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.
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