Jim Blinn's Corner: Notation, Notation, Notation (Jim Blinn's Corner Series) - Softcover

Blinn, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558608605 ISBN 13: 9781558608603

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann, 2002

Synopsis

The third entry in the Jim Blinn's Corner series, this is, like the others, a handy compilation of selected installments of his influential column. But here, for the first time, you get the "Director's Cut" of the articles: revised, expanded, and enhanced versions of the originals. What's changed? Improved mathematical notation, more diagrams, new solutions. What remains the same? All the things you've come to rely on: straight answers, irreverent style, and innovative thinking. This is Jim Blinn at his best - now even better.

• Features 21 expanded and updated installments of "Jim Blinn's Corner," dating from 1995 to 2001, and never before published in book form
• Includes "deleted scenes"―tangential explorations that didn't make it into the original columns
• Details how Blinn represented planets in his famous JPL flyby animations
• Explores a wide variety of other topics, from the concrete to the theoretical: assembly language optimization for parallel processors, exotic usage of C++ template instantiation, algebraic geometry, a graphical notation for tensor contraction, and his hopes for a future world

About this title

Review:

Jim Blinn presents an eclectic collection of 20 articles he originally wrote for Computer Graphics and Applications, an IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) magazine aimed at graphics professionals. It's unapologetic about being a programmer's book, and it won't make much sense if you're not one (even less if you've forgotten your algebra). But if the shoe fits, and if you're going to be writing your own graphics routines, you stand to learn a lot from an acknowledged master.

Topics include a tour through the author's collection of circle-drawing algorithms, an introduction to animation concepts through a character called Blobby Man, musings on rendering platonic solids, detailed discussions of shadows, clipping and viewports, and investigations into the nature of pixel space. Many algorithms are presented in a generalized pseudo-code that could be easily translated into other languages. In addition to learning practical techniques, you'll also benefit from seeing Blinn's intelligent and offbeat approach to solving problems.

About the Author:

For over three decades, eminent computer graphicist Jim Blinn has coupled his scientific knowledge and artistic abilities to foster the growth of the computer graphics field. His many contributions include the Voyager flyby animations of space missions to Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; The Mechanical Universe, a 52-part telecourse of animated physics; and the computer animation of Carl Sagan's PBS series Cosmos. In addition, Blinn is the recipient of the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award as well as the SIGGRAPH Coons Award, and has developed many widely used graphics techniques, including bump mapping, environment mapping, and blobby modeling. In 2000, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He currently works at Microsoft Research.

About this edition

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1558608605
• ISBN 13: 9781558608603
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336