Jim Blinn's Corner: Notation, Notation, Notation, 1st Edition

Key Features

*Features 21 expanded and updated installments of "Jim Blinn's Corner," dating from 1995 to 2001, and never before published in book form.
*Includes "deleted scenes"—tangential explorations that didn't make it into the original columns.
*Details how Blinn represented planets in his famous JPL flyby animations.
*Explores a wide variety of other topics, from the concrete to the theoretical: assembly language optimization for parallel processors, exotic usage of C++ template instantiation, algebraic geometry, a graphical notation for tensor contraction, and his hopes for a future world.

Description

The third entry in the Jim Blinn's Corner series, this is, like the others, a handy compilation of selected installments of his influential column. But here, for the first time, you get the "Director's Cut" of the articles: revised, expanded, and enhanced versions of the originals. What's changed? Improved mathematical notation, more diagrams, new solutions. What remains the same? All the things you've come to rely on: straight answers, irreverent style, and innovative thinking. This is Jim Blinn at his best—now even better.

Highlights
- Features 21 expanded and updated installments of "Jim Blinn's Corner," dating from 1995 to 2001, and never before published in book form.
- Includes "deleted scenes"—tangential explorations that didn't make it into the original columns.
- Details how Blinn represented planets in his famous JPL flyby animations.
- Explores a wide variety of other topics, from the concrete to the theoretical: assembly language optimization for parallel processors, exotic usage of C++ template instantiation, algebraic geometry, a graphical notation for tensor contraction, and his hopes for a future world.

Readership

Computer graphics professionals with computer science or mathematics background, including academic computer scientists, researchers, educators, students, and graduate students; graphics designers; computer animators interested in the latest developments of conceptual and practical aspects of rendering and graphics; software and game developers.

Jim Blinn's Corner: Notation, Notation, Notation, 1st Edition

Preface
Color Plates

Chapter 1 How to Draw a Sphere Part I, Basic Math (January 1995)
Chapter 2 How to Draw a Sphere Part II, Coordinate Systems (March 1995)
Chapter 3 How to Draw a Sphere Part III, The Hyperbolic Horizon (September 1995)
Chapter 4 The Truth about Texture Mapping (March 1990)
Chapter 5 Consider the Lowly 2x2 Matrix (March 1996)
Chapter 6 Calculating Screen Coverage (May 1996)
Chapter 7 Fugue for MMX (March-April 1997)
Chapter 8 Floating Point Tricks (July-August 1997)
Chapter 9 A Ghost in a Snowstorm (January-February 1998)
Chapter 10 W Pleasure, W Fun (May-June 1998)
Chapter 11 Ten More Unsolved Problems in Computer Graphics (September-October 1998)
Chapter 12 The Cross Ratio (November-December 1998)
Chapter 13 Inferring Transforms (May-June1999)
Chapter 14 How Many Different Rational Parametric Cubic Curves Are There? Part I, Inflection Points (July-August 1999)
Chapter 15 How Many Different Rational Parametric Cubic Curves Are There? Part II, The "Same" Game (November-December 1999)
Chapter 16 How Many Different Rational Parametric Cubic Curves Are There? Part III, The Catalog (March-April 2000)
Chapter 17 A Bright, Shiny Future (January 2000)
Chapter 18 Optimizing C++ Vector Expressions (July-August 2000)
Chapter 19 Polynomial Discriminants Part I, Matrix Magic (November-December 2000)
Chapter 20 Polynomial Discriminants Part II, Tensor Diagrams (January-February 2001)
Chapter 21 Tensor Contraction in C++ (March-April 2001)