Graphical Programming

Lecture 9
Graphical Programming
Lecturer: Sumaira Hussain
S.M.I University

COMPUTER GRAPHICS
• Images created with the help of computers
• 2-D and 3-D (displayed on a 2-D screen but in such a
way that they give an illusion of depth)
• Used for scientific research, artistic expression, or
for industrial applications
• Graphics have made the computer interfaces more
intuitive by removing the need to memorize
commands

DISPLAYING IMAGES
• Most all computer displays consist of a grid of tiny
pixels arranged in a regular grid of rows and
columns
• Images are displayed by assigning different colors to
the pixels located in the desired portion of the
computer display

PIXEL
• The smallest image forming element on a computer
display
• The computer display is made up of a regular grid of
these pixels
• The computer has the capability of assigning any
color to any of the individual pixels on the display
• Let’s now see how the computer displays a square

PIXEL COLORS (1)
• The color of each pixel is generally represented in
the form a triplet
• In a popular scheme – the RGB scheme – each part
of the triplet represents the intensity of one of out
of three primary colors: red, green, blue
• Often, the intensity of each color is represented
with a byte, resulting in 256x256x256 (16+ million)
unique color combinations

PIXEL COLORS (2)
• If this scheme is used to display an image that is
equal to the size of an XGA (1024x768 pixels)
display, the image will require 2.25MB of storage,
which is just too much
• A number of clever schemes have been invented to
reduce the number of bytes that are required for
storing graphics. 2 popular ones:
– Color mapping
– Dithering

COLOR MAPPING (1)
• Instead of letting each pixel assume one out of 16
million possible colors, only a limited number of
colors – called the platelet – are allowed
• For example, the platelet may be restricted to 256
colors (requiring 1 byte/pixel instead of 3)

COLOR MAPPING (2)
• Each value, from 0 to 255, is mapped to a selected
RGB color through a table, reducing the size of a
2.25MB graphic to 0.75MB
• The quality of the displayed image will not suffer at
all if the image only uses colors that are a part of
the platelet

COLOR PLATELET EXAMPLE
Color Platelet Code Actual Color in RGB
1 255, 255, 000 (yellow)
2 255, 000, 000 (red)
3 000, 255, 255 (cyan)
4 255, 153, 051 (orange)
… …
… …
… …

DITHERING
• In this scheme, pixels of alternating colors are used
to simulate a color that is not present in the platelet
• For example, red and green pixels can be alternated
to give the impression of bright yellow
• The quality of the displayed image is poorer

ALIASING
• The computer screen consists of square-ish pixels
arranged in a fixed grid
• At times, when a diagonal line is drawn on this grid,
it looks more like a staircase, instead of a straight
line
• This effect – called aliasing – can be managed by
reducing the size of pixels

ANTI-ALIASING (1)
• Anti-aliasing is another technique used for
managing the ‘staircase’ effect
• Let’s say that we need to draw a white straight-line
such that it overlaps 60% with one pixel, and 40%
with another initially, and near the end, 58%, 41%,
and 1%, respectively, with three pixels

ANTI-ALIASING (2)
• The staircase effect is caused because the proper
drawing of the line requires a pixel that does not
exist
• There are three options in this case:
– Assign the white color to the pixel corresponding to the
largest overlap
– Assign the white color to both pixels
• Either of these will cause the staircase effect

ANTI-ALIASING (3)
• The 3rd option is to color the pixel with 60% overlap
to a 40% gray color & the other one to 60% gray
• Result: A smoother - pleasing to the eye - look

GRAPHICS FILE FORMATS
The choice of the format generally depends upon
the nature of the image. For example:
– An image of natural scenery contains many irregular,
non-geometric shapes, therefore is stored in bit-map
format
– A CAD drawing consists of many geometric shapes like
straight lines, arcs, etc. and therefore is stored in a vector
format
– A third situation arises when dealing with graphics that
contain both regular and irregular shapes

VECTOR OR OBJECT-ORIENTED GRAPHICS
• Treats everything that is drawn as an object
• Objects retain their identity after they are drawn
• These objects can later be easily moved, stretched,
duplicated, deleted, etc
• Are resolution independent
• Relatively small file size
• Examples: swf, svg, wmf, ps

BIT-MAPPED OR RASTER GRAPHICS
• Treats everything that is drawn as a bit-map
• If an object is drawn on top of another, it is difficult
to move just one of them while leaving the other
untouched
• Changing the resolution often requires considerable
touch-up work
• Relatively large file size
• Examples: gif, jpg, bmp

FILE FORMATS POPULAR ON THE WEB (1)
gif (Graphical Interchange Format)
–Bit-map images compressed using the LZW algo.
–The number of colors is first reduced to 256 and then
consecutive pixels having the same color are encoded
in a [color, numberOfPixels] format
–Works well with computer-generated graphics (e.g.
CAD, block diagrams, cartoons) but not with natural,
realistic images
–Loss-less for images having 256 colors or less

jpg (JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group)
–Compressed, full-color and gray-scale bit-map images of
natural, real-world scenes, where most every pixel
differs in color from its neighbor
–It does not work as well as gif with non-realistic images,
such as cartoons or line drawings
–Does not handle compression of B&W images
–Lossy

swf (Shockwave Flash)
– Designed for 2-D animations, but can also be used for storing static
vector images as well
– A special program (called a plug-in) is required to view swf files in a
Web browser
svg (Structured Vector Graphics)
– New format; may become more popular than swf
– Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector image
format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity
and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard
developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999.
SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files.

IMAGE PROCESSING
• A branch of computer science concerned with
manipulating and enhancing computer graphics
• Examples:
– Converting 2-D satellite imagery into a 3-D model of a
terrain
– Restoring old, faded photographs into something closer
to the original
– Determining the amount of silting in Tarbela lake from a
satellite image

3-D GRAPHICS (1)
• Flat images enhanced to impart the illusion of
depth
• We perceive the world and the objects in it in 3-D -
breadth, width, depth - although the images formed
on the retinas of our eyes are 2-D
• The secret of 3-D perception: stereo vision
(Computer stereo vision is the extraction of 3D
information from digital images, such as obtained
by a CCD camera.)

3-D GRAPHICS (2)
• The two eyes are spaced a few cm apart
• Result: The images formed on the two retinas are
slightly different
• The brain combines these two into a single 3-D
image, enabling us to perceive depth

3-D GRAPHICS: APPLICATIONS
• Games
• Medical images
• 3-D CAD

3-D RENDERING
• The process of converting information about 3-D
objects into a bit-map that can be displayed on a 2-
D computer display
• Computationally, very expensive!
• Steps:
– Draw the wire-frame (skeleton, made with thin lines)
– Fill with colors, textures, patterns
– Add lighting effects (reflections, shadows)

ANIMATION
• Graphics in motion, e.g. cartoons
• Illusion of motion is created by showing the viewer
a sequence of still images, rapidly
• Drawing those images - each slightly different from
the previous one - used to be quite tedious work
• Computers have helped in cutting down some of
the tediousness

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COMPUTER ANIMATION: EXAMPLES
• Games
• Cartoons, movies
• Visualization of processes, e.g the IM process
• Displaying the results of scientific experiments, e.g.
nuclear fusion

TWEENING (1)
• Creating a reasonable illusion of motion requires
the drawing of 14-30 images per second of
animation – very tedious!
• In practice, only 4-5 images (called key images)
instead of 14-30 are drawn, and then the computer
is asked to create the remaining in-between images

TWEENING (2)
• This process of creating these in-between images
from key images is called in-betweening (or
tweening for short)
• The simplest algorithm for tweening calculates the
position of a particular segment of an image by
calculating the average of the positions of that
same image segment belonging to adjacent key
images

THE FUTURE OF GRAPHICS & ANIMATION
• New graphic-file storage formats will appear with
better compression efficiencies
• 3-D animation will become more popular as
computers become faster and algorithms become
smarter
• More realistic games; better realism in movies –
may, one day, make the human actors extinct

Graphical Programming

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