The presentation was done by Timothy Y. Wikedzi and Nicolaus Nyambili on Friday June 12, 2009.

Introduction:

Their presentation was very good and interesting; they also showed good organization and presentation of the materials together with showing good explanation on the questions that were asked.

Contents of the presentation:
On their presentation they based on the following guidelines

• Computer Graphics and Rendering Concepts and its history.
  
• Technologies applied in the field
  
• Application of Computer Graphics and Rendering
  
• Advantages and disadvantages of Computer Graphics and Rendering
  
• Challenges facing Computer Graphics and Rendering industry
  
• Expectation of the technology.

History of computer graphics and Rendering; The history of computer graphics records the effort made from early ages of the 1960s for the intention of using a making computer more interactive by the use of graphical user interface as in 1963 the program which ever utilized a complete GUI was created by Ivan Sutherland. The incorporation of the computer graphics in film industry lead to the increase of demand of CG (Computer graphics) and rendering.

Computer graphic is a computer based mathematical representation of a geometric object such as a building, a vehicle, a tree or any object including humans. Models (2D image or 3D object) are made that resemble actual thing and can be represented as vector image (images that use algorithms and mathematical function to represent its shape and size) or Raster/Bitmap image (images displayed based on pixels).

Coloring and texturing (process of building a surface’s detail and indicating how that surface will react to light) is among the things to consider in computer graphics and rendering. Moreover animation is another important concept in computer graphics and rendering.

On their presentation they explicitly explained the general Computer Graphics designing steps such as starts from Pre Designing, Modeling, Texturing, Animating and hence rendering (a process of converting vector images to raster images).

One of technology applied in the field is the Graphic API (Application Program Interface that provides the low-level functions to access graphics hardware directly. Examples of GAPI are Open GL that is used to access graphics directly and DirectX/Direct3D.

Open graphics language (OGL) is a hardware independent making to be suitable for all kinds of Platforms and all graphics hardware and also it is system independent to allow to be used in any System such as Win32, X-Win, and Mac.

We learnt on what OGL can do such as draw basic primitives (point, line, and polygon), do matrices, Z-Buffer, lighting and Shading on drawn 2D or 3D shapes, mapping textures, pixel operation and GPU computation.

Advantages of Computer graphics and rendering include;

• In engineering field it minimizes the production cost since design can be done by computers.


• It is used in filming industries to make quality and complex movies.


• It is used in gaming it allows real objects to be designed and programmed so that gaming becomes more interesting


• In medicine simulation of body organs helps the process of studying the body easier.

Although computer graphics is good but it has the following disadvantages

• It takes time (more time is waste).


• It is difficulty to understand for normal user since has complex application.


• It requires powerful computer machines for fast rendering.


• It replaces fires some actors from work since a programmed machine can work on behalf of actors.

Things that made me more interested in their presentation:

• How software like may can be used in 3D design.


• Getting exposed to how open GL works.


• Getting tips on how Movies like Terminator 3 applies 3D design.


• Getting the concept on how those robots are being programmed.

Generally I can say that their presentation roused interest on learning 3D design.