Introduction to Computer Graphics
UNIT 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER GRAPHICS Structures 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3
Introduction Objectives What is Computer Graphics? Applications 1.3.1 Presentation Graphics 1.3.2 Painting and Drawing 1.3.3 Photo Editing 1.3.4 Scientific Visualisation 1.3.5 Image Processing 1.3.6 Education, Training, Entertainment and CAD 1.3.7 Simulations 1.3.8 Animation and Games 1.4 Graphics Hardware 1.4.1 Input and Output Devices 1.4.2 Display Devices 1.5 Summary 1.6 Solutions/Answers
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1.0 INTRODUCTION Early man used drawings to communicate even before he learnt to talk, write, or count. Incidentally, these ancient hieroglyphics (picture-writings) communicate as well today, as they must have done thousands of years ago, this fully supports the saying that “A picture is worth a thousand words” and in the era of computers we can add on to it or we may as well revise the saying to “A computer is worth a million pictures!” ; so, you can estimate the power of a computer as a communication system. Now, with the advances in computer hardware and software, graphics has come a full circle and, more and more people are teaching and learning, communicating and sharing their ideas through the medium of graphics. By graphics, we mean any sketch, drawing, special artwork or other material that pictorially depict an object or a process or otherwise conveys information, as a supplement to or instead of written descriptions, and the utilisation of computers to accomplish such tasks leads to a new discipline of computer graphics. Traditionally, graphics has referred to engineering drawings of buildings, bridges, machine parts etc. and scientific drawings such as x-y curves, network and process flowcharts. In recent decades, graphics has ventured into industrial design, advertising and other artistic endeavours. During the last few years, even newspapers and periodicals aimed at the common man have begun to utilise graphics to present quantitative news such as selection results and production statistics. Computer graphics can do all this and more. In fact, the power and easy availability of computer graphics have increased the use of pictures to replace and augment words to describe, educate, or inform a wide variety of audiences, on a wide variety of subjects. In this unit, we shall concentrate on the graphic capabilities and potential of the digital computer plus we will discuss the meaning of the term graphics and its types, in addition to which, we will also discuss the hardware used for practical application of graphics in different streams of life. The software section however, will be discussed in Block 4 of this course.
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