What is computer graphics? ● Representation and display of image data ● Concerned with mathematical and computational aspects of displaying and representing images ● Not concerned with design/aesthetics
The Graphics Processing Unit ● Implements the graphics pipeline in hardware ● Performs vector and matrix operations, clipping, interpolation, rasterization and more ● Can simultaneously perform many computations
APIs: OpenGL and Direct3D ● Used to command the graphics card ● Configure graphics pipeline, copy data to video memory, load and run shaders ● Low-level