Module I

MODULE I
• Basicconcepts in Computer Graphics – Types of Graphic Devices –

Interactive Graphic inputs – Raster Scan and Random Scan
Displays.
TEXT BOOKS
1. Donald Hearn and M. Pauline Baker, Computer
Graphics, PHI, 2e, 1996
2. E. Gose, R. Johnsonbaugh and S. Jost., Pattern
Recognition and Image Analysis, PHI PTR, 1996 (Module
VI – Image Processing part)
3. William M. Newman and Robert F. Sproull , Principles
of Interactive Computer Graphics. McGraw Hill, 2e, 1979
4. Zhigang Xiang and Roy Plastock, Computer Graphics
(Schaum’s outline Series),McGraw Hill, 1986.
03/13/23 MODULE I - COMPUTER GRAPHICS 2

Basic Concepts in Computer
Graphics
• Computers have become a powerful tool for the rapid and economical
production of pictures.
• “A picture is worth a thousand words”
• computer graphics used routinely in such diverse areas as

Science
Engineering
 Medicine
 Business
 Industry
Government
 Art
Entertainment
 Advertising
 Education
Training

Definition of Computer Graphics
• Creation & Manipulation of pictures using computer.
• Art of drawing pictures ,lines, charts etc using computers with the
help of programming.
• Display the images on screens or hardcopy devices
• Father of Computer Graphics – Ivan Sutherland

Applications of Computer
Graphics
• Computer Aided Design (CAD)
• Presentation Graphics
• Computer Art
• Entertainment (animation, games, …)
• Education & Training
• Visualization (scientific & business)
• Image Processing
• Graphical User Interfaces

1.Computer Aided Design (CAD) (1)
• Used in design of buildings, automobiles, aircraft,
watercraft, spacecraft, computers, textiles & many
other products
• Objects are displayed in wire frame outline form
• Software packages provide multi-window
environment

1.Computer Aided Design (2)
• First displayed in a wireframe outline form that
shows the overall shape & internal features of
objects
• Quickly see the effects of interactive
adjustments to design shapes
• Animations are also used in CAD applications

2.Presentation Graphics
• Used to produce illustrations for reports or
generate slides for use with projectors
• Commonly used to summarize financial,
statistical, mathematical, scientific, economic
data for research reports, managerial reports &
customer information bulletins
• Examples : Bar charts, line graphs, pie charts,
surface graphs, time chart

Examples of presentation graphics

Examples of presentation graphics

3.Computer Art
• Used in fine art & commercial art
• Includes artist’s paintbrush programs, paint packages, CAD packages and
animation packages
• These packages provides facilities for designing object shapes & specifying object
motions.
• Examples : Cartoon drawing, paintings, product advertisements, logo design

Computer Art
• Electronic painting
• Picture painted electronically on
a graphics tablet (digitizer) using a stylus
• Cordless, pressure sensitive stylus
• Morphing
• A graphics method in which one object is transformed
into another

4. Entertainment
Movie industry
• Used in motion pictures, music videos, and television shows.
• Used in making of cartoon animation films.
Game industry

5.Education & Training
• Computer generated models are used as educational aids.
• Models of physical systems such as color-coded diagram help
trainees to understand the operation of the system.

Specialized systems used
for training applications
 simulators for practice
sessions or training of ship
captains
 aircraft pilots
 heavy equipment operators
 air traffic-control personnel

6.Visualization
• Scientific Visualization
• Producing graphical representations for scientific, engineering, and
medical data sets

• Business Visualization
 used in connection with data sets related to commerce, industry and other non-scientific
areas
• Techniques used- color coding, graphs, charts, surface renderings &
visualizations of volume interiors.
• Image processing techniques are combined with computer graphics to
produce many of the data visualizations

7. Image Processing
• Image Processing – applies techniques to modify or
interpret existing pictures such as photographs and
TV scans
• Medical applications
• Picture enhancements
• Tomography
• Simulations of operations
• Ultrasonics & nuclear medicine scanners
• 2 applications of image processing
• Improving picture quality
• Machine perception of visual information (Robotics)

• To apply image processing methods
• Digitize a photograph (or picture) into an image file
• Apply digital methods to rearrange picture parts to
• enhance color separations
• Improve quality of shading
• Tomography – technique of X-ray photography that allows
cross-sectional views of physiological systems to be
displayed
• Computed X-ray tomography (CT) and position emission
tomography ( PET) use projection methods to reconstruct
cross sections from digital data
• Computer-Aided Surgery is a medical application technique
to model and study physical functions to design artificial
limbs and to plan & practice surgery

8.Graphical User Interfaces
• Major component – Window manager (multiple-window
areas)
• To make a particular window active, click in that
window (using an interactive pointing device)
• Interfaces display – menus & icons
• Icons – graphical symbol designed to look like the
processing option it represents
• Advantages of icons – less screen space, easily
understood
• Menus contain lists of textual descriptions & icons

Fundamentals
• Computer screen contains 1000’s of little dots called pixels (picture
element)
• Pixel is the fundamental building block of picture.
• To display a picture
 computer be able to control the color of each pixels
 need to know how to organize the pixels into meaningful shapes and image.

Types of Computer Graphics
• Non Interactive Computer Graphics

 passive computer graphics
 the observer has no control over the image.
 shown on TV and other forms of computer art
• Interactive Computer Graphics

 two way communication between computer and user.
 observer is given some control over the image by providing him with an input
device
 the video game controller of the ping pong game.

Types of Graphic Devices
• Video Display Devices

• Input Devices
• Hard Copy Devices

Video Display Devices
• Video monitor - Primary output device in a
graphics system
• The Operation of most video monitors is
based on Cathode-ray tube (CRT)
Refresh CRT
 Basic Raster Scan Graphics
 Random Scan Displays

Refresh CRT
• Invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun (1897)
• Beam of electrons directed from cathode to
phosphor-coated screen
• Directed by magnetic focusing and deflection
coils (anodes) in vacuum filled tube
• Refresh rate (50-60 Hz / 72-76 Hz) to avoid
flicker

Refresh CRT
•A beam of electrons, emitted by an electron gun passes
through focusing and deflection systems that direct the
beam toward specified position on the phosphor-coated
screen.
• The phosphor then emits a small spot of light at each
position contacted by the electron beam.
• 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
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Refresh CRT
• The primary components of an electron gun in a CRT are
• Heated Metal Cathode
• Control Grid
• Heat is supplied to the cathode by directing a current through
a coil of wire called FILAMENT inside the cylindrical cathode
structure.
• This cause electron to be “boiled off” the hot cathode surface,
and accelerated towards the phosphor coated screen.
• Control grid- control the intensity of electron beam by
setting the voltage level.
• amount of light emitted by phosphor depends on the no: of
electron striking the screen.
• Focusing system - force the electron beam to converge
into small spot.
• Accelerating Anode - generate accelerating voltage.
• Deflection of the electron beam controlled either with electric
field or magnetic field.

persistence
• Defined as the time it takes the emitted light from the screen to
decay to one-tenth of its original intensity
• Lower persistence phosphors requires higher refresh rates to
maintain a picture on the screen without flicker

Characteristics of Cathode-Ray
Tube (CRT)
• Intensity
 proportional to the number of electrons repelled in beam per second .
• Resolution
 maximum number of points that can be displayed without overlap
• Aspect Ratio
 ratio of vertical points to horizontal points necessary to produce equal-
length lines in both directions on the screen

2. Raster Scan Display

2. Raster Scan Displays(2)
• 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 & off to create a pattern of illuminated spots

Raster Scan Displays(2)
• Refresh Buffer
 frame buffer
 Picture definition
 Set of intensity points
 one row at a time
• points are called pixels (picture elements/pel)

• Black & white systems
 each screen point either on or off
 One bit per pixel (bitmap)

Raster Scan Displays(3)
• Bilevel Systems
 Bit value 1 indicates the electron beam is turned on at that position
 A value of 0 indicates the beam intensity is to be off
• Up to 24 bits per pixel – high quality systems

• Multiple bits per pixel, the frame buffer is called pixmap

Interlacing scan lines on a raster scan
• First, all points on the even-
numbered (solid) scan lines
are displayed;
• then all points along the odd-
numbered (dashed) lines are
displayed.
• 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.

2. Random-Scan Display

Random-Scan /Vector Display/Stroke-
Writing/Calligraphic Displays
• electron beam is directed only to the parts of
the screen where a picture is to be drawn.
• picture definition
• set of line-drawing commands
• generally have higher resolution than raster
systems
• produce smooth line drawings, however it
cannot display realistic shaded scenes.

Random-Scan Display
• Refresh rate depends on the number of lines to be displayed.
• Picture definition – set of line drawing commands in an area of
memory called refresh display file(display list/ display program/
refresh buffer)

Color CRT Monitors (1)
• Displays color pictures by using a combination of phosphors that
emit different colored light.
• Combining the emitted light from the different phosphors , a range
of colors can be generated
• Two basic technique for producing color displays with CRT
 Beam Penetration Method
 Shadow-mask Method

Beam Penetration Method

Beam Penetration Method (1)
• Two layers of phosphor (red & green)
• Displayed color depends on how far the electron beam penetrated
into the phosphor layer.
• beam of slow electrons excites only the red layer
• beam of very fast electrons penetrates through the red layer &
excites the green layer.

Beam Penetration Method (2)
• At intermediate beam speeds, combination of red & green are
emitted to show two additional colors orange & yellow
• Only 4 colors possible (red, green, orange,yellow)
• Used with random scan monitor
• Quality of the picture is not as good as with other methods

Color CRT Monitors (3)
Shadow Mask Method
• Commonly used in raster-scan systems
• Produce much wider range of colors
• One phosphor dot emits a red light
• Another emits green light, another blue light
• 3 electron gun, one for each color dot
• Shadow mask grid just behind the phosphor coated screen.

Shadow mask method

Shadow Mask Method (1)
Delta-delta shadow mask method commonly used in color CRT
Systems
• Three electron beams are deflected & focused as a group onto the
shadow mask , which contains a series of holes aligned with the
phosphor-dot pattern
• When the three beam pass through a hole in the shadow
mask ,they activate a dot triangle, which appears on a small color
spot on the screen

Inline arrangement
• 3 electron gun, & the corresponding red-green-blue color dots on
the screen, are aligned along one scan line instead in a triangular
pattern
• Used in higher resolution CRT’s

• Color variations by varying the intensity levels of three electron
beam
• By turning off the red & green guns , get only the color coming
from the blue phosphor
• white – result of activating all 3 dots with equal intensity
• Yellow=green + red
• Cyan = blue +green
• Color CRT’s in graphic systems are designed as RGB .

Direct-View Storage Tubes (1)
• An alternative method for maintaining a screen image is to
 store the picture information inside the CRT instead of refreshing the screen
• Stores the picture information as a charge distribution just behind

the phosphor-coated screen

• Two electron guns
• Primary gun – used to store the picture pattern
• Flood gun – maintains the picture display

Advantages
• No refreshing is needed
• Very complex pictures can be displayed at very high resolution
without flicker.

Disadvantages
• Do not display color & are available with single level of
intensity
• Selected parts of the picture cannot be erased
• To eliminate a picture session ,the entire screen must be
erased
• Erasing & redrawing process can take several seconds
for a complex picture
• Storage displays have been largely replaced by raster
systems
Flat-Panel Displays (1)
• Refers to a class of video devices that have reduced volume,weight
& power requirements
• Thinner than CRT’s
• Hang them on walls or wear them on our wrists

Flat-Panel Displays (2)
• Current uses
 small TV monitor, calculators, pocket video game, laptop computers, viewing
of movies on airlines etc
• Two categories
 Emissive Displays
 Non-Emissive Displays

Emissive Displays
• emitters
• Convert electrical energy into light
• Eg:- plasma panels, thin-film electroluminescent displays, LED etc

1. Plasma Panel

1. plasma panels (1)
• also called gas-discharge displays
• constructed by filling the region between two glass plates with a
mixture of gases that usually includes neon.
• series of vertical conducting ribbons is placed on one glass panel
• and a set of horizontal ribbons is built into the other glass panel

plasma panels (2)
• Firing voltages applied to a pair of horizontal and
vertical conductors
• cause the gas at intersection of the two conductors to
break down into a glowing plasma of electrons and ions.
• Picture definition is stored in a refresh buffer
• firing voltages are applied to refresh the pixel positions
60 times per second.
• Alternating-current methods are used to provide faster
application of the firing voltages, and thus brighter
displays.

Disadvantage of Plasma Panel
• strictly monochromatic devices
• but systems have been developed that are now capable of
displaying color and grayscale.

2. Thin-film electroluminescent
displays
• similar in construction to a plasma panel
• region between the glass plates is filled with a phosphor, such as
zinc sulfide doped with manganese, instead of a gas
• When a sufficiently high voltage is applied to a pair of crossing
electrodes,
 phosphor becomes a conductor in the area of the intersection of the two electrodes.
 Electrical energy is then absorbed by the manganese atoms
 which then release the energy as a spot of light similar to the glowing plasma effect in a
plasma panel.
• require more power than plasma panels

• good color and gray scale displays are hard to achieve.

3. Light-Emitting Diode (LED).
• A matrix of diodes are arranged to form the pixel positions in the
display
• picture definition is stored in a refresh buffer.
• As in scan-line refreshing of a CRT, information is read from the
refresh buffer
• converted to voltage levels that are applied to the diodes to
produce the light patterns in the display.

Non- Emissive Displays
• Non-emitter
• Use optical effects to convert sunlight or light from some other
sources into graphics pattern
• Eg:- liquid crystal displays

Liquid Crystal Displays (1)
(LCDs)
• commonly used in small systems, such as
calculators and portable, laptop computers
• produce a picture by passing polarized light
from the surroundings or from an internal light
source through a liquid-crystal material that can
be aligned to either block or transmit the light.

• Liquid crystal -These compounds have a crystalline

arrangement of molecules, yet they flow like a liquid.
• Using nematic liquid crystal compounds
• Two glass plates contains polarizer, aligned 90 degree
to each other.
• Transparent conductors build in horizontally and
vertically in two plates
• intersection of two plates define a pixel position.


• Polarized light passing through the material is twisted so that it will

pass through the opposite polarizer.
• light is then reflected back to the viewer.
• To turn off the pixel, apply a voltage to the two intersecting
conductors to align the molecules so that the light is not twisted.
• This type of flat-panel device is referred to as
a passive-matrix LCD.

• Another method for constructing LCD 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
• prevent charge from gradually leaking out of the liquid-crystal
cells.
• These devices are called active-matrix displays.

Architecture- Raster Scan
Systems
• Interactive raster graphics systems typically employ several
processing units
• In addition to CPU,a special purpose processor, called the video
controller or display controller used to control the operation of
the display device
• Frame buffer can be any where in the system memory

Video Controller
• Perform basic refreshing operations
• Double buffering used in real time animations
 one buffer can be used for refreshing
 while the other is being filled with intensity values.
• often contains a lookup table, so that pixel values in the frame

buffer are used to access the lookup table

• Frame buffer locations & the corresponding screen positions are
referenced in cartesian products
• Some systems co-ordinate origin is defined at the lower left screen
corner
• Screen surface is then represented as the first quadrant of a two
dimensional system

• Scan lines are then labeled from y at the top of the screen to 0 at
max
the bottom
• Along each scan line, screen pixels positions are labeled from 0 to
xmax
• Two registers are used to store the co-ordinates of the screen
pixels
• Initially the x register is set to 0 & y register to y
max

• Value stored in the frame buffer for this pixel position is then
retrieved & used to set the intensity of the beam
• x register is incremented by 1, & the process repeated for the next
pixel on the top scan line
• This procedure is repeated for each pixel along the scan line

• After the last pixel on the top scan line has been processed
 x register is reset to 0
y register is decremented by 1 to speed up pixel processing

Raster-Scan Display Processor
• free the CPU from the graphics chores.
• major task is to digitizing a picture definition
given in an application program into set of
pixel-intensity values for storage in the frame
buffer.
• digitization process is called scan conversion.
• Straight lines and geometric objects are scan
converted into a set of discrete intensity points.
• Characters can be defined with rectangular grid.

A character defined as a rectangular grid
of pixel positions.

• generating various line styles (dashed, dotted,
or solid), displaying color areas, and performing certain

transformations and manipulations on displayed objects.
• Also, display processors are typically designed
to interface with interactive input devices, such as a mouse.

Methods to reduce the memory
requirements in raster systems.
• Run-length encoding
-store scanline as a set of integer
pairs
• Cell Encoding
-encode a set of rectangular area.

Architecture of random scan
displays
• An application pgm is the input
• Stored in the system memory along with a graphics package
• Graphic commands in the application program are translated by
the graphics package into a display file
• display file is then accessed by the display processor to refresh the
screen

• display processor cycles through each command in the display file
program once during every refresh cycle
• Display processor- display processing unit or a graphics controller

Three dimensional viewing
Devices (1)
• Display of three-dimensional scenes
• Using a technique that reflects a CRT image from a vibrating ,
flexible mirror
• As the varifocal mirror vibrates , it changes focal length
• These vibrations are synchronized with the display of an object on a
CRT
• Eg:- Genisco SpaceGraph System

Devices (2)
• each point on the object is reflected from the mirror into a spatial
position corresponding to the distance of that point from a
specified viewing position
• This allow us to walk around an object or scene & view it from
different side

Devices (3)

• origin of the coordinate system for
identifying screen positions is usually
specified in the lower-left corner.

Stereoscopic and Virtual-Reality
Systems
• Another technique for the display of 3D scenes.
• Not true 3D images, but provides a 3D effect.
• Uses two views of a scene along the lines of right and left
eye.
• Gives perception of a scene depth when right view is seen
from right eye and left scene is seen from left eye
(stereoscopic effect).
• Display each view at alternate refresh cycles.
96
Vector Display vs. Raster Display
Vector display
• Accurate (high resolution) for line drawings

• Requires display processor (controller) to interpret display commands
• High-cost
• Flickering when the number of primitives in the buffer becomes too large
Raster display
• Low-cost
• Requires frame buffer
• Refresh rate is independent of complexity of the display contents
• Easy to fill a region
• Line or polygon must be scan-converted into the component pixels in the frame
buffer, which is computationally expensive.
• Less accurate: lines are approximated with pixels on the raster grid.
This visual effect (I.e., jaggies or stair-casing) due to a sampling error is called
“aliasing”
Stereoscopic & Virtual Reality
Systems
• Technique for representing 3-D objects is displaying Stereoscopic
views
• Not produce true 3-D images
• But it does provide a 3-D effect by presentinga different view to
each eye of an observer so that scenes do appear to have depth

Video controller
• In high quality systems, two frame buffers
one buffer can be used for refreshing while the other is being
filled with intensity values.
• two buffers can switch roles
• provides a fast mechanism-for generating real-time
animations, since different views of moving objects can
be successively loaded into the refresh buffers.

Video controller
• transformations can be accomplished by the video controller.
• Areas of the screen can be enlarged, reduced, or moved from one
location to another during the refresh cycles.
• transformations can be accomplished by the video controller

Video controller
• video controller often contains a lookup table, so that pixel values
in the frame buffer are used to access the lookup table
• instead of controlling the CRT beam intensity directly.
• provides a fast method for changing screen intensity values

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• Basicconcepts in Computer Graphics – Types of Graphic Devices –

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• Non Interactive Computer Graphics

• Interactive Computer Graphics

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• Video Display Devices

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• points are called pixels (picture elements/pel)

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• Up to 24 bits per pixel – high quality systems

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• Stores the picture information as a charge distribution just behind

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