By
Jim Blinn, Microsoft, Inc., Redmond, Washington, U.S.A.
Description
For almost three decades eminent computer graphicist Jim Blinn has coupled his scientific knowledge and artistic abilities to foster the
growth of the computer graphics field. His many contributions include the Voyager Fly-by animations of space missions to Jupiter, Saturn,
and Uranus;
The Mechanical Universe, a 52-part telecourse of animated physics; and the computer animation of Carl Sagan's PBS
series
Cosmos. In addition, Blinn, the recipient of the first SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, has developed many
widely used graphics techniques, including bump mapping, environment mapping, and blobby modeling.
Blinn shares his insight and experience
in "Jim Blinn's Corner," an award-winning column in the technical magazine
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications in which
he unveils his most useful graphics methods and observations. This book, a compendium of 20 of the column's articles, leads you through
the "graphics pipeline" offering a wealth of tips and tricks. It explores common graphics problems, many of which have never before been
addressed.
An invaluable resource for any graphics professional
In his entertaining and inspirational style, Blinn examines
a variety of topics to help computer graphics software and application developers recognize and solve graphics programming problems.
Focusing on geometry and the graphics pipeline, he shares:
- easy to understand explanations of difficult concepts gleaned from
years of teaching
- interesting examples of tricky special cases that cause conventional algorithms to fail
- highly
refined algorithms for clipping, viewing, lighting, and rendering
Included in series
The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics
Audience:
Computer graphics professionals with computer science or mathematics background, including academic computer scientists, researchers,
educators, students, and graduate students; graphics designers; computer animators interested in the latest developments of conceptual
and practical aspects of rendering and graphics; software and game developers.
