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CS602 - Computer Graphics http://www.vustudents.

net FAQ
Question: What is the concept of positive and negative angles?
Answer: Angles are positive angles if the terminal ray rotates counterclockwise around
the vertex from the initial ray . Angles are negative angles if the terminal ray
rotates clockwise around the vertex from the initial ray

Question: Give the concept for line at right angle?


Answer: The lines are said to be at right angles if the rotating half line (or ray) from
starting from initial position to the final position describes one quarter of a circle.

Question: What is Quadrant?


Answer: Let X'OX and Y'OY perpendicular coplanar lines intersecting each other at O.
We refer X'OX as x-axis and Y'OY as y-axis. It is clear from the adjoining figure,
that these two lines divide the plane into four equal parts, each part is called a
Quadrant. The four Quadrants are: XOY - first Quadrant YOX' - second
Quadrant X'OY' - third Quadrant Y'OX - fourth Quadrant

Question: What Software packages are used to design "Room Layout Design and
Architectural Simulations" as in e-handouts?
Answer: Following are some famous known applications used for this purpose: CAD
system -> Designing and building then simulating layouts used mostly by
builders, engineers etc 3D Studio Max -> Designing of 3D objects Maya ->
Designing of 3D objects

Question: I tried to run code given in Lecture 13 using DevC for Table drawing but both
codes are not compiled?
Answer: This code is made using Borland Turbo C which will not run using other
compilers or coding languages, but actual purpose of this code for you is to
learn it by looking at how it works and map it into your own coding by what ever
you are using as compiler. Or try to use turbo C to compile this code. Use this
code as a learning tool pseudocode.

Question: Explain Virtual Reality Systems?


Answer: Virtual Reality Systems present a computer-generated visual and auditory
experience that allows a user to be immersed within a computer generated “
world ” for various purposes. Used in conjunction with traditional computer input
systems this can be used, for example, as a powerful design tool allowing a
user to see objects that he or she is designing. The application to entertainment
or training simulation systems is equally useful as it allows for the creation of an
infinite number of immersive environments to suit any need. The addition of
haptic systems to virtual reality will greatly increase its effectiveness at
simulating real-world situations. One example can potentially include a medical
training system using a simulator and virtual reality where a haptic system
provides doctors with the “feel” of virtual patients. Figure 1 shows the schematic
of such a medical simulation system, the visual display and the haptic gloves
are combined to simulate, in this example, an abdominal aortic aneurysm
surgery.

Question: What are the Working principles of Virtual Reality Systems?


Answer: The working principle of dielectric polymers can be summarized as follows: an
elastomeric polymer film that acts as a capacitor is sandwiched between two
compliant electrodes. Two effects occur simultaneously when an electric field is
applied between the two electrodes. The polymer is stretched in surface and
compressed in thickness during actuation. The change in thickness can be used
for mechanical output. However, there is a need to stack many layers of
dielectric films and electrodes to obtain large displacements. On the other hand,
the area expansion can be used as another method for actuation. The reported
strains obtained by pre-stretching the film are much larger than in thickness but
a restoring force is required to ensure the desired boundary conditions on the
film. This can be achieved either by using an antagonistic pair of actuators or
return springs. The following section describes the design of some compliant
frames used as a spring back force to generate a two-way actuator.
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Question: What is meant by stencil buffer?


Answer: A stencil buffer is an extra buffer, in addition to the color buffer (pixel buffer) and
depth buffer (z-buffering) found on modern computer graphics hardware. The
buffer is per pixel, and works on integer values, usually with a depth of one byte
per pixel. The depth buffer and stencil buffer often share the same area in the
RAM of the graphics hardware.

Question: What is the logic behind fractal geometry using in computer science? If fractal is
modern geometry than why we use euclidean geometry technique?
Answer: A fractal is generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split
into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the
whole a property called self-similarity. The term was coined in 1975 and was
derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured." Fractal is
modern geometry and uses of fractal often has the following features: • It has a
fine structure at arbitrarily small scales. • It is too irregular to be easily described
in traditional language. • It is self-similar (at least approximately or
stochastically). • It has a Hausdorff dimension which is greater than its
topological dimension (although this requirement is not met by space-filling
curves such as the Hilbert curve). • It has a simple and recursive definition.
Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often
considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms). Natural objects that
approximate fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning
bolts, coastlines, and snow flakes. However, not all self-similar objects are
fractal for example, the real line is formally self-similar but fails to have other
fractal characteristics.

Question: What is difference between quadratic and cubic parametric curves?


Answer: Quadratic parametric curves require three control point; whereas cubic curves
requires four control points. 2. Obviously three control points can create less
complex curves; therefore quadratic curves can have only one curvature
because two control points represent the starting and ending point; whereas;
third control point in between control the curvature of the curve

Question: What is the main difference between Forward Scattering and Back Scattering?
Answer: Forward scattering is the normal scattering of light after interacting with any
surface but back scattering results only when the surface is very rough and
irregular so the light is reflected back in the direction it comes.

Question: What is meant by Blending?


Answer: Blending means how much the background and foreground colors are mixed,
for example if we set alpha value equal 100% than only front color is visible.
What is perspective matrix? The perspective matrix is used to represent the
actual point according to our monitor screen settings how we want to project
that point on screen(perspective projection ).

Question: What is Fudge Factor?


Answer: By fudge factor we mean the value that will solve our problem and will help us in
avoiding calculations so the term of ambient light we use is fudge factor.

Question: Please explain Radio-city Method?


Answer: Radio city method calculates the ambient light that will be emitted from different
materials, using scientific calculations.

Question: Explain about Attenuation Factor?


Answer: Attenuation factor mean's how much light is attenuated after covering a certain
distance d, and it is given by the relation light intensity is directly proportional to
1/d2 meaning light decreases as distance increases.

Question: Is Ambient in features are not prominent due to solid color?


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Answer: Ambient light is due to atmosphere and we assume in most cases that certain
value of ambient light is present in the scene because for every point its
calculation consumes a lot of time and computational cost.
Question: Please explain the Impressive and Interactive 3D Environment?
Answer: By 3D we mean actual real time environment around us as you know our
monitor screen is 2D (Without Depth) but we have to draw on it pictures that are
real word (3D) So we have to use different techniques to create pictures that
look like 3D in 2D monitor screen.

Question: If all value of rgb is maximum in positive then we get White in other hand if we
get rgb values in negative maximum then we get Black Color. Please guide.
Answer: The basic idea is that white color reflects all rays on the other hand black color
absorb all rays, now it once again depend on graphics package used as some
packages treat white as maximum rgb value and some treat black as maximum
rgb value. Maximum negative value is taken as minimum Maximum positive
value is taken as maximum

Question: If we get the r value in negative then only r gets the dark impact on the object
others values g and b in positive and these values are not getting the dark
impact on the object. Explain
Answer: Maximum negative value has lower value as compared to lesser negative value,
also Red color is more prominent than Blue and Green.

Question: Is 4 color Mode use in Printing and 3 color Mode use for Monitors or digital
display?
Answer: No, infact it is based on our graphics rendering engine we are using for example
open gl supports 4 color mode but there are other engines that don't support 4
color mode, it doesn't depend on the monitor or printer.

Question: What exactly do we mean by pipeline clipping approach?


Answer: The basic concept here is that if we want to first check and than draw a polygon
after clipping than the steps we take are: Check all the vertices of the polygon if
they are inside of our clipping rectangle or not if they are out side than the
intersection point in the path of that vertex is saved after all this we draw the
polygon

Question: What is the rastering and what is different b/w raster and rastering line?
Answer: Rasterization mean translating an image into pixels or raster lines. A Raster line
is horizontal scan line which is used in filling algorithms. Triangle rasterization is
related to scan line. And we fill the triangle using the scan lines (Raster line).
Question: Why is the Bresenham's line drawing algorithm more efficient than the DDA line
drawing algorithm?
Answer: Bresenham’s algorithm uses integer arithmetic whereas the DDA uses floating
point arithmetic; and as you know floating point arithmetic is much slower than
integer arithmetic that is why Bresenham’s algorithm is more efficient than DDA
algorithm.

Question: What is the difference between bitmap graphics & vector graphics?
Answer: In vector graphics we use lines ( In fact vectors) to represent and store images
so they have smaller size, on the other hand in bitmap graphics we use pixels
store and represent the image data.

Question: What is meant by Resolution?


Answer: Resolution (In bits ) is No. of Horizontal pixels * No of Vertical pixels * No of bits
used to represent per pixel.

Question: What is the basic difference b/w Flat shading and Phong shading?
Answer: Flat shading produce shading in a flat manner (It produces constant shading

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everywhere on the object). In Phong shading we keep in mind the viewer
position so in it the shading output produced is more natural and can represent
shiny spots that are viewable from certain angles on reflecting object's surfaces.

Question: How many colors are used in the image if N bits are required to store a pixel?
Answer: 2n colors will be stored per pixel.
Question: What is the difference between bitmap graphics & colored graphics?
Answer: Bitmaps graphics store per pixel information. How much is the per pixel image
information depends upon the image type for example the black and white need
only one bit per pixel while colored image need 8, 16,24 bits per pixel.

Question: What are Evaluators?


Answer: Evaluators are used to compute points on a curve or surface. Using them we
can draw curves or surfaces. One dimensional evaluators are used to draw
Curves for example Bezier curve. Tow dimensional evaluators are used to draw
Surfaces for example Bezier surface

Question: Explain what are "FRACTALS" & also their use in computer graphics?
Answer: Fractals Fractal are geometric patterns that is repeated at ever smaller scales to
produce irregular shapes and surfaces that can not be represented by classical
geometry. Fractals are used in computer modeling of irregular patterns and
structure in nature. Use of Fractals: Fractals are used to represent that kind of
complex natural objects that can not be represented by ordinary classical
geometry.

Question: what is antialiasing?


Answer: Antialiasing is a technique for removing the non continuous irregular effects
produced at the boundary (edges) of different shapes due to smaller resolutions
(Big Pixel size) . In this technique we change the color of some pixels
surrounding the shape boundary so that the image look more natural and real.

Question: What is the opacity of the color?


Answer: Opacity Opaque objects does not allow the light to pass through them. For
example Walls, Metals, Wood, and their this property is called opacity. Opacity
and Transparency are converse to each other. Transparency is the measure of
how much light that is passed through an object.

Question: What is hue?


Answer: Hue is the measure of pureness of any color, and saturation is the measure
(amount) of hue.

Question: What is local and global co-ordinate system?


Answer: Every thing in the real world is represented by x, y, z Coordinates these are the
global valus of these three variables. And within this world there are different
objects that have their own dimensions along x, y, z these values are for that
particular object and represent only that object are called local coordinates of
that particular object.

Question: How to improve performance of Bresenham line algorithms?


Answer: Several techniques can be used to improve the performance of line-drawing
procedures. These are important because line drawing is one of the
fundamental primitives used by most of the other rendering applications. An
improvement in the speed of line-drawing will result in an overall improvement
of most graphical applications. Removing procedure calls using macros or inline
code can produce improvements. Unrolling loops also may produce longer
pieces of code, but these may run faster. The use of separate x and y
coordinates can be discarded in favour of direct frame buffer addressing.

Question: What is the concept behind clipping?


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Answer: It is desirable to restrict the effect of graphics primitives to a sub-region of the
canvas, to protect other portions of the canvas. All primitives are clipped to the
boundaries of this clipping rectangle; that is, primitives lying outside the clip
rectangle are not drawn.

Question: What do you know about clipping individual points?


Answer: If the x coordinate boundaries of the clipping rectangle are Xmin and Xmax, and
the y coordinate boundaries are Ymin and Ymax, then the following inequalities
must be satisfied for a point at (X,Y) to be inside the clipping rectangle: Xmin <
X < Xmax and Ymin < Y < Ymax If any of the four inequalities does not hold, the
point is outside the clipping rectangle.
Question: What is clipping?
Answer: In rendering, clipping refers to an optimization where the computer only draws
things that might be visible to the viewer.

Question: What is the importance of Clipping in Games?


Answer: Good clipping strategy is important in the development of video games in order
to maximize the game's frame rate and visual quality. Despite GPU chips that
are faster every year, it remains computationally expensive to transform,
texture, and shade polygons, especially with the multiple texture and shading
passes common today. Hence, game developers must live within a certain
"budget" of polygons that can be drawn each video frame.

Question: How can Lights be understood in Computer Graphics?


Answer: In order to understand how an object's color is determined, you'll need to
understand the parts that come into play to create the final color. First, you need
a source of illumination, typically in the form of a light source in your scene. A
light has the properties of color (an rgb value) and intensity. Typically, these are
multiplied to give scaled rgb values. Lights can also have attenuation, which
means that their intensity is a function of the distance from the light to the
surface. Lights can additionally be given other properties such as a shape (e.g.,
spotlights) and position (local or directional), but that's more in the
implementation rather than the math of lighting effects.

Question: Why shaders have importance in 3D Computer Graphics?


Answer: One of the nice things about shaders is that you can create your own for
whatever special effects you are looking for In fact, one of the reasons that
shaders have finally made it into mainstream 3D computer graphics is the
flexibility that they provide, which can finally be realized in real time on
consumer grade hardware. Unfortunately, with power comes responsibility the
responsibility to understand how lighting and shading in computer graphics is
traditionally done and how you can do it yourself (or do it differently) in a
shader. But first, you'll need an understanding of the mathematics behind
lighting and shading.

Question: What can be done using Shaders?


Answer: With shaders you can * Perform basic geometry transformations * Warp the
geometry * Blend or skin geometry * Generate color information (specular and
diffuse) * Tween vertices between transformation matrices * Generate texture
coordinates * Transform texture coordinates * Size point sprites * Use a custom
illumination model * Perform nonphotorealistic rendering * Perform bump,
environment, and specular mapping * Perform your own texture-blending
operations * Clip pixels In fact, your options are limited only by your ingenuity
and the size of the shader buffer (which limits how complicated your shader can
be).

Question: What the term reflections on reflections represent?


Answer: The term reflection actually encompasses three entirely different types of optical
phenomena. These three kinds of reflection are specular reflection (like a
mirror), diffuse reflection (often called Lambertian) and reflexive reflection (or
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retro-reflection).

Question: How can rendering be elaborated in 3D Computer Graphics?


Answer: Rendering is all about simulating the real world as much as possible. If you are
rendering something sitting on your table, think about everything that is going
on in the room. What is around the object? Where is the light coming from? Is
there light coming from different places around the room? How bright is it? What
color is the light? What do the shadows look like? What is reflecting in the
object? What kinds of highlights are on the object? All of these things are the
result of lighting and the environment. Novice users often don't take the time to
consider these things and then try to replicate them. It's no wonder most
beginners' renderings don't look very good.

Question: What is Diffuse Reflection?


Answer: The ideal diffuse reflector (or Lambertian reflector): Incident light is reflected
with equal intensity in all directions, regardless of viewing position. How much
light is reflected depends on the “reflectiveness” of the surface. A highly
reflective surface reflects most of the light.

Question: What is Specular Reflection?


Answer: Specular reflection is for shiny objects In contrast to diffuse reflection, specular
reflection is not constant at all angles from the surface.

Question: What is Attenuation?


Answer: Attenuate means “to weaken”. Light loses energy as it travels further.

Question: What is point?


Answer: Points are most often considered within the framework of Euclidean geometry,
where they are one of the fundamental objects. Euclid originally defined the
point vaguely, as "that which has no part". In two dimensional Euclidean space,
a point is represented by an ordered pair (x,y) coordinates.

Question: What is Circle?


Answer: A circle is a simple shape of Euclidean geometry consisting of those points in a
plane which are the same distance from a given point called the centre. The
common distance of the points of a circle from its center is called its radius.

Question: What is Transformation?


Answer: In mathematics, a transformation could be any function mapping a set X on to
another set or on to itself. However, often the set X has some additional
algebraic or geometric structure and the term "transformation" refers to a
function from X to itself which preserves this structure. Examples include linear
transformations and affine transformations such as rotations, reflections and
translations. These can be carried out in Euclidean space, particularly in
dimensions 2 and 3. They are also operations that can be performed using
linear algebra, and described explicitly using matrices.

Question: What is 3D Computer Graphics?


Answer: 3D computer graphics (in contrast to 2D computer graphics) are graphics that
use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that
is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and
rendering 2D images. Such images may be for later display or for real-time
viewing.

Question: What is curve?


Answer: In mathematics, a curve consists of the points through which a continuously
moving point passes. This notion captures the intuitive idea of a geometrical
one-dimensional object, which furthermore is connected in the sense of having
no discontinuities or gaps. Simple examples include the sine wave as the basic

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curve underlying simple harmonic motion, and the parabola.

Question: What is vector?


Answer: In elementary mathematics, physics, and engineering, a vector (sometimes
called a geometric or spatial vector) is a geometric object that has both a
magnitude (or length) and direction. A vector is frequently represented by a line
segment with a definite direction, or graphically as an arrow, connecting an
initial point A with a terminal point B.

Question: What is OpenGL?


Answer: OpenGL(R) is the software interface for graphics hardware that allows graphics
programmers to produce high-quality color images of 3D objects. OpenGL is a
rendering only, vendor neutral API providing 2D and 3D graphics functions,
including modelling, transformations, color, lighting, smooth shading, as well as
advanced features like texture mapping, NURBS, fog, alpha blending and
motion blur. OpenGL works in both immediate and retained (display list)
graphics modes. OpenGL is window system and operating system independent.
OpenGL has been integrated with Windows NT and with the X Window System
under UNIX. Also, OpenGL is network transparent. A defined common
extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client on one vendor's
platform to run across a network to another vendor's OpenGL server.
Question: What does the .gl or .GL file format have to do with OpenGL?
Answer: .gl files have nothing to do with OpenGL, but are sometimes confused with it. .gl
is a file format for images, which has no relationship to IRIS GL or OpenGL.

Question: What is the GLUT toolkit?


Answer: GLUT is a portable toolkit which performs window and event operations to
support OpenGL rendering. GLUT version 2.0 has: o window functions,
including multiple windows for OpenGL rendering o callback driven event
processing o sophisticated input devices, including dials and buttons box, tablet,
Spaceball(TM) o idle routines and timers o a simple cascading pop-up menu
facility o routines to generate wire and solid objects o bitmap and stroke fonts o
request and queries for multisample and stereo windows o OpenGL extension
query support

Question: What is GLUT?


Answer: GLUT is the OpenGL Utility Toolkit, a window system independent toolkit for
writing OpenGL programs. It implements a simple windowing application
programming interface (API) for OpenGL. GLUT makes it considerably easier to
learn about and explore OpenGL Programming. Libraries that are modeled on
the functionality of GLUT providing support for things like: windowing and
events, user input, menuing, full screen rendering, performance timing

Question: What is GLU?


Answer: GLU is the OpenGL Utility Library. This is a set of functions to create texture
mipmaps from a base image, map coordinates between screen and object
space, and draw quadric surfaces and NURBS.

Question: What do I need to compile and run OpenGL programs?


Answer: The following applies specifically to C/C++ usage. To compile and link OpenGL
programs, you'll need OpenGL header files and libraries. To run OpenGL
programs you may need shared or dynamically loaded OpenGL libraries, or a
vendor-specific OpenGL Installable Client Driver (ICD) specific to your device.
Also, you may need include files and libraries for the GLU and GLUT libraries.
Where you get these files and libraries will depend on which OpenGL system
platform you're using. OpenG.org maintains a list of links to OpenGL Utility
libraries. You can download most of what you need from there. Under Microsoft
Windows 9x, NT, and 2000: If you're using Visual C++, your compiler comes
with include files for OpenGL and GLU, as well as .lib files to link with. For
GLUT, download these files. Install glut.h in your compiler's include directory,
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glut32.lib in your compiler's lib directory, and glut32.dll in your Windows system
directory (c:\windows\system for Windows 9x, or c:\winnt\system32 for Windows
NT/2000). In summary, a fully installed Windows OpenGL development
environment will look like this: File Location [compiler]\include\gl gl.h glut.h glu.h
[compiler]\lib Opengl32.lib glut32.lib glu32.lib [system] Opengl32.dll glut32.dll
glu32.dll where [compiler] is your compiler directory (such as c:\Program
Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98) and [system] is your Windows 9x/NT/2000
system directory (such as c:\winnt\system32 or c:\windows\system).

Question: What is GLUT? How is it different from OpenGL?


Answer: Because OpenGL doesn't provide routines for interfacing with a windowing
system or input devices, an application must use a variety of other platform-
specific routines for this purpose. The result is nonportable code. Furthermore,
these platform-specific routines tend to be full-featured, which complicates
construction of small programs and simple demos. GLUT is a library that
addresses these issues by providing a platform-independent interface to
window management, menus, and input devices in a simple and elegant
manner. Using GLUT comes at the price of some flexibility.

Question: What is GLU? How is it different from OpenGL?


Answer: If you think of OpenGL as a low-level 3D graphics library, think of GLU as
adding some higher-level functionality not provided by OpenGL. Some of GLU's
features include: o Scaling of 2D images and creation of mipmap pyramids o
Transformation of object coordinates into device coordinates and vice versa o
Support for NURBS surfaces o Support for tessellation of concave or bow tie
polygonal primitives o Specialty transformation matrices for creating perspective
and orthographic projections, positioning a camera, and selection/picking o
Rendering of disk, cylinder, and sphere primitives o Interpreting OpenGL error
values as ASCII text The best source of information on GLU is the OpenGL red
and blue books and the GLU specification, which you can obtain from the
OpenGL org Web page.

Question: How does the camera work in OpenGL?


Answer: As far as OpenGL is concerned, there is no camera. More specifically, the
camera is always located at the eye space coordinate (0., 0., 0.). To give the
appearance of moving the camera, your OpenGL application must move the
scene with the inverse of the camera transformation.

Question: How can I move my eye, or camera, in my scene?


Answer: OpenGL doesn't provide an interface to do this using a camera model.
However, the GLU library provides the gluLookAt() function, which takes an eye
position, a position to look at, and an up vector, all in object space coordinates.
This function computes the inverse camera transform according to its
parameters and multiplies it onto the current matrix stack.

Question: Where should my camera go, the ModelView or Projection matrix?


Answer: The GL_PROJECTION matrix should contain only the projection transformation
calls it needs to transform eye space coordinates into clip coordinates. The
GL_MODELVIEW matrix, as its name implies, should contain modeling and
viewing transformations, which transform object space coordinates into eye
space coordinates. Remember to place the camera transformations on the
GL_MODELVIEW matrix and never on the GL_PROJECTION matrix. Think of
the projection matrix as describing the attributes of your camera, such as field of
view, focal length, fish eye lens, etc. Think of the ModelView matrix as where
you stand with the camera and the direction you point it.
Question: Given the current ModelView matrix, how can I determine the object-space
location of the camera?
Answer: The "camera" or viewpoint is at (0., 0., 0.) in eye space. When you turn this into
a vector [0 0 0 1] and multiply it by the inverse of the ModelView matrix, the
resulting vector is the object-space location of the camera. OpenGL doesn't let

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you inquire (through a glGet* routine) the inverse of the ModelView matrix.
You'll need to compute the inverse with your own code.

Question: How do I get a specified point (XYZ) to appear at the center of the scene?
Answer: gluLookAt() is the easiest way to do this. Simply set the X, Y, and Z values of
your point as the fourth, fifth, and sixth parameters to gluLookAt().

Question: How do I draw 3D objects on a 2D screen?


Answer: There are many ways to do this. Some approaches map the viewing rectangle
onto the scene, by shooting rays through each pixel center and assigning color
according to the object hit by the ray. Other approaches map the scene onto the
viewing rectangle, by drawing each object into the region, keeping track of
which object is in front of which. The mapping mentioned above is also referred
to as "projection", and the two most popular projections are perspective
projection and parallel projection. For example, to do a parallel projection of a
scene onto a viewing rectangle, you can just discard the Z coordinate (divide by
depth), and "clip" the objects to the viewing rectangle (discard portions that lie
outside the region).

Question: How do I draw a circle as a Bezier (or B-Spline) curve?


Answer: The short answer is, "You can't." Unless you use a rational spline you can only
approximate a circle. The approximation may look acceptable, but it is sensitive
to scale. Magnify the scale and the error of approximation magnifies. Deviations
from circularity that were not visible in the small can become glaring in the
large.
Question: What is color?
Answer: Color is the perceptual result of light in the visible region of the spectrum,
having wavelengths in the region of 400 nm to 700 nm, incident upon the retina.
Physical power (or radiance) is expressed in a spectral power distribution
(SPD), often in 31 components each representing a 10 nm band.

Question: What is Intensity?


Answer: Intensity is a measure over some interval of the electromagnetic spectrum of
the flow of power that is radiated from, or incident on, a surface. Intensity is
what I call a linear-light measure, expressed in units such as watts per square
meter. The voltages presented to a CRT monitor control the intensities of the
color components, but in a nonlinear manner. CRT voltages are not proportional
to intensity.

Question: What is CIE color model?


Answer: A color model based on human perception developed by the CIE (Commission
Internationale de l'Eclairage) committee. While widely regarded as the most
accurate color model, CIE is unsuitable for many technologies, including color
printing and color monitors. Consequently, these systems need to use other
color models, such as CMYK and RGB.

Question: What is CMYK?


Answer: Short for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black, and pronounced as separate letters.
CMYK is a color model in which all colors are described as a mixture of these
four process colors. CMYK is the standard color model used in offset printing for
full-color documents. Because such printing uses inks of these four basic
colors, it is often called four-color printing.

Question: What is color monitor?


Answer: A display monitor capable of displaying many colors. In contrast, a monochrome
monitor can display only two colors -- one for the background and one for the
foreground. Color monitors implement the RGB color model by using three
different phosphors that appear red, green, and blue when activated. By placing
the phosphors directly next to each other, and activating them with different
intensities, color monitors can create an unlimited number of colors. In practice,
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however, the real number of colors that any monitor can display is controlled by
the video adapter. Color monitors based on CRT technology employ three
different techniques to merge phosphor triplets into pixels: Dot-trio shadow
masks place a thin sheet of perforated metal in front of the screen. Since
electrons can pass only through the holes in the sheet, each hole represents a
single pixel. Aperture-grille CRTs place a grid of wires between the screen and
the electron guns. Slot-mask CRTs uses a shadow mask but the holes are long
and thin. It's sort of a cross between the dot-trio shadow mask and aperture-grill
techniques.

Question: What is monochrome?


Answer: One color. Monitors, for example, can be monochrome, grayscale or color.
Monochrome monitors actually use two colors, one for the display image (the
foreground) and one for the background. Graphic images can also be
monochrome, grayscale, or color.
Question: What is CRT?
Answer: Abbreviation of cathode-ray tube, the technology used in most televisions and
computer display screens. A CRT works by moving an electron beam back and
forth across the back of the screen. Each time the beam makes a pass across
the screen, it lights up phosphor dots on the inside of the glass tube, thereby
illuminating the active portions of the screen. By drawing many such lines from
the top to the bottom of the screen, it creates an entire screenful of images.

Question: What is Pixel?


Answer: Short for Picture Element, a pixel is a single point in a graphic image. Graphics
monitors display pictures by dividing the display screen into thousands (or
millions) of pixels, arranged in rows and columns. The pixels are so close
together that they appear connected.
Question: How many colors or shades can be displayed on a system?
Answer: The number of bits used to represent each pixel determines how many colors or
shades of gray can be displayed. For example, in 8-bit color mode, the color
monitor uses 8 bits for each pixel, making it possible to display 2 to the 8th
power (256) different colors or shades of gray.

Question: How can quality of display system be determined?


Answer: The quality of a display system largely depends on its resolution, how many
pixels it can display, and how many bits are used to represent each pixel. VGA
systems display 640 by 480, or about 300,000 pixels. In contrast, SVGA
systems display 800 by 600, or 480,000 pixels. True Color systems use 24 bits
per pixel, allowing them to display more than 16 million different colors.

Question: What is convergence?


Answer: In graphics, convergence refers to how sharply an individual color pixel on a
monitor appears. Each pixel is composed of three dots -- a red, blue, and green
one. If the dots are badly misconverged, the pixel will appear blurry. All monitors
have some convergence errors, but they differ in degree.

Question: What is VGA?


Answer: Abbreviation of video graphics array, a graphics display system for PCs
developed by IBM. VGA has become one of the de facto standards for PCs. In
text mode, VGA systems provide a resolution of 720 by 400 pixels. In graphics
mode, the resolution is either 640 by 480 (with 16 colors) or 320 by 200 (with
256 colors). The total palette of colors is 262,144.

Question: What is graphics mode?


Answer: Many video adapters support several different modes of resolution, all of which
are divided into two general categories: character mode and graphics mode. Of
the two modes, graphics mode is the more sophisticated. Programs that run in
graphics mode can display an unlimited variety of shapes and fonts, whereas

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programs running in character mode are severely limited. Programs that run
entirely in graphics mode are called graphics-based programs. In character
mode, the display screen is treated as an array of blocks, each of which can
hold one ASCII character. In graphics mode, the display screen is treated as an
array of pixels. Characters and other shapes are formed by turning on
combinations of pixels.

Question: What is text mode?


Answer: A video mode in which a display screen is divided into rows and columns of
boxes. Each box can contain one character. Text mode is also called character
mode. All video standards for the PC, including VGA, support a text mode that
divides the screen into 25 rows and 80 columns. In addition to text mode, most
video adapters support a graphics mode, in which the display screen is divided
into an array of pixels. Whereas character-based programs run in text mode, all
graphics-based programs run in graphics mode.

Question: What is animation?


Answer: A simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames.
Cartoons on television is one example of animation. Animation on computers is
one of the chief ingredients of multimedia presentations. There are many
software applications that enable you to create animations that you can display
on a computer monitor. Note the difference between animation and video.
Whereas video takes continuous motion and breaks it up into discrete frames,
animation starts with independent pictures and puts them together to form the
illusion of continuous motion.

Question: What is CAD?


Answer: Acronym for computer-aided design. A CAD system is a combination of
hardware and software that enables engineers and architects to design
everything from furniture to airplanes. In addition to the software, CAD systems
require a high-quality graphics monitor; a mouse, light pen, or digitizing tablet
for drawing; and a special printer or plotter for printing design specifications.
Question: What is SVGA?
Answer: Short for Super VGA, a set of graphics standards designed to offer greater
resolution than VGA. SVGA supports 800 x 600 resolution, or 480,000 pixels.
The SVGA standard supports a palette of 16 million colors, but the number of
colors that can be displayed simultaneously is limited by the amount of video
memory installed in a system. One SVGA system might display only 256
simultaneous colors while another displays the entire palette of 16 million
colors. The SVGA standards are developed by a consortium of monitor and
graphics manufacturers called VESA.

Question: WHAT IS LUMINANCE?


Answer: Brightness is defined by the CIE as the attribute of a visual sensation according
to which an area appears to emit more or less light. Because brightness
perception is very complex, the CIE defined a more tractable quantity luminance
which is radiant power weighted by a spectral sensitivity function that is
characteristic of vision.

Question: What is Lightness?


Answer: Human vision has a nonlinear perceptual response to brightness: a source
having a luminance only 18% of a reference luminance appears about half as
bright. The perceptual response to luminance is called Lightness.

Question: What is Hue?


Answer: According to the CIE, hue is the attribute of a visual sensation according to
which an area appears to be similar to one of the perceived colors, red, yellow,
green and bue, or a combination of two of them. Roughly speaking, if the
dominant wavelength of an SPD shifts, the hue of the associated color will shift.

Question: What is satuation?


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Answer: From the CIE, saturation is the colorfulness of an area judged in proportion to
its brightness. Saturation runs from neutral gray through pastel to saturated
colors. Roughly speaking, the more an SPD is concentrated at one wavelength,
the more saturated will be the associated color. You can desaturate a color by
adding light that contains power at all wavelengths.

Question: Can blue be assigned fewer bits than red or green?


Answer: Blue has a small contribution to the brightness sensation. However, human
vision has extraordinarily good color discrimination capability in blue colors. So
if you give blue fewer bits than red or green, you will introduce noticeable
contouring in blue areas of your pictures.

Question: What is True color?


Answer: True color is the provision of three separate components for additive red, green
and blue reproduction. True color systems often provide eight bits for each of
the three components, so true color is sometimes referred to as 24-bit color.

Question: What is gamma?


Answer: The intensity of light generated by a physical device is not usually a linear
function of the applied signal. A conventional CRT has a power-law response to
voltage: intensity produced at the face of the display is approximately the
applied voltage, raised to the 2.5 power. The numerical value of the exponent of
this power function is colloquially known as gamma. This nonlinearity must be
compensated in order to achieve correct reproduction of intensity.

Question: What is contrast ratio?


Answer: Contrast ratio is the ratio of intensity between the brightest white and the
darkest black of a particular device or a particular environment. Projected
cinema film - or a photographic reflection print - has a contrast ratio of about
80:1. Television assumes a contrast ratio - in your living room - of about 30:1.
Typical office viewing conditions restrict contrast ratio of CRT display to about
5:1.

Question: What is motion capture?


Answer: Motion capture is a technique by which a performer's movements can be
recorded digitally, and reproduced by a CG character either in real-time or after
the data has been processed (depending on how the data is sampled). This
allows for more realistic and natural motion in character animation. A variation
of this technique uses an armature instead of a performer, and movements are
made and keyframed the same way that stop-motion animators have been
doing it for many years.

Question: How do I do a hidden surface test (backface culling) with 2D points?


Answer: c = (x1-x2)*(y3-y2)-(y1-y2)*(x3-x2) x1,y1, x2,y2, x3,y3 = the first three points of
the polygon. If c is positive the polygon is visible. If c is negative the polygon is
invisible (or the other way).

Question: What are the Applications for Computer Graphics?


Answer: Computer graphics applications are found in almost all areas. Some of the
important areas are: User Interfaces Layout and Design Scientific Visualization
and Analysis Art Design Medicine and Virtual Surgery Layout Design
Architectural Simulations History and cultural heritage Entertainment
Simulations Games

Question: How do I rotate a 2D point?


Answer: In 2D, you make (X,Y) from (x,y) with a rotation by angle t so: X = x cos t - y sin
t Y = x sin t + y cos t As a 2x2 matrix this is very simple. If you want to rotate a
column vector v by t degrees using matrix M, use M = [cos t -sin t] [sin t cos t] in
the product M v. If you have a row vector, use the transpose of M (turn rows into
columns and vice versa). If you want to combine rotations, in 2D you can just
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add their angles, but in higher dimensions you must multiply their matrices.
Question: What is meant by Computer Graphics?
Answer: 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: what are Computer Graphics Applications?


Answer: Computer graphics applications are found in almost all areas.

Some of the important areas are:

1. User Interfaces
2. Layout and Design
3. Scientific Visualization and Analysis
4. Art and Design
5. Medicine and Virtual Surgery
6. Layout Design & Architectural Simulations
7. History and cultural heritage
8. Entertainment
9. Simulations
10. Games

Question: What is the difference between pixel and resolution?


Answer: A pixel is the smallest unit in a computer image or display. Resolution is
mapping between the monitor screen size and the pixels.With higher resolution,
more pixels can be displayed and therefore the image is more discrete and
detailed, however, pixels are smaller at high resolution and detail can be hard to
visualize on smaller screens.

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