Hughes/Computer Graphics, 3/E

Chapter 6. Introduction to Fixed-Function 3D Graphics and Hierarchical Modeling

6.1. Introduction

You’ve been introduced to how a 3D scene is projected to 2D to produce a rendered image, and you know the basic facts (substantially clarified in later chapters) about light, reflectance, sensors, and displays. The other required ingredient for an understanding of graphics is mathematics. We’ve found that students understand mathematics better when they encounter it experimentally (as we saw with the order-of-transformations issue in Chapter 2). But performing experiments using 3D graphics requires either that you build your own graphics system, for which the preliminary mathematics is critical, or that you use something premade. WPF is a good example ...