial arts
for producing better as well as cost effective pictures. Artists use a
variety of programs in their work, provided by computer graphics. Some
of the most frequently used packages include:

Super Paint, Astist’s Paintbrush,, Pixel paint etc.

Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications
Computer Aided Design
Introduction to Computer Graphics

• Room Layout Design and Architectural Simulations

 Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications

Training : step by step assembly

Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications
Medical visualisation
Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications
Scientific data visualisation

Computer graphics is very helpful in producing graphical

representations for scientific visualization and analysis
especially in the field of engineering and medicine. It
helps a lot in drawing charts and creating models.
 Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications
Every day use : Graphical User interface
Almost all the software packages provide a graphical interface. A major component of gra
interface is a window manager that allows a user to display multiple windows like areas on
screen at the same time. Each window can contain a different process that can contain gr
or non-graphical display. In order to make a particular window active, we simply have to cl
that window using an interactive pointing device.
Graphical Interface also includes menus and icons for fast selection of programs, p
operations or parameter values. An icon is a graphical symbol that is designed to look like
processing option it represents.
Introduction to Computer Graphics
Introduction to Computer Graphics
Applications

Every day use

Display technologies

1. Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs)

2. Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)

3. Plasma display panels

Display technologies

Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) :

Most common display device today
Evacuated glass bottle
Extremely high voltage

Heating element (filament)

Electrons pulled towards
anode focusing cylinder

Vertical and horizontal deflection plates

Beam strikes phosphor coating on
front of tube
Display technologies

Contains a filament that, when heated, emits a stream of

electrons

Electrons are focused with an electromagnet into a sharp

beam and directed to a specific point of the face of the
picture tube

The front surface of the picture tube is coated with small

phospher dots

When the beam hits a phospher dot it glows with a brightness

proportional to the strength of the beam and how long it is
hit
Display technologies

Measuring CRT capabilities?

Size of tube

Brightness of phosphers vs. darkness of tube

Speed of electron gun

Width of electron beam

Pixels?
 Display technologies
Types of CRTs: 1. Vector Displays, 2. Raster Displays
Vector Displays:
Early computer displays: basically an oscilloscope
Control X,Y with vertical/horizontal plate voltage
Often used intensity as Z (close things were brighter)

Just does wireframe

Complex scenes cause visible flicker
Display technologies

Raster Displays
Raster: A rectangular array of points or dots
Pixel: One dot or picture element of the raster
Scan line: A row of pixels
Display technologies

• In raster scan picture is stored in the area called refresh buffer or

frame buffer.
• Picture/image on the screen is refreshed again and again form the
frame buffer
• Picture is stored in a two dimensional matrix where each element
corresponds to each pixel on the screen.
• If there is black and white picture then there is only one bit required
to store ‘0’ for black or 1 for white and in this case buffer will be
referred as bitmap.
• if multiple bits are used for one pixel frame buffer will be referred
as Pixmap. For example to show 256 colours, 8 bits will be required
for each pixel
•
Display technologies
• image is drawn frame buffer in a line-by-line fashion. The drawing is
done in a line-by-line fashion.
• Completing a line from left to right and then going to the start (left)
of the next line is called horizontal retrace..
• After completing scanning of the whole screen and going back to the
top-left of screen is Normally each vertical retrace takes 1/60 th of
a second to avoid flickering.

• There are two further methods to scan the image: interlaced

and non-interlaced
• The ratio of vertical points to horizontal points necessary to
produce equal-length lines in both directions on the screen is called
Aspect ratio. An aspect ratio of 5/6 means that a vertical line
plotted with 5 points has the same length as a horizontal line
plotted with 6 points.
Display technologies

Some terminology
Fluorescence: Light emitted while the phospher is being
struck by electrons

Phosphorescence: Light emitted once the electron beam is

removed

Persistence: The time from the removal of the excitation to

the moment when phosphorescence has decayed to 10%
of the initial light output
Display technologies

Some terminology:
Refresh: Frame must be “refreshed” to draw new images

As new pixels are struck by electron beam, others are decaying

Electron beam must hit all pixels frequently to eliminate flicker

Critical fusion frequency

Typically 60 times/sec
Display technologies

• There are two techniques used in color CRT monitors:

1. Beam Penetration Method
2. ƒ Shadow Mask Method

In beam penetration method two layers of phosphor, usually coated onto the
inside of the CRT screen.
Displayed color depends on how far the electron beam penetrates into the
phosphor layers.
At intermediate beam speeds, combinations of red and green light are
emitted to show two additional colors, orange and yellow.
Beam penetration is an inexpensive way to produce colors as only a few colors
are possible and the quality of picture is also not impressive.
Display technologies

• Shadow mask methods can display a wide range of colors.

• In this technique each pixel position is made up of three
• phosphor dots (sub-Pixels) called triads and have different colors i.e
Red, Green and Blue
• The displayed color is made by the combination of all three dots.
• Three guns are used to throw beam at three dots of the same pixel.
By varying intensity at each dot, a wide range of colors can be
generated.
Display technologies

Color CRTs:
Requires manufacturing very precise geometry
Uses a pattern of color phosphors on the screen:

Delta electron gun arrangement In-line electron gun arrangement

Display technologies
Display technologies

Raster CRT pros:

Allows solids, not just wireframes
Bright! Display emits light

Cons:
Requires screen-size memory array
Practical limit on size (call it 40 inches)
Bulky
Display technologies

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)

LCDs: organic molecules, naturally in crystalline state, that liquefy

when excited by heat or E field
Crystalline state twists polarized light 90º.
Display technologies

Plasma display panels

Similar in principle to fluorescent light tubes
Small gas-filled capsules are excited by electric field, emits
UV light UV excites phosphor
Phosphor relaxes, emits some other color
Display technologies

Plasma display panels

Display technologies

Plasma Display Panel Pros

Large viewing angle
Good for large-format displays
Fairly bright

Cons
Expensive
Large pixels (~1 mm versus ~0.2 mm)
Phosphors gradually deplete
Less bright than CRTs, using more power
Display technologies
Virtual reality Devices

ProVeiwXL Datavisor NVISOR SX

80
Display technologies
Virtual reality Devices
Display technologies
Virtual reality Devices
Display technologies
Virtual reality Devices

• Virtual reality system enables users to move and react in a

computer-simulated environment.
• Various types of devices allow users to sense and manipulate
virtual objects much as they would real objects.
Display technologies

LCD Projector
Display technologies
Display technologies
Display technologies (DLP)
Display technologies (DLP)
Display technologies (DLP)
Display technologies (DLP)
Display technologies (DLP)
Display technologies (DLP)
 Display systems
Organization of a simple raster system is shown in following figure. video
controller accesses the frame buffer in system memory to refresh the screen.

Video Display
CPU Memory Monitor
Controller

System Bus

Frame-buffer locations, and the corresponding screen positions, are referenced

in Cartesian coordinates.
Display systems
• Two registers are used to store the coordinates of the screen pixels.
Initially, the x register is set to 0 and the y register is set to y max .
• The value stored in the frame buffer for this pixel position is then
retrieved and used to set the intensity of the CRT beam.
• Then the x register is incremented by 1, and the process repeated for
the next pixel on the top scan line.
• This procedure is repeated for each pixel along the next line by
resetting x register to 0 and decrementing the y register by 1.
• Pixels along this scan line are then processed in turn, and the
procedure is repeated for each successive scan line.
• After cycling through all pixels along the bottom scan line y=0, the
video controller resets to the first pixel position on the top scan line
and the refresh process starts over.
Display systems
Display systems
• Graphics Card or Display Adapters
• A video display adapter which is the special printed circuit board that plugs
into one of the several expansion slots present on the mother board of the
computer. A video display adapter is simply referred as a video card.

• A number of display adapters are available with varying capabilities

especially Intel systems support following adapters:
• Monochrome Adapter (MA)
• Hercules Adapter (HA)
• Color Graphics Adapter (CGA)
• Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA)
• Multicolor Graphics Adapter (MCGA)
• Video Graphics Adapter (VGA)
• Super Video Graphics Adapter (SVGA)
• Extended Graphics Adapter (XGA)
Display systems

• Monochrome Adapter(MA)
• The simplest and the first available adapter is MA. This adapter can display
only text in single color and has no graphics displaying capability.
• Hercules Adapter (HA)
• The Hercules card emulates the monochrome adapter but also operates
in a graphics mode. Having graphics capabilities the Hercules card became
somewhat of a standard for monochrome systems.
• Color Graphics Adapter(CGA)
• This adapter can display text as well as graphics. In text mode it operates in
25 rows by 80 column mode with 16 colors. In graphics mode two resolutions
are available:
• Medium resolution graphics mode 320 * 200 with 4 colors available from
palette of 16 colors and 640 * 200 with 2 colors
CGA Suffered from Flicker and Snow
Display systems

• Enhanced Graphics Adapter

• The EGA could emulate most of the functions and all the display modes
of CGA and MA. The EGA offered high resolution and solved the problem
of snow and flicker of CGA.
• In addition EGA is designed to use the enhanced color monitor capable of
displaying 640 * 350 in 16 colors from a palette of 64.
• Multicolor Graphics Adapter
• The MCGA was designed to emulate the CGA card and to maintain
compatibility with all the CGA modes. In addition to the text and graphics
modes of the CGA, MCGA has two new graphics modes:
• 640 * 480 with 2 colors
• 320 * 200 in with 256 colors
Display systems

• Video Graphics Adapter

• The VGA supports all the display modes of MA, CGA and MCGA. In
addition VGA supports a graphics mode of 640 * 480 with 16 colors.
• Super Video Graphics Adapter
• The SVGA designation refers to enhancements to the VGA standard by
independent vendors. Unlike display adapters discussed earlier SVGA
does not refer to a card that meets a particular specification but to a
group of cards that have different capabilities. For example one card may
have resolutions 800 * 600 and 1024 * 768, whereas, another card may have
same resolution but more colors. These cards have different capabilities, but
still both of them are classified as SVGA. Since each SVGA card has
different capabilities, you need special device driver programs for driving
them. This means that unlike VGA cards which can have a single driver
that works with all VGA cards, regardless of the vendor, each SVGA card
must have a corresponding driver.
Display systems

• Extended Graphics Adapter

• The XGA evolved from the VGA and provides greater resolution, more colors
and much better performance. The XGA has a graphics processor bus
mastering. Being a bus master adapter means that the XGA can take control
of the system as though it were the mother board. In essence, a bus master
is an adapter of the mother board. The XGA offers 2 new modes:
640 * 480 with 16 bit colors (65536 colors)
1024 * 768 with 8 bit colors (256 colors)
•
Display systems

• RAM on the Video Card

• Video cards always have a certain amount of RAM. This RAM is also called
the frame buffer. Today video cards hold plenty of RAM, but earlier it was
more important:
•