Browse Books

Reviewer: Adina Raclariu

In the last ten years, 3D graphics and realism have become the driving force behind personal computer development. Visualization is an indispensable tool to make sense of the flood of information in today's computer systems. Desktop computers that can handle 3D graphics are being used for every thing from entertainment and the Internet to multimedia and user interfaces. Visualization has moved beyond the scientific domain into business, social science, demographics, and information management in general. The first part of this book covers the fundamental concepts of computer graphics. Then the authors present the mathematical tools for data representation and rendering, as a basis for visualization techniques. They have chosen C++ for their visualization toolkit, because it is available on many Unix platforms and personal computers. One of the principal goals of visualization is to enable the user to explore the information inherent in the data, by providing alternative methods of analysis and presentation. The authors compare different software systems for visualization of data sets, including Application Visualization System, Animation Production Environment, and the proposed vtk system. Vtk is designed for programming visualization networks; it contains an object library implemented in C++. The next part of the book is concerned with advanced data representation and algorithms. Image processing is presented as an important tool for preprocessing and manipulating data. Next, the authors investigate interpreted languages for data visualization, introduce the syntax of the interpreted language Tcl, and explain how Tcl is integrated with their visualization toolkit. The last chapters discuss visualization over the Web and outline the most important application domains for visualization, including 3D medical imaging, financial visualization, computational fluid dynamics, and finite element analysis. In addition to presenting this complex domain accurately and attractively, the authors supplement each chapter with programming examples and exercises. Therefore, I recommend the book both to those interested in developing data visualization applications and for use in introductory classes on visualization. It provides students and programmers with practical and up-to-date methods for solving basic problems in 3D graphics and realism. Covering both theoretical and practical aspects of recent visualization techniques makes it an essential work in this area.