Computer Graphics With Java

Computer Graphics With Java 218

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday July 11, 2007 @03:11PM from the read-all-about-it dept.

Michael Grady writes "Computer graphics has become an indispensable part of mainstream computing and the undergraduate course in computer graphics programming is often one of the most popular courses in the curriculum. In the early days, such courses dealt with low level implementation details and algorithms such as converting lines to pixels, filling rectangles, view clipping and anti-aliasing. When OpenGL arrived on the scene, it was welcomed as an efficient and powerful, procedure-oriented library that kept many of the low level details out of sight. The sort of projects that could be tackled in an introductory course became much more impressive. That was back in the 90's. Is there a way to build a course covering the basic computer graphics concepts and techniques which takes advantage of object orientation and higher levels of abstraction? I believe the authors of Computer Graphics using Java have found a way." Read below for Michael's review

Computer Graphics Using Java 2D and 3D
author	Hong Zhang and Y. Daniel Liang
pages	462
publisher	Pearson Prentice Hall
rating	8
reviewer	Michael Grady
ISBN	0-13-035118-0
summary	Introduction to computer graphics concepts and techniques using Java 2D and 3D

Their strategy is to teach by example using the comprehensive, high level interfaces provided by Java 2D and Java 3D. Their examples are often well chosen and fun. The programming exercises are entertaining and appropriate.

About one third of the book is devoted to 2D graphics and covers the usual topics: coordinate systems, modeling, constructive area geometry, color models, affine transformations, compositing, splines, clipping, fonts, raster images, animation and image processing. As anyone who has worked in this area knows, Java 2D provides a beautifully designed set of classes for high quality 2D graphics and imaging. This part of the book could also serve as an excellent introduction for any programmer who wants to begin exploring its functionality.

Where the book really shines is in the examples. My favorite 2D examples include:An interactive demo of the RGB Color model which also illustrates constructive area geometry. An efficient rendering of the Mandelbrot set as a raster image. An elegant analog clock that shows how to use the Timer class in animation. An interactive demo of the common 2D affine transformations.

Surprisingly, none of the code uses anti-aliasing, even though Java 2D does a great job smoothing rough edges. In computer graphics circles, this is a faux pas — a violation of accepted, although unwritten, social rules, and points must be deducted for this omission. But if you add the required one line of code, most of the examples look pretty good.

The last two thirds of the book are devoted to 3D graphics programming, which reflects a common emphasis in the course at the undergraduate level. Coverage includes scene graphs, the rendering pipeline, 3D modeling, affine and projective transformations, illumination and reflection models, texture mapping, adaptive rendering, animation and interactivity, as well as object oriented graphics concepts such as behavior dynamics.

Java 3D provides a high level, object oriented framework for 3D graphics programming, with about 360 classes. For those who are used to programming with OpenGL, the Java 3D mindset may require a bit of indoctrination. It's based on the concept of a scene graph, and makes a lot of sense from an object oriented programming viewpoint.

Basically, a scene graph is a data structure for organizing the objects of a scene. We mean objects in the object oriented sense. Java 3D objects may be responsible for geometric, transformation, illumination, shading or behavioral data. The nodes of the scene graph represent objects and the edges represent a necessary connection. For example, a transformation node may be connected to a node representing a cube. The corresponding transformation object defines how the cube should be rotated, scaled, etc. In traversing the graph from its root, the Java 3D rendering engine finds all the information required to render the scene. It's a cool way to do computer graphics at a higher level of abstraction than programming directly with OpenGL.

Once again, many of the examples are excellent for an introductory text. My favorite 3D examples include: The classic spinning dodecahedron. This example shows that setting up the scene geometry is pleasantly intuitive in Java 3D. The ease of computing the normal vectors of all plane surfaces using the NormalGenerator class is a good illustration of the power of object oriented programming. Transformations, lighting and material properties are handled by dedicated classes. An interactive illustration of the common 3D affine transformations showing the effect of modifying transformation matrices. The mirror image of rotating 3D text that demonstrates the effect of composing transformations. How to generate a torus mesh. The canonical Utah Teapot.

Once again,the code does not use anti-aliasing, even where it is badly needed.

One of the benefits of using the Java platform is the extensive support for networking, multithreading, multimedia, database access and web services. For the most part, none of these benefits are exploited in the text. But that is probably the subject for a second course in computer graphics using Java.

All in all, it's clear that the authors are excellent teachers. This shows in their effective use of the teaching-by-example style. As stated in the preface, the authors intended their book for students and computer professionals who want to learn basic computer graphics concepts and techniques and who want to get started in programming with the Java 2D and 3D APIs. I believe they have succeeded in this goal, and if you are in this group of readers, I can confidently recommend their book.

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