Computer Graphics Lecture Notes

These flashcards cover the fundamental concepts of computer graphics, including textures, lighting, scene graphs, transformations, and rendering.

Texture

Images applied to surfaces of geometric shapes in three-dimensional scenes.

Texture Coordinates

A set of coordinates mapping parts of a texture image to the vertices of a geometric shape, ranging from (0,0) to (1,1).

Sampling

The process of retrieving the texture color using texture coordinates.

Mipmapping

A collection of texture images where each subsequent texture is twice as small compared to the previous one.

Lighting

The placement of lights in a scene to achieve a desired visual effect.

Ambient Lighting

A type of lighting that affects all points on all surfaces in a scene equally.

Diffuse Lighting

Lighting that has been scattered, appearing lighter or darker depending on the angle of incoming light.

Specular Lighting

Lighting that creates bright spots and highlights on a surface, simulating shininess.

Phong Model

An illumination model incorporating ambient, diffuse, and specular lighting, suitable for reflective surfaces.

Attenuation

The decrease in intensity of light as the distance from the light source increases.

Shading

The effect where colors on a surface appear brighter or dimmer depending on the angle of the light rays.

Shadow Pass

A rendering pass that determines which points in a scene are visible to the light source to create shadows.

Scene Graph

A data structure that organizes the contents of a 3D scene in a hierarchical format.

Model Matrix

A matrix storing the cumulative transformations applied to an object, indicating its location, orientation, and scale.

Transform

Refers collectively to the location, orientation, and scale of an object in 3D space.

Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs)

Buffers storing vertex attributes in the GPU for rendering.

Fragment Shader

A program that determines the color of each pixel in a rendered image.

Graphics Pipeline

An abstract model describing a sequence of steps needed in rendering a three-dimensional scene.

Rasterization

The process of determining which pixels correspond to the geometric shapes being rendered.

Perspective Projection

A method of projecting 3D points onto a 2D plane, creating a sense of depth.

Framebuffer

A memory region that stores multiple buffers for rendering images, including color and depth buffers.

Uniform Variables

Global variables in shaders that remain constant during the rendering of a shape, used for efficient data handling.

Vertex Shader

A program in the graphics pipeline that processes individual vertices, often performing transformations and lighting calculations.

View Matrix

A matrix that transforms coordinates from world space into the camera's (or viewer's) local coordinate space.

Projection Matrix

A matrix that transforms 3D view space coordinates into 2D clip space, essential for perspective or orthographic projection.

Depth Buffer (Z-Buffer)

A component of the framebuffer that stores depth information for each pixel, used to determine which objects are in front of others.

Normal Vector

A vector that is perpendicular to a surface at a given point, primarily used in lighting calculations to determine how light reflects off the surface.

Viewport

The rectangular area on a display device where the final rendered image is drawn and mapped to the screen.

World Space

A global coordinate system in a 3D scene where all objects are positioned relative to a common origin.

Object Space

The local coordinate system of an individual 3D object, with its origin typically at the object's center.

Clip Space

The 3D space resulting from applying the projection matrix, where coordinates are normalized, typically within [-1, 1] bounds, before rasterization.

Back-face Culling

An optimization technique that discards polygons facing away from the camera, reducing the number of primitives to render.

Texture Filtering

The process of interpolating texel colors to determine the color of a pixel when the texture's resolution does not perfectly match the screen resolution.

Material Properties

Attributes defining how a surface interacts with light, including its ambient, diffuse, and specular reflection characteristics.

Gouraud Shading

A shading technique where lighting calculations are performed at each vertex, and the resulting colors are interpolated across the polygon's surface.