Real-Time Rendering, Fourth Edition, 4th Edition

Chapter 4 Transforms

DOI: 10.1201/b22086-4

“What if angry vectors veer

Round your sleeping head, and form.

There’s never need to fear

Violence of the poor world’s abstract storm.”

—Robert Penn Warren

A transform is an operation that takes entities such as points, vectors, or colors and converts them in some way. For the computer graphics practitioner, it is extremely important to master transforms. With them, you can position, reshape, and animate objects, lights, and cameras. You can also ensure that all computations are carried out in the same coordinate system, and project objects onto a plane in different ways. These are only a few of the operations that can be performed with transforms, but they are sufficient to demonstrate the ...