Adrian Cochrane
There's a handful of techniques used all over computer graphics: matrix transforms, interpolation, & symbols. (I can see how these loosely resembles decompression...) I'll discuss each of these today!
Also there's physics sims & scanline algorithms, which I won't be covered . Not to mention lots of geometry!
Over the following days I'll discuss GPUs & some common rendering algorithms.
1/4!
Adrian Cochrane
An important consideration in computer graphics is where to draw things. Matrices help here by geometric transforms (translation, rotation, resizing, skew, etc) in a way which through the power of algebra can trivially be combined without increasing compute costs on applying the resulting matrix.
A 2D matrix:
x' = ax + by + c
y' = dx + ey + f
Rotation involves trigonometry.
2/4!
Adrian Cochrane
Interpolation covers cases where you have 2 points onscreen or across time & we need to fill the intermediate space to make them more perceivable.
This takes some formula (if any, i.e. not identity) from 0 to 1 & scales it to fill the target space, to compute how to scale the intermediary values between those points.
Across space this gets called (primitive) vector graphics. Across time it is "animation".
3/4!
Adrian Cochrane
Finally not all information is inherently visual, so we tend to consult some more-or-less sophisticated lookup table to determine how to represent each symbol.
You can view both CSS & font files in these terms! So this is mostly where I play...
UI frameworks may be stretching the concept some, but ofcourse icon themes fit!
4/4 Fin for today!
Lorenzo
@alcinnz Taking an algebra course was probably the best thing I could do to improve my knowledge on how to render 3D graphics.
Understanding what's a matrix and how to use them is really essential.
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