What is Computer Graphics?

Welcome one and all to the blog formally known as The Rants of an Angry Game Dev Girl, I am once again back to post blogs that for some reason people other than my professors and TAs read (Still not sure why people actually read this thing but you know whatever). Now last year I had a bunch of posts related to Computer Graphics, which is one of my courses at school and I must blog again for it this year (which I don't really mind to much cause my blogs last year helped me study. I just really need to keep on top of them unlike what I'm doing right now. Man its only the 3rd week of school and I'm already behind ) so you are probably going to see a bunch of blogs talking about different things related to computer graphics like Lighting, Shaders, Bloom, Mapping and some other cool shit.

 Now if anyone is interesting in reading the blogs from last year you can find them on this page Here. Now I'm not an expert on computer graphics but I promise that I will do my best to be as accurate as possible. In this blog I'm just going to focus on what exactly computer graphics is and what it's used for in the real world (I know a lot people go to school and complain about the stuff they are learning and always say shit like "I'm never going to need this in the real world" which I get it I did that too but computer graphics is actually relevant in the real world so people listen up).

WHAT IS COMPUTER GRAPHICS?

So there are a lot of different ways to describe computer graphics and it's uses in the real world, the dictionary describes as the set of technologies used to create art with computers but that doesn't really explain what computer graphics truly is or how it does what it does.  You can define computer graphics as a visual representation of data that is displayed on a window or monitor made on a computer but that also doesn't really help you understand what it is. The term computer graphics is explained as a series of images (usually referred to a video) or a single image, but really it includes pretty much everything on computers excluding sound and text.

Now typically computer graphics is made up of three parts:

• the representation and manipulation of data by a computer
• the numerous technologies used to create and manipulate images
• the sub field of computer science that focuses on methods to create and manipulate visual content

Computer Graphics can be used from anything from animated movies, your favorite superhero movies, video, TV Ads, almost anything you can think probably has some link to computer graphics.

USES FOR COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Like I mentioned about Computer Graphics can be used in so many different ways, some of which have been used in possible you favorite movies, games and TV shows. Now I'm only going to go over brief what some of the thing you can do with computer graphics as I will go more into depth about them at a later date.

OBJECT RENDERING

Computer graphics allows us to create objects, places or even creatures that wouldn't be possible without it. Have you ever wondered how in shows like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, True Blood and Bitten characters can transform in creatures or beasts like wolves, well they use computer graphics to create the create models. Just take a look at movies like Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings, many of the creatures are created using a 3D rendering program and later animated.

 

 SHADING AND COLOR

 In computer graphics there are numerous different ways to create shadows to give rendered objects a more realistic appearance as well as creating texture and the illusion of transparency. By applying different types of shading computer graphics allows us to create different effects.

Using computer graphics we can manipulate color to change the way we view a scene or model or even an effect.

LIGHTING

In computer graphics there are numerous ways to create lighting and shadows that give your scene a dynamic look. Lighting can create and set the mood and also ruin it if not done correctly.

 Based on the different type of lighting you use,  there are numerous effects and looks you can achieve. There is also numerous ways to create lighting and shadows that can range from realistic to cartoonish, each has different benefits, memory use and uses which I will probably talk about in a later blog

Computer Graphics is an extremely vast topic and over the next couple of weeks I will be focuses on different aspects that fall under this topic, my next blog will probably be focusing on Shaders, what they are and what they are used for.