Advanced Trail
This trail is meant for students who have some knowledge of the
material and are looking for
a more detailed explanation of the content materials. Each section in here will
also contain links to the appropriate sections in the introductory and programming
sections.
Coordinate System
There are several different kinds of coordinate systems used in computer graphics and in commercial graphics systems. The system used in this module is a 2D-coordinate screen system (since we are only learning about 2-dimensional objects and transformations.) In this system, the x-axis is the horizontal axis whose values increase from left to right. The y-axis is the vertical axis with values increasing from bottom to top. Thus, the "origin" of the system (i.e. the point x = 0, y = 0) is in the bottom left corner.
Mathematical Specification
Any point in 2-dimensional space can be specified in this coordinate system by a 2-tuple (a,b) where the value of "a" is the point's distance along the x-axis from the origin, and the "b" value is the point's distance along the y-axis from the origin.