Abstract

Computer graphics has come a long way over the years, making more and more lifelike displays. Raytracing techniques have been used to create images to a very high level of realism, and can handle optical effects like shading, shadows, reflection and refraction, but with a severe computation cost. Why does it take hours for a single frame to render in a CG film, when modern videogames can smoothly handle 60 frames per second? This talk will have a look at how real-time graphics is handled differently, the techniques used to achieve similar effects and the shortcuts that can be made to achieve this in a fraction of a second. We will cover the various stages involved in representing a 3D world and displaying it on a 2D screen, and look at real time algorithms such as Shadow mapping and Environment mapping.