Viewing

This chapter draws on a model consisting only of 3D line segments that are specified by the coordinates of their two endpoints. It discusses the machinery needed to produce renderings of solid surfaces. The viewing transformation has the job of mapping 3D locations, represented as coordinates in the canonical coordinate system, to coordinates in the image, expressed in units of pixels. The camera transformation converts points in canonical coordinates to camera coordinates or places them in camera space. The projection transformation moves points from camera space to the canonical view volume. Finally, the viewport transformation maps the canonical view volume to screen space. In addition, it takes line segments in the view volume to line segments in the canonical volume.