Java™ Media APIs: Cross-Platform Imaging, Media, and Visualization

The Big Chain of Transforms

On the way through the graphics pipeline, the 3D content undergoes numerous transformations to become a rendered output. This part of the pipeline is what we have covered throughout this section of the book so far as we have examined content creation. The pipeline transformations occur over all the many reference frames in the scene (represented by TransformGroups and Transform3Ds). The basic set of transformations in any 3D graphics pipeline was established early on by Sutherland, who recognized the utility of projective geometry in chaining them together for computational ease. In fact, when we refer to “the 3D graphics pipeline,” for all intents and purposes, we are describing what is frequently called the Sutherland ...