Fundamentals of Computer Graphics

This edition of Fundamentals of Computer Graphics adds four new contributed chapters and contains substantial reorganizations and improvements to the core material. The new chapters add coverage of implicit modeling and of two important graphics applications: games and information visualization. The fourth new contributed chapter is a major upgrade to the material on color science. As with the chapters added in the second edition, we have chosen the contributors both for their expertise and for their clear way of expressing ideas. We have made a number of changes to the early chapters of the book, integrating the second author’s experience teaching introductory graphics at Cornell using the first and second editions. Most of these have been revised and updated, particularly the chapters on images, viewing, ray tracing, the graphics pipeline, and the material on triangle meshes. Some of the original material from these chapters has been reorganized, sometimes with topics appearing in different chapters than in the previous editions. Our aim in this reorganization has been to move the elementary material towards the beginning. In our thinking, Chapters 2 through 8 constitute the “core core,” taking the straight and narrow path through what is absolutely required for understanding how images get onto the screen using the complementary approaches of ray tracing and rasterization. Ray tracing is covered first, since it is the simplest way to generate images of 3D scenes, followed by the mathematical machinery required for the graphics pipeline, then the pipeline itself. After that, the “outer core” covers other topics that would commonly be included in an introductory class. For example, ray tracing is split into two chapters, with the more advanced material now in Chapter 13. The material on spatial data structures (some formerly under Ray Tracing and Hidden Surfaces) is consolidated in Chapter 12 together with an expanded section on triangle meshes. In all these revisions, we have endeavored to retain the informal, intuitive style of presentation that characterizes the earlier editions, while at the same time improving consistency, precision, and completeness. We hope the reader will find the result is a better platform for a variety of courses in computer graphics.