PRACTICAL GRAPHICS FOR 3D COMPUTER ANIMATION

Abstract

Presented here are a collection of practical techniques in computer graphics which are reasonably easy to implement and produce an acceptable degree of realism for a small investment in programming time. Most of these techniques are not in themselves particularly complex but refinements on well known algorithms. Taken together they form a collection of ideas which may be of interest to other workers in the field. Research in various aspects of realistic graphics and animation requires a testbed system in which to produce results from experiments with specific areas of interest. For example to test the effectiveness of a volcanic eruption manufactured from particles, it is necessary to have at least rudimentary animation infrastructure available. In this paper we describe some of the ways in which we provide this infrastructure with the limited resources available in a typical university research environment consisting of a VAX 780 running UNIX and a frame buffer. These methods have been developed during the building of a computer animation system called Graphicsland at the University of Calgary.