Andrew Glassner's Notebook: Recreational Computer Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)

Andrew Glassner's computer graphics career combines renowned technical expertise with an exceptional ability to convey what he knows to professionals and hobbyists in many different fields. Reproducing and expanding almost all of his columns from IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications over the past three years, Andrew Glassner's Notebook is an eclectic, provocative, and broadly relevant book sure to entertain and inform you, regardless of the nature of your interest in graphics or the extent of your knowledge. The 4-color illustrations alone, some not previously published, will empower your skills and interest in the graphics world.

Inside, you'll gain lasting insights into the principles of computer graphics-not instruction in program-specific techniques but a deep and broad understanding of how to approach the visual world in terms of geometry, patterns, and relationships. And the story doesn't end there. To help you put this understanding to work, Glassner grounds these principles in dozens of detailed examples drawn from a wide variety of fields, ranging from traditional modeling and rendering, to more exotic subjects like tiling, Moire patterns, and more. Broad in scope yet rich in specifics, Andrew Glassner's Notebook delivers stimulating challenges and even greater rewards.

* Collects three years' worth of insights and expands this original work with an all-new introductory chapter, corrections, updates, and clarifications.
* Filled with hundreds of full-color images.
* Carries traditional computer graphics techniques and applications into new territory, covering topics drawn from science, the arts, and other fields.
* Provides detailed information on building beautiful and unusual physical models.
* Illustrates the realities of the research process, illustrating some of the dead ends encountered in the search for a good solution to a problem.
* Lets you avoid most math and clearly explains what little is required. ...Read more

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Andrew Glassner's Notebook is a compilation of lively and brain-tickling columns from the bimonthly magazine IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, some of which are published here in their entirety for the first time. Going beyond mere "fun with computer graphics," topics include problems in mathematics, physics, astronomy, and even industrial design.

The articles are organized chronologically, and some of the best subjects get revisited at a later date. For example, in "Origami Polyhedra," Glassner shows how to build everything from tetrahedra to icosadodecahedra using unit origami and colored paper, and explains it clearly enough that a child could follow. In a later column, he revisits the theme, this time showing how to build polyhedra from net diagrams. One early column discusses frieze groups and their relation to basic group theory, while a later chapter delves into the tangential topic of aperiodic tiling. Still another column deals with the challenge of creating alphanumeric displays on LCD, LED, and other light-emitting panels (the theory behind the ability to spell words upside down on a calculator, e.g., 07734).

The book is attractively designed with an abundance of illustrations that are colorfully visual and as elegant as they are entrancing. Patterns of all kinds in science are intriguing, and this is proven many times over. There is substantial serious mathematics here also: the expert will find the articles enhanced by it, but nonexperts can bypass it without missing any of the fun.

This notebook will appeal to mathematicians, graphic artists, and any open-minded, curious thinker, even the scientifically inclined junior high schooler. It is the sort of book that could fill scientists with new enthusiasm or inspire nonscientists to reconsider why they didn't like science in the first place. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: Solar halos and sun dogs, frieze groups and aperiodic tiling, origami and net diagrams for polyhedra, box folding, taxicab geometry, shading algorithms, alphanumeric electronic displays, polygon approximations and the Schwartz paradox, moiré patterns, mirror reflections and billiard balls, Ptolemy's Theorem, Napoleon's Theorem, and Fourier transformations. ...Read more

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