M.Sc. / The domain of computer graphics has undergone phenomenal changes and improvements over the past decade, to the extent that photorealistic renderings have now become possible. Evidence of the vast potential of such renderings is all too clear in movies such as The Titanic. In the manufacturing arena, however, it is rarely required to produce visualisations of this quality. The rendered image is, in fact, required merely to visualise the required data set effectively and unambiguously, a requirement that can be met without reverting to the latest rendering algorithms. What is considered more important, however, is the functionality that has become available to the user. Virtual-reality-type interfaces and displays, real-time object manipulation and interactive measuring utilities are but a few functions required effectively to reduce costs during the design phase of a project. Although handy, the latter functions serves exponentially to multiply the processing requirements of the underlying hardware platform. In order, therefore, to ensure that interactiveness be maintained, some rendering techniques may have to be omitted so as to render the visualised scene unambiguously. Traditionally, visualisations required specialised graphics workstations. Although this requirement still obtains to medium- and large-scale visualisations, the PC industry has seen a dramatic increase in computing power, to the extent that it might be possible to implement small-scale visualisations at PC level soon. DirectX constitutes a set of graphics libraries developed by Microsoft as a standard for game developers and video accelerator manufacturers. Although DirectX has very rarely been implemented in a non-gaming environment, it is possible through the use of effects such as texture mapping and Gourad shading, which effects are supported by DirectX, to create a small-scale visualisation of acceptable rendering quality. If this could be achieved, companies could use their existing computers to implement visualisations of this kind. In so doing, visualisation capabilities would be made available to a much bigger segment of the market.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:1980 |
| Date | 06 February 2012 |
| Creators | Gerber, E. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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