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Computer Graphics With Java
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.
You can purchase Computer Graphics Using Java 2D and 3D from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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.
You can purchase Computer Graphics Using Java 2D and 3D from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I can't remember if it was a limitation on Java specifically, but the JPEG library I was using for image recognition in my univeristy robotics class didn't support multidimensional arrays for accessing pixels. So if you want the to access pixel i in row j of an image that's x * y pixels, you'd have to use image[j*x + i] (or something like that). Also figuring out where a particular pixel was located just based on it's index was equally cumbersome. From that moment on, I decided that working with graphics in Java was terrible.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Seriously.. Just because you can put OpenGL bindings in a corporate fabricated language doesn't mean you should.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
- infer from context/documentation that *some* signed values are actually unsigned values in disguise
- for such values, use bit shift instead of arithmetic shift
- for such values, manually translate them if they are printed incorrectly on the console or in a debugger
Not only that, you're not even right. You miss the following problems:Is it just me, or does this book belong with all the other "great" Java books of 1998 ? I still have a very hard time understanding why people even bother with Java at all, but how many legitimate uses are there for Java graphics in this day and age ? They have widget toolkits that kinda sorta get the job done. I certainly don't want to see any new Java games, that's what Flash is for.
The thing is, computer graphics theory is pretty much universal. Once you learn the algorithms to draw your primitives, you can apply them just about anywhere. Does anyone need a book to draw a line in Visual Basic ? Well they're suckers if they do, because it works more or less the same way as C++, or Delphi, or even Javascript on a Canvas object. Java is in the same boat.
-Billco, Fnarg.com