Practice in Computer Graphics
by William Shoaff with lots of help
The best way to master a discipline is to practice the fundamentals.
There are varying degrees of mastery.
The philosoper Henry Dreyfus identified six levels of mastery:
beginner, rookie, professional, expert, virtuoso, and master.
The exercises I'll provide you will not be strigent enough to
bring you to the professional level, but you should be able
become a fluent rookie and with extended practice achieve the
higher levels of competency in computer graphics.
- 1.
- The platonic solids are widely used as sample objects.
Develop model data files for the platonic solids:
The tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, and
dodecahedron.
Blinn [#!blin:96!#] and Hill [#!hill:90!#]
are two references that cover this topic.
- 2.
- Discover Web sites that discuss the platonic solids.
- 3.
- The Utah teapot (now on display at the Computer Museum in Boston)
is another standard graphics object.
Develop a model file for the Utah teapot.
- 4.
- Spheres, tori, and other objects also provide interesting
samples models that can populate a graphics scene.
Develop model files for objects such as these.
- 1.
- Show that a weighted sum of points is a vector when the weights add up
to zero.
- 1.
- Homework 1
- 2.
- Homework 2
No References!
William Shoaff
1999-09-28