Advanced Methods in Computer Graphics: With examples in OpenGL

This book brings together several advanced topics in computer graphics that are important in the areas of game development, three-dimensional animation and real-time rendering. The book is designed for final-year undergraduate or first-year graduate students, who are already familiar with the basic concepts in computer graphics and programming. It aims to provide a good foundation of advanced methods such as skeletal animation, quaternions, mesh processing and collision detection. These and other methods covered in the book are fundamental to the development of algorithms used in commercial applications as well as research.

Advanced Methods in Computer Graphics provides an in-depth analysis of a selection of topics that are important in the areas of character animation and game development. The discussion of a wide range of algorithms and their implementation aspects presented in the book will serve as a useful reference for researchers and practitioners in computer graphics. Students will find the book to be a valuable resource in their study of advanced graphics concepts.

The key topics covered in the book are hierarchical modelling and transformations using scene graphs, skeletal animation, forward and inverse kinematics solutions, quaternion based rotation interpolation, mesh processing and collision detection algorithms. The book also gives a thorough overview of splines, interpolation curves, and surface design methods.

Features:

• Comprehensive coverage of a large collection of methods used in animation and game programming.
• Detailed description of the theoretical aspects of algorithms, complemented by examples, figures and pseudo-codes.
• Each chapter accompanied by a set of demonstration programs that clearly show the implementation and working of key algorithms.
• The C++ source code of all the examples, demos and classes for each chapter can be downloaded from the publisher's website, http://extras.springer.com/978-1-4471-2339-2.

Ramakrishnan Mukundan is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has been teaching computer graphics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels for the past twelve years.