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-How 3-D Graphics WorkYou're probably reading this on the screen of a computer monitor -- a display that has two real dimensions, height and width. But when you look at a movie like "Toy Story II" or play a game like TombRaider, you see a window into a three-dimensional world. One of the truly amazing things about this window is that the world you see can be the world we live in, the world we will live in tomorrow, or a world that lives only in the minds of a movie’s or game's creators. And all of these worlds can appear on the same screen you use for writing a report or keeping track of a stock portfolio. |
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Fluid Motion for Us Is Hard Work for the ComputerAll the factors we’ve discussed so far add complexity to the process of putting a 3-D image on the screen. It’s harder to define and create the object in the first place, and it’s harder to render it by generating all the pixels needed to display the image. The triangles and polygons of the wireframe, the texture of the surface, and the rays of light coming from various light sources and reflecting from multiple surfaces must all be calculated and assembled before the software begins to tell the computer how to paint the pixels on the screen. You might think that the hard work of computing would be over when the painting begins, but it’s at the painting, or rendering, level that the numbers begin to add up. |
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How Graphics Boards HelpSince the early days of personal computers, most graphics boards have been translators, taking the fully developed image created by the computer's CPU and translating it into the electrical impulses required to drive the computer's monitor. This approach works, but all of the processing for the image is done by the CPU -- along with all the processing for the sound, player input (for games) and the interrupts for the system. Because of everything the computer must do to make modern 3-D games and multi-media presentations happen, it’s easy for even the fastest modern processors to become overworked and unable to serve the various requirements of the software in real time. It’s here that the graphics co-processor helps: it splits the work with the CPU so that the total multi-media experience can move at an acceptable speed. |
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How to Make It Look Like the Real ThingNo matter how large or rich the virtual 3-D world, a computer can depict that world only by putting pixels on the 2-D screen. This section will focus on just how what you see on the screen is made to look realistic, and especially on how scenes are made to look as close as possible to what you see in the real world. First we'll look at how a single stationary object is made to look realistic. Then we'll answer the same question for an entire scene. Finally, we'll consider what a computer has to do to show full-motion scenes of realistic images moving at realistic speeds. |
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Making 3-D Graphics MoveSo far, we've been looking at the sorts of things that make any digital image seem more realistic, whether the image is a single "still" picture or part of an animated sequence. But during an animated sequence, programmers and designers will use even more tricks to give the appearance of "live action" rather than of computer-generated images. |
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Transforms and Processors: Work, Work, WorkLooking at the number of information bits that go into the makeup of a screen only gives a partial picture of how much processing is involved. To get some inkling of the total processing load, we have to talk about a mathematical process called a transform. Transforms are used whenever we change the way we look at something. A picture of a car that moves toward us, for example, uses transforms to make the car appear larger as it moves. Another example of a transform is when the 3-D world created by a computer program has to be "flattened" into 2-D for display on a screen. Let's look at the math involved with this transform -- one |
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What Are 3-D Graphics?For many of us, games on a computer or advanced game system are the most common ways we see 3-D graphics. These games, or movies made with computer-generated images, have to go through three major steps to create and present a realistic 3-D scene: |
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What Makes a Picture 3-D?A picture that has or appears to have height, width and depth is three-dimensional (or 3-D). A picture that has height and width but no depth is two-dimensional (or 2-D). Some pictures are 2-D on purpose. Think about the international symbols that indicate which door leads to a restroom, for example. The symbols are designed so that you can recognize them at a glance. That’s why they use only the most basic shapes. Additional information on the symbols might try to tell you what sort of clothes the little man or woman is wearing, the color of their hair, whether they get to the gym on a regular basis, and so on, but all of that extra information would tend to make it take longer for |
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