All about graphics 13
All about graphics
This is the chapter where we really get stuck in. Anyone who wants to know more about
3D Graphics Representation
Today it is considered de rigeur to know all about 3D. Your curiosity will be aroused as soon as you experience the first visual wizardry generated by your new graphics board. Two features of the 3D display will leap out at you: it's both realistic and fast. The amount of work required here is known only to the processor, but we will describe it in detail to you below.
The 3D Pipeline
What actually happens when a monitor displays a 3D object? The data describing the 3D object are passed through what is known as the 3D pipeline, in which the mathematical calculations for its representation in space and perspective on the monitor are carried out. What happens in detail?
3D Pipeline
Object data | Tesselation | Geometrical | Rendering | Display | |
transformation | on the monitor | ||||
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Start: The object data
The pipeline starts at the object. The object description is made up of the data (points).
Tesselation
In the first step, the object is broken down into a number of polygons or triangles. The vertices of the triangles are described by coordinate points (x, y and z) with the 'z' value containing the depth information. Depending on the representation, these vertices also contain information concerning the material and texture. The volume of data to be pro- cessed increases enormously because of this conversion of the image information.
