Computer Graphics Using OpenGL (3rd Edition) [Paperback]

Francis S Hill Jr. (Author), Stephen M Kelley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 30, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0131496700 | ISBN-13: 978-0131496705 | Edition: 3

 

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book introduces the basic concepts and techniques of modern interactive computer graphics, assisting in writing practical application programs. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

F.S. Hill Jr. is a Professor Emeritus of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  He received a Ph. D. degree from Yale University in 1968, worked for 3 years in digital data transmission at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and joined the University in 1970.  He is the author of numerous articles in the field of signal processing, communications, and computer graphics.  He has been editor and associate editor of the IEEE Communications Society magazine.  He is also a fellow of the IEEE.  He is co-author of the book Introduction To Engineering and has won several awards for outstanding teaching.

 

Stephen M. Kelley and Dr. Hill met in 2000 in connection with a National Science Foundation distance learning project.  Since then co-teaching courses in computer graphics at the University of Massachusetts and co-authoring Computer Graphics using OpenGL, 3^rd Edition.  Stephen Kelley recently graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Interactive Multimedia and Computer Graphics along with a minor in Information Technology.  Stephen also runs his own web development and consulting company, Intangible Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 920 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 3 edition (December 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131496700
• ISBN-13: 978-0131496705
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #587,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia > OpenGL

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just the facts, m'am, July 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Computer Graphics (Hardcover)

If you want a book that is not targeted towards a specific platform, just one that contains the guts of the algorithms necessary for creating curves, ray tracing, affine transformations, and the all-too-necesary World-to-Viewport code, this one is well worth the money. Definitely for the reader with a strong background in programming and mathematics, but not too much for a no-brainer like myself (I passed Calc2 with a 'D')!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes learning Computer Graphics **fun** !!, August 26, 2001

By 

Optimistix (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Computer Graphics (Hardcover)

This is an excellent first book on Computer graphics using OpenGL - very accessible and enjoyable at the same time, with a good breadth of coverage as well.

I took a course under Prof. Hill while he was a visiting Prof. at the Indian Institue of Science, which used the draft of this book. We had a great time learning graphics with Prof. Hill - his enthusiasm is infectious, and this comes out in the textbook as well. We were able to develop a 'Tour of the Tajmahal' by the end of the course, with lots of special effects (like texturing, flying objects) - it was **beautiful** :-) !!

The book covers all the usual material expected in a Computer graphics textbook - transformations, modeling, texturing, hidden surface removal ........, as well as somewhat 'advanced' topics like ray-tracing.

The writing style is engaging and the explanations are very clear - this is a book that makes it easy to learn graphics. It also contains helpful tutorial material for all the maths background required, and a really huge number of exercises - obviously, you need not do all of them, just take your pick.

Please note that it is **not** a tutorial/reference on OpenGL - it merely uses OpenGL as the tool of choice for writing graphics code. If you want to learn OpenGL, please check out the 'Official guide to learning OpenGL' by Woo et al - we used that text in conjunction with this in our course, and it's really helpful for getting upto speed with OpenGL.

All in all, this is an excellent choice if you want an uptodate text on Computer graphics using OpenGL.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent computer graphics tutorial, January 24, 2007

By 

calvinnme - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Computer Graphics Using OpenGL (3rd Edition) (Paperback)

This is a good solid introductory text on computer graphics theory and programming. Note that the book uses OpenGL rather than teaching it, so if you are looking for an OpenGL tutorial you will be disappointed. For that consult the classic "Red Book" on the subject. This book does throw in a couple of advanced topics - fractals, virtual realism, and ray tracing, for example. I really liked how the explanations were very detailed, and how pseudocode accompanies the explanation of every algorithm. The pseudocode is C-like and is therefore easily understandable. Also, the author makes excellent and frequent use of very excellent figures to get his points across. I also liked all of the practice problems, because they are good sanity checks on whether or not you really understand the material.

I will add that I was at first hesitant to add this book to my collection, because in the early 90's I used a textbook by this same author in a class I was taking on computer graphics, and it was about the most awful thing I have ever seen in print. There were a couple of good chapters, but most of it was paragraph after paragraph of rambling text without equations, codes, or anything that approached a tutorial. I wasn't a novice to this subject at the time, either, so it wasn't a lack of knowledge on the subject that made me hate that book. I'm saying all of this just in case this was your last experience with this author, don't let it prevent you from getting this book. Hill seems to have learned from his past mistakes, and I highly recommend this text. I notice the table of contents shown is for an older edition. This edition has changed considerably, so I show the new table of contents for the 3rd edition next:

Chapter 1 Introduction to Computer Graphics
1.1 What is Computer Graphics?
1.2 Where Computer Generated pictures are Used
1.3 Elements of Pictures created in Computer Graphics.
1.4 Graphics display devices
1.5 Graphics Input Primitives and Devices

Chapter 2 Getting Started Drawing Figures
2.1 Getting started making pictures
2.2 Drawing Basic Graphics Primitives
2.3 Making Line-drawings
2.4 Simple interaction with mouse and keyboard

Chapter 3 Additional Drawing Tools
3.1. Introduction
3.2. World Windows and Viewports
3.3. Clipping Lines
3.4. Regular Polygons, Circles, and Arcs
3.5. The Parametric Form of a Curve.

Chapter 4 Vector Tools for Graphics
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Review of Vectors
4.3. The Dot Product.
4.4. The Cross Product of Two Vectors.
4.5. Representations of Key Geometric Objects.
4.6. Finding the Intersection of two Line Segments.
4.7. Intersections of Lines with Planes, and Clipping.
4.8. Polygon Intersection Problems.

Chapter 5 Transformations of Objects
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Introduction to Transformations
5.3. 3D Affine Transformations
5.4. How To Change Coordinate Systems
5.5. Affine Transformations used in a Program.
5.6. To Draw 3D Scenes Interactively with OpenGL.

Chapter 6 Modeling Shapes with Polygonal Meshes.
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Introduction to Solid Modeling with Polygonal Meshes.
6.3. Polyhedra.
6.4. Extruded Shapes.
6.5. Mesh Approximations to Smooth Objects.
6.6. Particle Systems and Physically Based Systems

Chapter 7 Three-Dimensional Viewing
7.1 Introduction
7.2. The Camera Revisited.
7.3. To Specify a Camera in a program.
7.4. Perspective Projections of 3D Objects.
7.5. To Produce Stereo Views.
7.6. Taxonomy of Projections.

Chapter 8 Rendering Faces for Visual Realism
8.1. Introduction
8.2. Introduction to Shading Models
8.3. Flat Shading and Smooth Shading.
8.4. Adding Hidden Surface Removal.
8.5. To Add Texture to Faces.
8.6. To Add Shadows of Objects.
8.7. OpenGL 2.0 & The Shading Language (GLSL)

Chapter 9 Tools for Raster Displays
9.1. Introduction
9.2. Manipulating Pixmaps.
9.3. Combining Pixmaps.
9.4. Do It Yourself Line Drawing: Bresenham's Algorithm.
9.5 To Define and Fill Regions of Pixels.
9.6. Manipulating Symbolically-defined Regions.
9.7. Filling Polygon-Defined Regions.
9.8. Aliasing and Anti-Aliasing Techniques.
9.9. Creating More Shades and Colors.

Chapter 10 Curve and Surface Design
10.1. Introduction
10.2. Describing Curves using Polynomials.
10.3. On Interactive Curve Design.
10.4. Bezier Curves for Curve Design.
10.5. Properties of Bezier Curves.
10.6. Finding Better Blending functions.
10.7. The B-Spline Basis Functions.
10.8. Useful Properties of B-Spline Curves for Design.
10.9. Rational Splines and NURBS Curves.
10.10. A Glimpse at Interpolation.
10.11. Modeling Curved Surfaces.

Chapter 11 Color Theory
11.1. Introduction
11.2. Color Description
11.3. The CIE Standard
11.4. Color Spaces
11.5. Indexed Color and the LUT.
11.6. Color Quantization.

Chapter 12 Ray Tracing
12.1. Introduction
12.2. Setting Up the Geometry of Ray Tracing
12.3. Overview of the Ray-Tracing Process
12.4. Intersection of a Ray with an Object.
12.5. Organizing a Ray Tracer Application.
12.6. Intersecting Rays with Other Primitives
12.7. To Draw Shaded Pictures of Scenes
12.8. Adding Surface Texture.
12.9. Anti-aliasing Ray Tracings.
12.10. Using Extents
12.11. Adding Shadows for Greater Realism.
12.12. Reflections and Transparency
12.13. Compound Objects: Boolean Operations on Objects
12.14. Ray Tracing vs. Ray Casting

A1. Graphics Tools - Obtaining OpenGL.

A2. Some Mathematics for Computer Graphics
A2.1 Some Key Definitions for Matrices and their Operations
A2.2. Some Properties of Vectors and their operations.
A2.3. Spherical Coordinates and Direction Cosines.

A3. An Introduction to SDL: Scene Description Language
A3.1. Syntax of SDL
A3.2. Macros in SDL.
A3.3. Extending SDL.

A4. Fractals and The Mandelbrot Set
A4.1. Introduction
A4.2. Fractals and Self-Similarity
A4.3. The Mandelbrot Set

A5. Relative and Turtle Drawing.
A5.1. To Develop moveRel() and lineRel().
A5.2. Turtle Graphics
A5.3. Figures Based on Regular Polygons.

You'll note that the main difference between the second and third editions is that Hidden Surface Removal and Fractals no longer have dedicated chapters, but additional chapters on other subjects have not been added. The HSR material is now part of another chapter, and the Fractal subject matter is part of the appendix. One positive difference is the addition of some good material on the OpenGL Shading Language, which is a hot topic these days. Also, the material in the appendix on Postscript has been eliminated.