computer graphics for other uses see computer graphics disambiguation a blender 245 screenshot displaying the 3d test model suzanne computer graphics are pictures and films created using computers usually the term refers to computergenerated image data created with the help of specialized graphical hardware and software it is a vast and recently developed area of computer science the phrase was coined in 1960 by computer graphics researchers verne hudson and william fetter of boeing it is often abbreviated as cg though sometimes erroneously referred to as computergenerated imagery cgi some topics in computer graphics include user interface design sprite graphics vector graphics 3d modeling shaders gpu design implicit surface visualization with ray tracing and computer vision among others the overall methodology depends heavily on the underlying sciences of geometry optics and physics computer graphics is responsible for displaying art and image data effectively and meaningfully to the consumer it is also used for processing image data received from the physical world computer graphics development has had a significant impact on many types of media and has revolutionized animation movies advertising video games and graphic design in general overview the term computer graphics has been used in a broad sense to describe almost everything on computers that is not text or sound typically the term computer graphics refers to several different things the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer the various technologies used to create and manipulate images the subfield of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content see study of computer graphics today computer graphics is widespread such imagery is found in and on television newspapers weather reports and in a variety of medical investigations and surgical procedures a wellconstructed graph can present complex statistics in a form that is easier to understand and interpret in the media such graphs are used to illustrate papers reports theses and other presentation material many tools have been developed to visualize data computer generated imagery can be categorized into several different types two dimensional 2d three dimensional 3d and animated graphics as technology has improved 3d computer graphics have become more common but 2d computer graphics are still widely used computer graphics has emerged as a subfield of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content over the past decade other specialized fields have been developed like information visualization and scientific visualization more concerned with the visualization of three dimensional phenomena architectural meteorological medical biological etc where the emphasis is on realistic renderings of volumes surfaces illumination sources and so forth perhaps with a dynamic time component history see also history of computer animation introduction the precursor sciences to the development of modern computer graphics were the advances in electrical engineering electronics and television that took place during the first half of the twentieth century screens could display art since the lumiere brothers use of mattes to create special effects for the earliest films dating from 1895 but such displays were limited and not interactive the first cathode ray tube the braun tube was invented in 1897 it in turn would permit the oscilloscope and the military control panel the more direct precursors of the field as they provided the first twodimensional electronic displays that responded to programmatic or user input nevertheless computer graphics remained relatively unknown as a discipline until the 1950s and the postworld war ii period during which time the discipline emerged from a combination of both pure university and laboratory academic research into more advanced computers and the united states militarys further development of technologies like radar advanced aviation and rocketry developed during the war new kinds of displays were needed to process the wealth of information resulting from such projects leading to the development of computer graphics as a discipline 1950s sage sector control room early projects like the whirlwind and sage projects introduced the crt as a viable display and interaction interface and introduced the light pen as an input device douglas t ross of the whirlwind sage system performed a personal experiment in which a small program he wrote captured the movement of his finger and displayed its vector his traced name on a display scope one of the first interactive video games to feature recognizable interactive graphics tennis for two was created for an oscilloscope by william higinbotham to entertain visitors in 1958 at brookhaven national laboratory and simulated a tennis match in 1959 douglas t ross innovated again while working at mit on transforming mathematic statements into computer generated 3d machine tool vectors by taking the opportunity to create a display scope image of a disney cartoon character electronics pioneer hewlettpackard went public in 1957 after incorporating the decade prior and established strong ties with stanford university through its founders who were alumni this began the decadeslong transformation of the southern san francisco bay area into the worlds leading computer technology hub now known as silicon valley the field of computer graphics developed with the emergence of computer graphics hardware further advances in computing led to greater advancements in interactive computer graphics in 1959 the tx2 computer was developed at mits lincoln laboratory the tx2 integrated a number of new manmachine interfaces a light pen could be used to draw sketches on the computer using ivan sutherlands revolutionary sketchpad software using a light pen sketchpad allowed one to draw simple shapes on the computer screen save them and even recall them later the light pen itself had a small photoelectric cell in its tip this cell emitted an electronic pulse whenever it was placed in front of a computer screen and the screens electron gun fired directly at it by simply timing the electronic pulse with the current location of the electron gun it was easy to pinpoint exactly where the pen was on the screen at any given moment once that was determined the computer could then draw a cursor at that location sutherland seemed to find the perfect solution for many of the graphics problems he faced even today many standards of computer graphics interfaces got their start with this early sketchpad program one example of this is in drawing constraints if one wants to draw a square for example they do not have to worry about drawing four lines perfectly to form the edges of the box one can simply specify that they want to draw a box and then specify the location and size of the box the software will then construct a perfect box with the right dimensions and at the right location another example is that sutherlands software modeled objects not just a picture of objects in other words with a model of a car one could change the size of the tires without affecting the rest of the car it could stretch the body of car without deforming the tires 1960s spacewar running on the computer history museums pdp1 the phrase computer graphics itself was coined in 1960 by william fetter a graphic designer for boeing this old quote in many secondary sources comes complete with the following sentence fetter has said that the terms were actually given to him by verne hudson of the wichita division of boeing in 1961 another student at mit steve russell created another important title in the history of video games spacewar written for the dec pdp1 spacewar was an instant success and copies started flowing to other pdp1 owners and eventually dec got a copy the engineers at dec used it as a diagnostic program on every new pdp1 before shipping it the sales force picked up on this quickly enough and when installing new units would run the worlds first video game for their new customers higginbothams tennis for two had beaten spacewar by almost three years but it was almost unknown outside of a research or academic setting e e zajac a scientist at bell telephone laboratory btl created a film called simulation of a twogiro gravity attitude control system in 1963 in this computergenerated film zajac showed how the attitude of a satellite could be altered as it orbits the earth he created the animation on an ibm 7090 mainframe computer also at btl ken knowlton frank sinden and michael noll started working in the computer graphics field sinden created a film called force mass and motion illustrating newtons laws of motion in operation around the same time other scientists were creating computer graphics to illustrate their research at lawrence radiation laboratory nelson max created the films flow of a viscous fluid and propagation of shock waves in a solid form boeing aircraft created a film called vibration of an aircraft also sometime in the early 1960s automobiles would also provide a boost through the early work of pierre bzier at renault who used paul de casteljaus curves now called bzier curves after bziers work in the field to develop 3d modeling techniques for renault car bodies these curves would form the foundation for much curvemodeling work in the field as curves unlike polygons are mathematically complex entities to draw and model well pong arcade version it was not long before major corporations started taking an interest in computer graphics trw lockheedgeorgia general electric and sperry rand are among the many companies that were getting started in computer graphics by the mid1960s ibm was quick to respond to this interest by releasing the ibm 2250 graphics terminal the first commercially available graphics computer ralph baer a supervising engineer at sanders associates came up with a home video game in 1966 that was later licensed to magnavox and called the odyssey while very simplistic and requiring fairly inexpensive electronic parts it allowed the player to move points of light around on a screen it was the first consumer computer graphics product david c evans was director of engineering at bendix corporations computer division from 1953 to 1962 after which he worked for the next five years as a visiting professor at berkeley there he continued his interest in computers and how they interfaced with people in 1966 the university of utah recruited evans to form a computer science program and computer graphics quickly became his primary interest this new department would become the worlds primary research center for computer graphics also in 1966 ivan sutherland continued to innovate at mit when he invented the first computer controlled headmounted display hmd called the sword of damocles because of the hardware required for support it displayed two separate wireframe images one for each eye this allowed the viewer to see the computer scene in stereoscopic 3d after receiving his phd from mit sutherland became director of information processing at arpa advanced research projects agency and later became a professor at harvard in 1967 sutherland was recruited by evans to join the computer science program at the university of utah a development which would turn that department into one of the most important research centers in graphics for nearly a decade thereafter eventually producing some of the most important pioneers in the field there sutherland perfected his hmd twenty years later nasa would rediscover his techniques in their virtual reality research at utah sutherland and evans were highly sought after consultants by large companies but they were frustrated at the lack of graphics hardware available at the time so they started formulating a plan to start their own company in 1968 arthur appel described the first algorithm for what would eventually become known as ray casting a basis point for almost all of modern 3d graphics as well as the later pursuit of photorealism in graphics in 1969 the acm initiated a special interest group on graphics siggraph which organizes conferences graphics standards and publications within the field of computer graphics by 1973 the first annual siggraph conference was held which has become one of the focuses of the organization siggraph has grown in size and importance as the field of computer graphics has expanded over time 1970s the utah teapot by martin newell and its static renders became emblematic of cgi development during the 1970s an astonishing amount of the breakthroughs in the field in this decade particularly many important early breakthroughs in the transformation of graphics from utilitarian to realistic occurred at the university of utah in the 1970s which had hired ivan sutherland sutherland was paired with david c evans to teach an advanced computer graphics class which contributed a great deal of founding research to the field and taught several students who would grow to found several of the industrys most important companies namely pixar silicon graphics and adobe systems one of these students was edwin catmull catmull had just come from the boeing company and had been working on his degree in physics growing up on disney catmull loved animation yet quickly discovered that he did not have the talent for drawing now catmull along with many others saw computers as the natural progression of animation and they wanted to be part of the revolution the first animation that catmull saw was his own he created an animation of his hand opening and closing he also pioneered texture mapping to paint textures on threedimensional models in 1974 now considered one of the fundamental techniques in 3d modeling it became one of his goals to produce a featurelength motion picture using computer graphics a goal he would achieve two decades later after his founding role in pixar in the same class fred parke created an animation of his wifes face as the uu computer graphics laboratory was attracting people from all over john warnock was another of those early pioneers he would later found adobe systems and create a revolution in the publishing world with his postscript page description language and adobe would go on later to create the industry standard photo editing software in adobe photoshop and a prominent movie industry special effects program in adobe after effects tom stockham led the image processing group at uu which worked closely with the computer graphics lab james clark was also there he would later found silicon graphics a major advance in 3d computer graphics was created at uu by these early pioneers hidden surface determination in order to draw a representation of a 3d object on the screen the computer must determine which surfaces are behind the object from the viewers perspective and thus should be hidden when the computer creates or renders the image the 3d core graphics system or core was the first graphical standard to be developed a group of 25 experts of the acm special interest group siggraph developed this conceptual framework the specifications were published in 1977 and it became a foundation for many future developments in the field also in the 1970s henri gouraud jim blinn and bui tuong phong contributed to the foundations of shading in cgi via the development of the gouraud shading and blinnphong shading models allowing graphics to move beyond a flat look to a look more accurately portraying depth jim blinn also innovated further in 1978 by introducing bump mapping a technique for simulating uneven surfaces and the predecessor to many more advanced kinds of mapping used today the modern videogame arcade as is known today was birthed in the 1970s with the first arcade games using realtime 2d sprite graphics pong in 1972 was one of the first hit arcade cabinet games speed race in 1974 featured sprites moving along a vertically scrolling road gun fight in 1975 featured humanlooking sprite character graphics while space invaders in 1978 featured a large number of sprites on screen both used an intel 8080 microprocessor and fujitsu mb14241 video shifter to accelerate the drawing of sprite graphics 1980s donkey kong was one of many popular video games that helped to popularize computer graphics to a mass audience in the 1980s the 1980s began to see the modernization and commercialization of computer graphics as the home computer proliferated a subject which had previously been an academicsonly discipline was adopted by a much larger audience and the number of computer graphics developers increased significantly in the early 1980s the availability of bitslice and 16bit microprocessors started to revolutionize highresolution computer graphics terminals which now increasingly became intelligent semistandalone and standalone workstations graphics and application processing were increasingly migrated to the intelligence in the workstation rather than continuing to rely on central mainframe and minicomputers typical of the early move to highresolution computer graphics intelligent workstations for the computeraided engineering market were the orca 1000 2000 and 3000 workstations developed by orcatech of ottawa a spinoff from bellnorthern research and led by david pearson an early workstation pioneer the orca 3000 was based on motorola 68000 and amd bitslice processors and had unix as its operating system it was targeted squarely at the sophisticated end of the design engineering sector artists and graphic designers began to see the personal computer particularly the commodore amiga and macintosh as a serious design tool one that could save time and draw more accurately than other methods the macintosh remains a highly popular tool for computer graphics among graphic design studios and businesses modern computers dating from the 1980s often use graphical user interfaces gui to present data and information with symbols icons and pictures rather than text graphics are one of the five key elements of multimedia technology in the field of realistic rendering japans osaka university developed the links1 computer graphics system a supercomputer that used up to 257 zilog z8001 microprocessors in 1982 for the purpose of rendering realistic 3d computer graphics according to the information processing society of japan the core of 3d image rendering is calculating the luminance of each pixel making up a rendered surface from the given viewpoint light source and object position the links1 system was developed to realize an image rendering methodology in which each pixel could be parallel processed independently using ray tracing by developing a new software methodology specifically for highspeed image rendering links1 was able to rapidly render highly realistic images it was used to create the worlds first 3d planetariumlike video of the entire heavens that was made completely with computer graphics the video was presented at the fujitsu pavilion at the 1985 international exposition in tsukuba also in the field of realistic rendering the general rendering equation of david immel and james kajiya was developed in 1986 an important step towards implementing global illumination which is necessary to pursue photorealism in computer graphics the continuing popularity of star wars and other science fiction franchises were relevant in cinematic cgi at this time as lucasfilm and industrial light magic became known as the goto house by many other studios for topnotch computer graphics in film important advances in chroma keying bluescreening etc were made for the later films of the original trilogy two other pieces of video would also outlast the era as historically relevant dire straits iconic nearfullycgi video for their song money for nothing in 1985 which popularized cgi among music fans of that era and a scene from young sherlock holmes the same year featuring the first fully cgi character in a feature movie an animated stainedglass knight in 1988 the first shaders small programs designed specifically to do shading as a separate algorithm were developed by pixar which had already spun off from industrial light magic as a separate entity though the public would not see the results of such technological progress until the next decade in the late 1980s sgi computers were used to create some of the first fully computergenerated short films at pixar and silicon graphics machines were considered a highwater mark for the field during the decade the 1980s is also called the golden era of videogames millionsselling systems from atari nintendo and sega among other companies exposed computer graphics for the first time to a new young and impressionable audience as did msdosbased personal computers apple iis and macs and amigas which also allowed users to program their own games if skilled enough in the arcades advances were made in commercial realtime 3d graphics in 1988 the first dedicated realtime 3d graphics boards were introduced in arcades with the namco system 21 this innovation would be the precursor of the later home graphics processing unit or gpu a technology where a separate and very powerful chip is used in parallel processing with a cpu to optimize graphics 1990s quarxs series poster maurice benayoun franois schuiten 1992 the 1990s overwhelming note was the emergence of 3d modeling on a mass scale and an impressive rise in the quality of cgi generally home computers became able to take on rendering tasks that previously had been limited to workstations costing thousands of dollars as 3d modelers became available for home systems the popularity of silicon graphics workstations declined and powerful microsoft windows and apple macintosh machines running autodesk products like 3d studio or other home rendering software ascended in importance by the end of the decade the gpu would begin its rise to the prominence it still enjoys today the field began to see the first rendered graphics that could truly pass as photorealistic to the untrained eye though they could not yet do so with a trained cgi artist and 3d graphics became far more popular in gaming multimedia and animation at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the nineties were created in france the very first computer graphics tv series la vie des btes by studio mac guff ligne 1988 les fables gomtriques 19891991 by studio fantme and quarxs the first hdtv computer graphics series by maurice benayoun and franois schuiten studio za production 19901993 in film pixar began its serious commercial rise in this era under edwin catmull with its first major film release in 1995 toy story a critical and commercial success of ninefigure magnitude the studio to invent the programmable shader would go on to have many animated hits and its work on prerendered video animation is still considered an industry leader and research trail breaker in video games in 1992 virtua racing running on the sega model 1 arcade system board laid the foundations for fully 3d racing games and popularized realtime 3d polygonal graphics among a wider audience in the video game industry primarily by john carmack the sony playstation sega saturn and nintendo 64 among other consoles sold in the millions and popularized 3d graphics for home gamers certain late90s firstgeneration 3d titles became seen as influential in popularizing 3d graphics among console users such as platform games super mario 64 and the legend of zelda ocarina of time and early 3d fighting games like virtua fighter battle arena toshinden and tekken technology and algorithms for rendering continued to improve greatly in 1996 krishnamurty and levoy invented normal mapping an improvement on jim blinns bump mapping 1999 saw nvidia release the seminal geforce 256 the first home video card billed as a graphics processing unit or gpu which in its own words contained integrated transform lighting triangle setupclipping and rendering engines by the end of the decade computers adopted common frameworks for graphics processing such as directx and opengl since then computer graphics have only become more detailed and realistic due to more powerful graphics hardware and 3d modeling software amd also became a leading developer of graphics boards in this decade creating a duopoly in the field which exists this day 2000s a screenshot from the videogame killing floor built in unreal engine 2 personal computers and console video games took a great graphical leap forward in the 2000s becoming able to display graphics in real time computing that had previously only been possible prerendered andor on businesslevel hardware cgi became ubiquitous in earnest during this era video games and cgi cinema had spread the reach of computer graphics to the mainstream by the late 1990s and continued to do so at an accelerated pace in the 2000s cgi was also adopted en masse for television advertisements widely in the late 1990s and 2000s and so became familiar to a massive audience the continued rise and increasing sophistication of the graphics processing unit were crucial to this decade and 3d rendering capabilities became a standard feature as 3dgraphics gpus became considered a necessity for desktop computer makers to offer the nvidia geforce line of graphics cards dominated the market in the early decade with occasional significant competing presence from ati as the decade progressed even lowend machines usually contained a 3dcapable gpu of some kind as nvidia and amd both introduced lowpriced chipsets and continued to dominate the market shaders which had been introduced in the 1980s to perform specialized processing on the gpu would by the end of the decade become supported on most consumer hardware speeding up graphics considerably and allowing for greatly improved texture and shading in computer graphics via the widespread adoption of normal mapping bump mapping and a variety of other techniques allowing the simulation of a great amount of detail computer graphics used in films and video games gradually began to be realistic to the point of entering the uncanny valley cgi movies proliferated with traditional animated cartoon films like ice age and madagascar as well as numerous pixar offerings like finding nemo dominating the box office in this field the final fantasy the spirits within released in 2001 was the first fully computergenerated feature film to use photorealistic cgi characters and be fully made with motion capture other animated films like the polar express drew attention at this time as well star wars also resurfaced with its prequel trilogy and the effects continued to set a bar for cgi in film in videogames the sony playstation 2 and 3 the microsoft xbox line of consoles and offerings from nintendo such as the gamecube maintained a large following as did the windows pc marquee cgiheavy titles like the series of grand theft auto assassins creed final fantasy bioshock kingdom hearts mirrors edge and dozens of others continued to approach photorealism grow the video game industry and impress until that industrys revenues became comparable to those of movies microsoft made a decision to expose directx more easily to the independent developer world with the xna program but it was not a success directx itself remained a commercial success however opengl continued to mature as well and it and directx improved greatly the secondgeneration shader languages hlsl and glsl began to be popular in this decade in scientific computing the gpgpu technique to pass large amounts of data bidirectionally between a gpu and cpu was invented speeding up analysis on many kinds of bioinformatics and molecular biology experiments the technique has also been used for bitcoin mining and has applications in computer vision 2010s this section needs expansion you can help by adding to it october 2014 a diamond plate texture rendered closeup using physically based rendering principles increasingly an active area of research for computer graphics in the 2010s in the early half of the 2010s cgi is nearly ubiquitous in video prerendered graphics are nearly scientifically photorealistic and realtime graphics on a suitably highend system may simulate photorealism to the untrained eye texture mapping has matured into a multistage process with many layers generally it is not uncommon to implement texture mapping bump mapping or isosurfaces normal mapping lighting maps including specular highlights and reflection techniques and shadow volumes into one rendering engine using shaders which are maturing considerably shaders are now very nearly a necessity for advanced work in the field providing considerable complexity in manipulating pixels vertices and textures on a perelement basis and countless possible effects their shader languages hlsl and glsl are active fields of research and development physically based rendering or pbr which implements even more maps to simulate real optic light flow is an active research area as well along with advanced optics areas like subsurface scattering and photon mapping experiments into the processing power required to provide graphics in real time at ultrahighresolution modes like ultra hd are beginning though beyond reach of all but the highestend hardware in cinema most animated movies are cgi now a great many animated cgi films are made per year but few if any attempt photorealism due to continuing fears of the uncanny valley most are 3d cartoons in videogames the microsoft xbox one sony playstation 4 and nintendo switch currently dominate the home space and are all capable of highly advanced 3d graphics the windows pc is still one of the most active gaming platforms as well image types twodimensional 2d computer graphics see also video display controller raster graphic sprites left and masks right 2d computer graphics are the computerbased generation of digital imagesmostly from models such as digital image and by techniques specific to them 2d computer graphics are mainly used in applications that were originally developed upon traditional printing and drawing technologies such as typography in those applications the twodimensional image is not just a representation of a realworld object but an independent artifact with added semantic value twodimensional models are therefore preferred because they give more direct control of the image than 3d computer graphics whose approach is more akin to photography than to typography pixel art see also pixel art a large form of digital art pixel art is created through the use of raster graphics software where images are edited on the pixel level graphics in most old or relatively limited computer and video games graphing calculator games and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art sprite graphics see also sprite computer graphics a sprite is a twodimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene initially including just graphical objects handled separately from the memory bitmap of a video display this now includes various manners of graphical overlays originally sprites were a method of integrating unrelated bitmaps so that they appeared to be part of the normal bitmap on a screen such as creating an animated character that can be moved on a screen without altering the data defining the overall screen such sprites can be created by either electronic circuitry or software in circuitry a hardware sprite is a hardware construct that employs custom dma channels to integrate visual elements with the main screen in that it superimposes two discrete video sources software can simulate this through specialized rendering methods vector graphics see also vector graphics example showing effect of vector graphics versus raster bitmap graphics vector graphics formats are complementary to raster graphics raster graphics is the representation of images as an array of pixels and is typically used for the representation of photographic images vector graphics consists in encoding information about shapes and colors that comprise the image which can allow for more flexibility in rendering there are instances when working with vector tools and formats is best practice and instances when working with raster tools and formats is best practice there are times when both formats come together an understanding of the advantages and limitations of each technology and the relationship between them is most likely to result in efficient and effective use of tools threedimensional 3d computer graphics see also graphics processing unit 3d graphics compared to 2d graphics are graphics that use a threedimensional representation of geometric data for the purpose of performance this is stored in the computer this includes images that may be for later display or for realtime viewing despite these differences 3d computer graphics rely on similar algorithms as 2d computer graphics do in the frame and raster graphics like in 2d in the final rendered display in computer graphics software the distinction between 2d and 3d is occasionally blurred 2d applications may use 3d techniques to achieve effects such as lighting and primarily 3d may use 2d rendering techniques 3d computer graphics are the same as 3d models the model is contained within the graphical data file apart from the rendering however there are differences that include the 3d model is the representation of any 3d object until visually displayed a model is not graphic due to printing 3d models are not only confined to virtual space 3d rendering is how a model can be displayed also can be used in nongraphical computer simulations and calculations computer animation see also computer animation example of computer animation produced using motion capture fractal landscape an example of computergenerated imagery computer animation is the art of creating moving images via the use of computers it is a subfield of computer graphics and animation increasingly it is created by means of 3d computer graphics though 2d computer graphics are still widely used for stylistic low bandwidth and faster realtime rendering needs sometimes the target of the animation is the computer itself but sometimes the target is another medium such as film it is also referred to as cgi computergenerated imagery or computergenerated imaging especially when used in films virtual entities may contain and be controlled by assorted attributes such as transform values location orientation and scale stored in an objects transformation matrix animation is the change of an attribute over time multiple methods of achieving animation exist the rudimentary form is based on the creation and editing of keyframes each storing a value at a given time per attribute to be animated the 2d3d graphics software will change with each keyframe creating an editable curve of a value mapped over time in which results in animation other methods of animation include procedural and expressionbased techniques the former consolidates related elements of animated entities into sets of attributes useful for creating particle effects and crowd simulations the latter allows an evaluated result returned from a userdefined logical expression coupled with mathematics to automate animation in a predictable way convenient for controlling bone behavior beyond what a hierarchy offers in skeletal system set up to create the illusion of movement an image is displayed on the computer screen then quickly replaced by a new image that is similar to the previous image but shifted slightly this technique is identical to the illusion of movement in television and motion pictures concepts and principles images are typically created by devices such as cameras mirrors lenses telescopes microscopes etc digital images include both vector images and raster images but raster images are more commonly used pixel in the enlarged portion of the image individual pixels are rendered as squares and can be easily seen in digital imaging a pixel or picture element is a single point in a raster image pixels are placed on a regular 2dimensional grid and are often represented using dots or squares each pixel is a sample of an original image where more samples typically provide a more accurate representation of the original the intensity of each pixel is variable in color systems each pixel has typically three components such as red green and blue graphics are visual presentations on a surface such as a computer screen examples are photographs drawing graphics designs maps engineering drawings or other images graphics often combine text and illustration graphic design may consist of the deliberate selection creation or arrangement of typography alone as in a brochure flier poster web site or book without any other element clarity or effective communication may be the objective association with other cultural elements may be sought or merely the creation of a distinctive style primitives primitives are basic units which a graphics system may combine to create more complex images or models examples would be sprites and character maps in 2d video games geometric primitives in cad or polygons or triangles in 3d rendering primitives may be supported in hardware for efficient rendering or the building blocks provided by a graphics application rendering rendering is the generation of a 2d image from a 3d model by means of computer programs a scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure it would contain geometry viewpoint texture lighting and shading information as a description of the virtual scene the data contained in the scene file is then passed to a rendering program to be processed and output to a digital image or raster graphics image file the rendering program is usually built into the computer graphics software though others are available as plugins or entirely separate programs the term rendering may be by analogy with an artists rendering of a scene although the technical details of rendering methods vary the general challenges to overcome in producing a 2d image from a 3d representation stored in a scene file are outlined as the graphics pipeline along a rendering device such as a gpu a gpu is a device able to assist the cpu in calculations if a scene is to look relatively realistic and predictable under virtual lighting the rendering software should solve the rendering equation the rendering equation does not account for all lighting phenomena but is a general lighting model for computergenerated imagery rendering is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing file to produce final video output 3d projection 3d projection is a method of mapping three dimensional points to a two dimensional plane as most current methods for displaying graphical data are based on planar two dimensional media the use of this type of projection is widespread especially in computer graphics engineering and drafting ray tracing ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image plane the technique is capable of producing a very high degree of photorealism usually higher than that of typical scanline rendering methods but at a greater computational cost shading example of shading shading refers to depicting depth in 3d models or illustrations by varying levels of darkness it is a process used in drawing for depicting levels of darkness on paper by applying media more densely or with a darker shade for darker areas and less densely or with a lighter shade for lighter areas there are various techniques of shading including cross hatching where perpendicular lines of varying closeness are drawn in a grid pattern to shade an area the closer the lines are together the darker the area appears likewise the farther apart the lines are the lighter the area appears the term has been recently generalized to mean that shaders are applied texture mapping texture mapping is a method for adding detail surface texture or colour to a computergenerated graphic or 3d model its application to 3d graphics was pioneered by dr edwin catmull in 1974 a texture map is applied mapped to the surface of a shape or polygon this process is akin to applying patterned paper to a plain white box multitexturing is the use of more than one texture at a time on a polygon procedural textures created from adjusting parameters of an underlying algorithm that produces an output texture and bitmap textures created in an image editing application or imported from a digital camera are generally speaking common methods of implementing texture definition on 3d models in computer graphics software while intended placement of textures onto a models surface often requires a technique known as uv mapping arbitrary manual layout of texture coordinates for polygon surfaces while nonuniform rational bspline nurb surfaces have their own intrinsic parameterization used as texture coordinates texture mapping as a discipline also encompasses techniques for creating normal maps and bump maps that correspond to a texture to simulate height and specular maps to help simulate shine and light reflections as well as environment mapping to simulate mirrorlike reflectivity also called gloss antialiasing rendering resolutionindependent entities such as 3d models for viewing on a raster pixelbased device such as a liquidcrystal display or crt television inevitably causes aliasing artifacts mostly along geometric edges and the boundaries of texture details these artifacts are informally called jaggies antialiasing methods rectify such problems resulting in imagery more pleasing to the viewer but can be somewhat computationally expensive various antialiasing algorithms such as supersampling are able to be employed then customized for the most efficient rendering performance versus quality of the resultant imagery a graphics artist should consider this tradeoff if antialiasing methods are to be used a preantialiased bitmap texture being displayed on a screen or screen location at a resolution different than the resolution of the texture itself such as a textured model in the distance from the virtual camera will exhibit aliasing artifacts while any procedurally defined texture will always show aliasing artifacts as they are resolutionindependent techniques such as mipmapping and texture filtering help to solve texturerelated aliasing problems volume rendering volume rendered ct scan of a forearm with different colour schemes for muscle fat bone and blood volume rendering is a technique used to display a 2d projection of a 3d discretely sampled data set a typical 3d data set is a group of 2d slice images acquired by a ct or mri scanner usually these are acquired in a regular pattern eg one slice every millimeter and usually have a regular number of image pixels in a regular pattern this is an example of a regular volumetric grid with each volume element or voxel represented by a single value that is obtained by sampling the immediate area surrounding the voxel 3d modeling 3d modeling 3d modeling is the process of developing a mathematical wireframe representation of any threedimensional object called a 3d model via specialized software models may be created automatically or manually the manual modeling process of preparing geometric data for 3d computer graphics is similar to plastic arts such as sculpting 3d models may be created using multiple approaches use of nurbs to generate accurate and smooth surface patches polygonal mesh modeling manipulation of faceted geometry or polygonal mesh subdivision advanced tessellation of polygons resulting in smooth surfaces similar to nurb models a 3d model can be displayed as a twodimensional image through a process called 3d rendering used in a computer simulation of physical phenomena or animated directly for other purposes the model can also be physically created using 3d printing devices pioneers in computer graphics charles csuri charles csuri is a pioneer in computer animation and digital fine art and created the first computer art in 1964 csuri was recognized by smithsonian as the father of digital art and computer animation and as a pioneer of computer animation by the museum of modern art moma and association for computing machinerysiggraph donald p greenberg donald p greenberg is a leading innovator in computer graphics greenberg has authored hundreds of articles and served as a teacher and mentor to many prominent computer graphic artists animators and researchers such as robert l cook marc levoy brian a barsky and wayne lytle many of his former students have won academy awards for technical achievements and several have won the siggraph achievement award greenberg was the founding director of the nsf center for computer graphics and scientific visualization a michael noll noll was one of the first researchers to use a digital computer to create artistic patterns and to formalize the use of random processes in the creation of visual arts he began creating digital art in 1962 making him one of the earliest digital artists in 1965 noll along with frieder nake and georg nees were the first to publicly exhibit their computer art during april 1965 the howard wise gallery exhibited nolls computer art along with randomdot patterns by bela julesz other pioneers a modern render of the utah teapot an iconic model in 3d computer graphics created by martin newell 1975 pierre bzier jim blinn jack bresenham john carmack paul de casteljau ed catmull frank crow james d foley william fetter henry fuchs henri gouraud charles loop nadia magnenat thalmann benot b mandelbrot martin newell fred parke bui tuong phong steve russell daniel j sandin alvy ray smith bob sproull ivan sutherland daniel thalmann andries van dam john warnock lance williams jim kajiya organizations siggraph siggraph asia gdc bell telephone laboratories united states armed forces particularly the whirlwind computer and sage project boeing ibm renault the computer science department of the university of utah lucasfilm and industrial light magic autodesk adobe systems pixar silicon graphics khronos group opengl the directx division at microsoft nvidia amd study of computer graphics computer graphics computer science the study of computer graphics is a subfield of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content although the term often refers to threedimensional computer graphics it also encompasses twodimensional graphics and image processing as an academic discipline computer graphics studies the manipulation of visual and geometric information using computational techniques it focuses on the mathematical and computational foundations of image generation and processing rather than purely aesthetic issues computer graphics is often differentiated from the field of visualization although the two fields have many similarities applications computer graphics may be used in the following areas computational biology computational photography computational physics computeraided design computer simulation design digital art education graphic design infographics information visualization rational drug design scientific visualization special effects for cinema video games virtual reality web design computer graphics portal computer science portal glossary of computer graphics l ammeraal and k zhang 2007 computer graphics for java programmers second edition johnwiley sons isbn9780470031605 david rogers 1998 procedural elements for computer graphics mcgrawhill james d foley andries van dam steven k feiner and john f hughes 1995 computer graphics principles and practice addisonwesley donald hearn and m pauline baker 1994 computer graphics prenticehall francis s hill 2001 computer graphics prentice hall john lewell 1985 computer graphics a survey of current techniques and applications van nostrand reinhold jeffrey j mcconnell 2006 computer graphics theory into practice jones bartlett publishers r d parslow r w prowse richard elliot green 1969 computer graphics techniques and applications peter shirley and others 2005 fundamentals of computer graphics ak peters ltd m slater a steed y chrysantho 2002 computer graphics and virtual environments from realism to realtime addisonwesley wolfgang hhl 2008 interactive environments with opensource software springer wien new york isbn3211791698 wikimedia commons has media related to computer graphics look up computer graphics in wiktionary the free dictionary a critical history of computer graphics and animation history of computer graphics series of articles computer graphics research at uc berkeley thomas dreher history of computer art chap iv2 computer animation vtevisualization of technical informationfields biological data visualization chemical imaging crime mapping data visualization educational visualization flow visualization geovisualization information visualization mathematical visualization medical imaging molecular graphics product visualization scientific visualization software visualization technical drawing user interface design visual culture volume visualization image types chart diagram engineering drawing graph of a function ideogram map photograph pictogram plot schematic skeletal formula statistical graphics table technical drawings technical illustration user interface people jacques bertin stuart card thomas a defanti michael friendly george furnas pat hanrahan nigel holmes christopher r johnson august kekul manuel lima alan maceachren jock d mackinlay michael maltz bruce h mccormick miriah meyer charles joseph minard rudolf modley gaspard monge tamara munzner otto neurath florence nightingale hanspeter pfister clifford a pickover william playfair karl wilhelm pohlke adolphe quetelet george g robertson arthur h robinson lawrence j rosenblum ben shneiderman fraser stoddart edward tufte fernanda vigas ade olufeko howard wainer martin wattenberg bang wong related topics cartography chartjunk computer graphics in computer science graph drawing graphic design graphic organizer imaging science information graphics information science mental visualisation misleading graph neuroimaging patent drawing scientific modelling spatial analysis visual analytics visual perception volume cartography volume rendering 