Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice
Encyclopedia
Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice is a textbook
written by James D. Foley
, Andries van Dam
, Steven K. Feiner and John Hughes
and published by Addison–Wesley.
It was widely considered a classic standard reference book on the topic of computer graphics
, and is also known as the bible of computer graphics (due to its size), the great white book (due to its white cover) or after the name of its authors as Foley et al. Parts of the dated text are largely irrelevant to today's graphics hardware, and important advancements of the last decades are missing.
's SIGGRAPH
CORE 1979 graphics standard, and focused on 2D vector graphics.
, anti-aliasing
, advanced rendering algorithms
and an introduction to animation. The SGP library was replaced by SRGP (Simple Raster Graphics Package), a library for 2D raster primitives and interaction handling, and SPHIGS (Simple PHIGS
), a library for 3D
primitives, which were specifically written for the book.
. New implementations for the SRGP and SPHIGS graphics packages in C were also provided.
Textbook
A textbook or coursebook is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions...
written by James D. Foley
James D. Foley
James David Foley is a Professor and the Stephen Fleming Chair in Telecommunications in the School of Interactive Computing, and former Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology from 2008-2010...
, Andries van Dam
Andries van Dam
Andries "Andy" van Dam is a Dutch-born American professor of computer science and former Vice-President for Research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Together with Ted Nelson he contributed to the first hypertext system, HES in the late 1960s. He co-authored Computer Graphics:...
, Steven K. Feiner and John Hughes
John F. Hughes (computer scientist)
John F. Hughes is a Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He is perhaps best known as the co-author of several widely-used textbooks in the field of computer graphics.-External links:*...
and published by Addison–Wesley.
It was widely considered a classic standard reference book on the topic of computer graphics
Computer graphics (computer science)
Computer graphics is a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Although the term often refers to the study of three-dimensional computer graphics, it also encompasses two-dimensional graphics and image processing.- Overview...
, and is also known as the bible of computer graphics (due to its size), the great white book (due to its white cover) or after the name of its authors as Foley et al. Parts of the dated text are largely irrelevant to today's graphics hardware, and important advancements of the last decades are missing.
First Edition
The initial edition discussed the SGP library, which was based on ACMAssociation for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
's SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...
CORE 1979 graphics standard, and focused on 2D vector graphics.
Second Edition
The second edition was completely rewritten and covered 2D and 3D raster and vector graphics, user interfaces, geometric modelingGeometric modeling
Geometric modeling is a branch of applied mathematics and computational geometry that studies methods and algorithms for the mathematical description of shapes....
, anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
, advanced rendering algorithms
Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...
and an introduction to animation. The SGP library was replaced by SRGP (Simple Raster Graphics Package), a library for 2D raster primitives and interaction handling, and SPHIGS (Simple PHIGS
PHIGS
PHIGS is an API standard for rendering 3D computer graphics, at one time considered to be the 3D graphics standard for the 1990s. Instead a combination of features and power led to the rise of OpenGL, which became the most popular professional 3D API of the 1990s...
), a library for 3D
3D
3D or 3-D may refer to:*Three-dimensional space, the physical universe*Stereoscopy, any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image-Music:*3D...
primitives, which were specifically written for the book.
Second Edition in C
In the second edition in C all examples were converted to CC (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
. New implementations for the SRGP and SPHIGS graphics packages in C were also provided.