ADMAS UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER
SCIENCE

COMPUTER GRAPHICS

By: Getaneh T.
E-Mail: [email protected]
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 CHAPTER 4:
GEOMETRY AND DRAWING
ALGORITHMS

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DRAWING DIFFERENT OBJECTS
 Geometric Representation of objects: is a
representation or creating of an objects in
two or three dimensional space.
 Different techniques used to draw an object

1. Scan Converting Lines

2. Scan Converting Circles

3. Scan Converting Ellipse

4. Scan Converting Polygons

5. Scan Converting Texts

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…
The graphics.h header file

Will demonstrate in lab session….....

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SCAN CONVERTING LINES
Line Drawing
 First problem statement: Draw a line on a screen

between two points

Problem Statement
 Given two points P and Q in the XY plane, both

with integer coordinates, determine which pixels

on a screen should be drawn in order to best
approximate a unit-width line segment starting at
P and ending at Q

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WHAT IS SCAN CONVERSION?
 Final step of rasterization (the process of taking
geometric shapes and converting them into an
array of pixels stored in the framebuffer to be
displayed) – converting from “random scan”
specification to a raster scan where we specify
which pixels are drawn based on a stored array of
primitives.
 Takes triangles (or higher-order primitives) and

maps them to pixels on screen

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SCAN-CONVERTING A LINE: FINDING THE
NEXT PIXEL
Special cases:
 Horizontal Line:
 Draw pixel P and increment x coordinate value by 1 to
get next pixel.
 Vertical Line:
 Draw pixel P and increment y coordinate value by 1 to
get next pixel.
 Diagonal Line:
 Draw pixel P and increment both x and y coordinate
by 1 to get next pixel.

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VERTICAL DISTANCE

 Why can we use vertical

distance as a measure of which
point (pixel center) is closer?
 … because vertical distance
is proportional to actual
distance
 Similar triangles show that true
distances to line (in blue) are
directly proportional to vertical
distances to line (in black) for
each point
 Therefore, point with smaller
vertical distance to line is
closest to line

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STRATEGY 1 – INCREMENTAL
ALGORITHM

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STRATEGY 1 – INCREMENTAL ALGORITHM

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STRATEGY 2 – MIDPOINT LINE
ALGORITHM

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STRATEGY 2 – MIDPOINT LINE
ALGORITHM

NE pixel

Previous pixel Q
Midpoint M

E pixel

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STRATEGY 2- MIDPOINT LINE
ALGORITHM

NE pixel

E pixel

For line shown, algorithm chooses

NE as next pixel.
Now, need to find a way to
calculate on which side of line
midpoint lies

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GENERAL LINE EQUATION IN IMPLICIT
FORM

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DECISION VARIABLE

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INCREMENTING DECISION VARIABLE
IF E WAS CHOSEN:

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IF NE WAS CHOSEN:

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SUMMARY

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EXAMPLE CODE

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THE BRESENHAM LINE ALGORITHM
 The Bresenham algorithm is another
incremental scan conversion algorithm
 The big advantage of this algorithm is that

it uses only integer calculations

 Created by Jack Bresenham worked for 27

years at IBM before entering academia.

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THE BIG IDEA
Move across the x axis in unit intervals and at each
step choose between two different y coordinates

For example, from

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(xk+1, yk+1)
position (2, 3) we
4
have to choose
(xk, yk) between (3, 3) and
3 (3, 4)
(xk+1, yk)
2
We would like the
point that is closer to
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2 3 4 5
the original line
DERIVING THE BRESENHAM LINE
ALGORITHM
At sample position xk+1
yk+1
the vertical separations dupper
from the mathematical line y
dlower
are labelled dupper and yk
dlower xk+1
The y coordinate on the mathematical line at
xk+1 is:
y m( xk  1)  b 22
DERIVING THE BRESENHAM LINE
ALGORITHM (CONT…)
So, dupper and dlower are given as follows:
d lower  y  yk
m( xk  1)  b  yk
and:
d upper ( yk  1)  y
 yk  1  m( xk  1)  b
We can use these to make a simple decision about
which pixel is closer to the mathematical line

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DERIVING THE BRESENHAM LINE
ALGORITHM (CONT…)
This simple decision is based on the difference
between the two pixel positions:

d lower  d upper 2m( xk  1)  2 yk  2b  1

Let’s substitute m with ∆y/∆x where ∆x and
∆y are the differences between the end-points:

y
x(d lower  d upper ) x(2 ( xk  1)  2 yk  2b  1)
x
2y xk  2x yk  2y  x(2b  1)
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2y xk  2x yk  c

DERIVING THE BRESENHAM LINE
ALGORITHM (CONT…)

So, a decision parameter pk for the kth step

along a line is given by:
pk x(d lower  d upper )
2y xk  2x yk  c
The sign of the decision parameter pk is the
same as that of dlower – dupper
If pk is negative, then we choose the lower
pixel, otherwise we choose the upper pixel
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DERIVING THE BRESENHAM LINE
ALGORITHM (CONT…)
Remember coordinate changes occur along the
x axis in unit steps so we can do everything
with integer calculations
At step k+1 the decision parameter is given
as: p 2y x  2x y  c
k 1 k 1 k 1

Subtracting pk from this we get:

pk 1  pk 2y ( xk 1  xk )  2x( yk 1  yk )
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DERIVING THE BRESENHAM LINE
ALGORITHM (CONT…)

But, xk+1 is the same as xk+1 so:

pk 1  pk  2y  2x( yk 1  yk )
where yk+1 - yk is either 0 or 1 depending on
the sign of pk
The first decision parameter p0 is evaluated at
(x0, y0) is given as:
p0 2y  x
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THE BRESENHAM LINE ALGORITHM
BRESENHAM’S LINE DRAWING ALGORITHM
(for |m| < 1.0)
1. Input the two line end-points, storing the left end-point
in (x0, y0)
2. Plot the point (x0, y0)
3. Calculate the constants Δx, Δy, 2Δy, and (2Δy - 2Δx)
and get the first value for the decision parameter as:
p0 2y  x
4. At each xk along the line, starting at k = 0, perform the
following test. If pk < 0, the next point to plot is
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(xk+1, yk) and:
pk 1  pk  2y
THE BRESENHAM LINE ALGORITHM
(CONT…)
Otherwise, the next point to plot is (xk+1, yk+1) and:
pk 1  pk  2y  2x
5. Repeat step 4 (Δx – 1) times
.

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BRESENHAM EXAMPLE
Let’s have a go at this
Let’s plot the line from (20, 10) to (30, 18)
First off calculate all of the constants:
Δx: 10
Δy: 8
2Δy: 16
2Δy - 2Δx: -4
Calculate the initial decision parameter p0:
p0 = 2Δy – Δx = 6
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 BRESENHAM EXAMPLE (CONT…)
18 k pk (xk+1,yk+1)

17 0

16 1

15 2
3
14
4
13
5
12
6
11
7
10 31
8
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 9
BRESENHAM EXERCISE
Go through the steps of the Bresenham line
drawing algorithm for a line going from (21,12)
to (29,16)

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BRESENHAM LINE ALGORITHM
SUMMARY
The Bresenham line algorithm has the
following advantages:
 An fast incremental algorithm
 Uses only integer calculations

Comparing this to the DDA algorithm, DDA has

the following problems:
 Accumulation of round-off errors can make the
pixelated line drift away from what was intended
 The rounding operations and floating point
arithmetic involved are time consuming

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A SIMPLE CIRCLE DRAWING
ALGORITHM
The equation for a circle is:
2 2 2
x  y r
where r is the radius of the circle
So, we can write a simple circle drawing
algorithm by solving the equation for y at unit
x intervals using:
y  r 2  x 2
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A SIMPLE CIRCLE DRAWING
ALGORITHM (CONT…)

y0  20 2  0 2 20

y1  20 2  12 20

y2  20 2  2 2 20

y19  20 2  19 2 6

y20  20 2  20 2 0
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A SIMPLE CIRCLE DRAWING
ALGORITHM (CONT…)
However, unsurprisingly this is not a brilliant
solution!
Firstly, the resulting circle has large gaps
where the slope approaches the vertical
Secondly, the calculations are not very efficient
 The square (multiply) operations
 The square root operation – try really hard to
avoid these!
We need a more efficient, more accurate
solution

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EIGHT-WAY SYMMETRY
The first thing we can notice to make our circle
drawing algorithm more efficient is that circles centred
at (0, 0) have eight-way symmetry

(-x, y) (x, y)

(-y, x) (y, x)

(-y, -x) (y, -x)

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(-x, -y) (x, -y)
MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
Similarly to the case with lines, there is an
incremental algorithm for drawing circles – the
mid-point circle algorithm
In the mid-point circle algorithm we use eight-
way symmetry so only ever calculate the
points for the top right eighth of a circle, and
then use symmetry to get the rest of the points

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MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
(CONT…)
Assume that we have
just plotted point (xk, yk) (xk, yk) (xk+1, yk)

The next point is a

choice between (xk+1, yk)
(xk+1, yk-1)
and (xk+1, yk-1)
We would like to choose
the point that is nearest to
the actual circle
So how do we make this choice?
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MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
(CONT…)
Let’s see the equation of the circle slightly to
give us:
f circ ( x, y )  x 2  y 2  r 2
The equation evaluates as follows:

 0, if ( x, y ) is inside the circle boundary


f circ ( x, y ) 0, if ( x, y ) is on the circle boundary
 0, if ( x, y ) is outside the circle boundary

By evaluating this function at the midpoint
between the candidate pixels we can make our
decision 40
MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
(CONT…)
Assuming we have just plotted the pixel at (xk,yk) so
we need to choose between (xk+1,yk) and (xk+1,yk-
1) pk  f circ ( xk  1, yk  1 )
Our decision variable can be defined 2 as:
2
( xk  1)  ( yk  1 2
) r 2
2

Ifpk < 0 the midpoint is inside the circle and and the
pixel at yk is closer to the circle

Otherwise the midpoint is outside and yk-1 is closer41

MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
(CONT…)
To ensure things are as efficient as possible we
can do all of our calculations incrementally
First consider:

pk 1  f circ xk 1  1, yk 1  1
2

or:
2

[( xk  1)  1]  yk 1  1
2
2
 r 2

pk 1  pk  2( xk  1)  ( yk21  yk2 )  ( yk 1  yk )  1
where yk+1 is either yk or yk-1 depending on
the sign of pk
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MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
(CONT…)
The first decision variable is given as:
p0  f circ (1, r  1 )
2
1  (r  1 ) 2  r 2
2
5  r
4
Then if pk < 0 then the next decision variable
is given as:
pk 1  pk  2 xk 1  1
If pk > 0 then the decision variable is:
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pk 1  pk  2 xk 1  1  2 yk  1
THE MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
 Input radius r and circle centre (xc, yc), then set
the coordinates for the first point on the
circumference of a circle centred on the origin
as: ( x , y ) (0, r )
0 0

 Calculate the initial value of the decision

parameter as: p  5 r
0 4

 Starting with k = 0 at each position xk, perform

the following test. If pk < 0, the next point along 44
pk 1  pk  2 xk 1  1
the circle centred on (0, 0) is (xk+1, yk) and:
THE MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
(CONT…)
Otherwise the next point along the circle is (xk+1,
yk-1) and:
pk 1  pk  2 xk 1  1  2 yk 1
4. Determine symmetry points in the other seven
octants
5. Move each calculated pixel position (x, y) onto the
circular path centred at (xc, yc) to plot the
coordinate values:
x  x  xc y  y  yc

6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 until x >= y 45

MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
EXAMPLE
To see the mid-point circle algorithm in action
lets use it to draw a circle centred at (0,0) with
radius 10

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 MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
EXAMPLE (CONT…)
10 pk
k (xk+1,yk+1) 2xk+1 2yk+1
9
8 0
7 1
6
5 2
4 3
3
2 4
1 5
0
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6
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
EXERCISE
Use the mid-point circle algorithm to draw the
circle centred at (0,0) with radius 15

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MID-POINT CIRCLE ALGORITHM
SUMMARY
The key insights in the mid-point circle
algorithm are:
 Eight-way symmetry can hugely reduce the work
in drawing a circle
 Moving in unit steps along the x axis at each
point along the circle’s edge we need to choose
between two possible y coordinates

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