Computer Graphics (Fall 2003)

COMS 4160, Lecture 1: Overview and History

Ravi Ramamoorthi
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~cs4160
 What is Computer Graphics?
• Anything to do with visual representations on a
computer, including
– Text (Yes !! An early computer graphics problem)
– WIMP GUIs
– Computer Images (CG = Computer + Pictures)
– 3D Graphics: CG special effects, games, animations
– Scientific Visualization (CFD images)
– Algorithms, theory (physics, math, computation)
– Display devices, hardware (graphics cards, monitors)

The term Computer Graphics was coined by William Fetter of Boeing in 1960
First graphic system in mid 1950s USAF SAGE radar data (developed MIT)
How far we’ve come: TEXT

Manchester Mark I

Display
 From Text to GUIs
• Invented at PARC circa 1975. Used in the
Apple Macintosh, and now prevalent
everywhere.

Xerox Star Windows 1.0

 And graphical applications

• Presentations (bar charts, graphs,

powerpoint)
• Scientific
Visualization
(such as in CFD)

Compressible flow around

Space shuttle
science.gmu.edu
 Display hardware

• vector displays (1963: modified oscilloscope,

1974: Evans and Sutherland Picture System)
• raster displays
– 1975 – Evans and Sutherland frame buffer
– 1980s – cheap frame buffers  bit-mapped personal
computers
– 1990s – liquid-crystal displays  laptops
– 2000s – micro-mirror projectors  digital cinema
• other (stereo, head-mounted displays,
autostereoscopic displays, tactile, haptic, sound)

Slide courtesy Marc Levoy

 Displaying Images in Color

• 3 phosphors: Red, Green, Blue. 8 bits/channel,

color will be 24 bits, approx 17 million colors
– Secondary colors: R+B = Magenta
– R+G = Yellow
– B+G = Cyan
– R+G+B = White (PP won’t let me draw 3C diag.)
– Grayscale = .3R + .6G + .1B

• Can also use 8 bits lookup table (256 colors)

– Which 256 colors? Color Quantization (eg GIF)
 Drawing: Sketchpad (1963)
Ivan Sutherland, MIT

• First Interactive
Graphics PhD thesis

• 1988 Turing Award

“For his pioneering and
visionary contributions
to computer graphics,
• Pop up menus starting with Sketchpad”
• Constraint-based drawing
• Hierarchical Modeling
 Paint Systems
• SuperPaint system: Richard Shoup, Alvy
Ray Smith (PARC, 1973-79)

• Nowadays, Photoshop can draw, paint, edit

• Awards to Shoup and Smith: SIGGRAPH 1990 Computer Graphics
Achievement Award, Academy Award (S&E) [with Tom Porter]
 Image Processing
• Digitally alter images
• Crop,scale,composite
• Add or remove objects

• Tools are still primitive

– Relight, change materials
– Combine synthetic objects
– Topic of Research
 3D Graphics
• Maybe what we generally consider CG
• Currently important in
– Design (CAD)
– Education, Simulators, VR
– Games
– Entertainment (Movies), Art
 Rendering: 1960s (visibility)
1960s - the visibility problem
– Roberts (1963), Appel (1967) - hidden-line algorithms
– Warnock (1969), Watkins (1970) - hidden-surface
– Sutherland (1974) - visibility = sorting

Images from FvDFH, Pixar’s Shutterbug

Slide ideas for history of Rendering courtesy Marc Levoy
 Rendering: 1970s (raster graphics)
1970s - raster graphics
– Gouraud (1971) - diffuse lighting
– Phong (1974) - specular lighting
– Blinn (1974) - curved surfaces, texture
– Catmull (1974) - Z-buffer hidden-surface algorithm
– Crow (1977) - anti-aliasing
Rendering (1980s, 90s: Global Illumination)

early 1980s - global illumination

– Whitted (1980) - ray tracing
– Goral, Torrance et al. (1984) radiosity
– Kajiya (1986) - the rendering equation
New trends: non-photorealistic rendering
– Drebin et al. (1988), Levoy (1988) - volume rendering
– Haeberli (1990) - impressionistic paint programs
– Salesin et al. (1994-) - automatic pen-and-ink
illustration
– Meier (1996) - painterly rendering
New trends: Image-Based Rendering
– Chen and Williams (1993) - view interpolation
– McMillan and Bishop (1995) - plenoptic modeling
– Levoy and Hanrahan (1996) - light field rendering
 3D Graphics Pipeline

Modeling Animation Rendering

Images
Geometry, Kinematics, Shading,
/Movies
Lighting, Dynamics Simulation
Materials) of Light

• Nowadays, increasing reliance on real data (range,

photographs, motion capture). Many research questions.

• Also, Image-based rendering: interpolation of photographs

Videos
 Relationship to other courses
• Addition of several graphics courses (next year)

• Other related (but not prerequisite) topics of

interest: Computer vision, user interfaces, pixel
processing.
 Administrivia of Course
• Website:
• Assignments posted on website
• TA:
• Office Hours
• Books
• Collaboration Policy
• Grading
• Difficulty/Time required
• Programming
• Background (programming, mathematical)
• Questions?
 Course Outline
•Week 2-3: Transformations and Viewing (Midtm)
•Week 3-5: OpenGL (Ass 1,3,4)
•Week 6,7: Curves (Ass 2, Midtm)
•Week 9-12: Rendering (Final)
Note
– First part modeling, next part rendering.
– Assignments above relate to content. Dates on web
page. Midterm in class, Final assignment take home
– Remember to send e-mail per assignment 0