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Plasma Effect
The plasma effect is a computer-based visual effect animated in real-time. It uses cycles of changing colours warped in various ways to give an illusion of liquid, organic movement. Plasma was the name of a VGA graphics demo created by Bret Mulvey in 1988 and released on CompuServe. It used a diamond-square algorithm to generate a 2D pattern, and then cycled the colors using VGA's hardware palette in its 256-color mode. Plasma was picked up by demo coders for their demos where the effect was heavily used, especially in the early 1990s. The effect was particularly common on the Commodore Amiga where it could be implemented very efficiently with its display hardware features. Plasma can also be implemented easily in software rendering by using sinus tables and pseudocolor palettes, and it has also been the first true demo effect for many beginning PC democoders. The fractal software Fractint also incorporates an algorithm known as "plasma", which, when combined with the col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasma Effect
The plasma effect is a computer-based visual effect animated in real-time. It uses cycles of changing colours warped in various ways to give an illusion of liquid, organic movement. Plasma was the name of a VGA graphics demo created by Bret Mulvey in 1988 and released on CompuServe. It used a diamond-square algorithm to generate a 2D pattern, and then cycled the colors using VGA's hardware palette in its 256-color mode. Plasma was picked up by demo coders for their demos where the effect was heavily used, especially in the early 1990s. The effect was particularly common on the Commodore Amiga where it could be implemented very efficiently with its display hardware features. Plasma can also be implemented easily in software rendering by using sinus tables and pseudocolor palettes, and it has also been the first true demo effect for many beginning PC democoders. The fractal software Fractint also incorporates an algorithm known as "plasma", which, when combined with the col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palette (computing)
In computer graphics, a palette is the set of available colors from which an image can be made. In some systems, the palette is fixed by the hardware design, and in others it is dynamic, typically implemented via a color lookup table (CLUT), a correspondence table in which selected colors from a certain color space's color reproduction range are assigned an index, by which they can be referenced. By referencing the colors via an index, which takes less information than needed to describe the actual colors in the color space, this technique aims to reduce data usage, including processing, transfer bandwidth, RAM usage, and storage. Images in which colors are indicated by references to a CLUT are called indexed color images. Description As of 2019, the most common image colorspace in graphics cards is the RGB color model with 8 bits per pixel color depth. Using this technique, 8 bits per pixel are used to describe the luminance level in each of the RGB channels, therefore 24 b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perlin Noise
Perlin noise is a type of gradient noise developed by Ken Perlin. History Ken Perlin developed Perlin noise in 1983 as a result of his frustration with the "machine-like" look of computer-generated imagery (CGI) at the time. He formally described his findings in a SIGGRAPH paper in 1985 called ''An Image Synthesizer''. He developed it after working on Disney's computer animated sci-fi motion picture ''Tron'' (1982) for the animation company Mathematical Applications Group (MAGI). In 1997, Perlin was awarded an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for creating the algorithm, the citation for which read: Perlin did not apply for any patents on the algorithm, but in 2001 he was granted a patent for the use of 3D+ implementations of simplex noise for texture synthesis. Simplex noise has the same purpose, but uses a simpler space-filling grid. Simplex noise alleviates some of the problems with Perlin's "classic noise", among them computational complexity and visually-significan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pixel Shaders
In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as ''shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of specialized functions in computer graphics special effects and video post-processing, as well as general-purpose computing on graphics processing units. Traditional shaders calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility. Most shaders are coded for (and run on) a graphics processing unit (GPU), though this is not a strict requirement. ''Shading languages'' are used to program the GPU's rendering pipeline, which has mostly superseded the fixed-function pipeline of the past that only allowed for common geometry transforming and pixel-shading functions; with shaders, customized effects can be used. The position and color (hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast) of all pixels, vertices, and/or textures use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GPUs
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing. Their parallel structure makes them more efficient than general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) for algorithms that process large blocks of data in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card or embedded on the motherboard. In some CPUs, they are embedded on the CPU die. In the 1970s, the term "GPU" originally stood for ''graphics processor unit'' and described a programmable processing unit independently working from the CPU and responsible for graphics manipulation and output. Later, in 1994, Sony used the term (now standing for ''graphics processing unit'') ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Color Cycling
Color cycling, also known as palette shifting, is a technique used in computer graphics in which colors are changed in order to give the impression of animation. This technique was mainly used in early computer games, as storing one image and changing its palette required less memory and processor power than storing the animation as several frames. Examples of use * The Windows 9x boot screen used color cycling to provide animation. * The 3D maze screensaver included with earlier versions of Windows used color cycling to animate the four fractal textures available. * The Amiga Boing Ball cycled the ball's checkerboard pattern between red and white to create the illusion of the ball rotating. The same technique was used by Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on the Sega Genesis in its bonus stages featuring a rolling checkerboard sphere. * ''SimCity 2000'' made extensive use of this technique: every building with animation had its animation provided by color cycling. This was used to provid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fractint
Fractint is a freeware computer program to render and display many kinds of fractals. The program originated on MS-DOS, then ported to the Atari ST, Linux, and Macintosh. During the early 1990s, Fractint was the definitive fractal generating program for personal computers. The name is a portmanteau of ''fractal'' and ''integer'', since the first versions of Fractint used only integer arithmetic (also known as fixed-point arithmetic), for faster rendering on computers without math coprocessors. Since then, floating-point arithmetic and arbitrary-precision arithmetic modes have been added. Features FractInt can draw most kinds of fractals that have appeared in the literature. It also has a few "fractal types" that are not strictly speaking fractals, but may be more accurately described as display hacks. These include cellular automata. History Fractint originally appeared in 1988 as FRACT386, a computer program for rendering fractals very quickly on the Intel 80386 process ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trigonometric Tables
In mathematics, tables of trigonometric functions are useful in a number of areas. Before the existence of pocket calculators, trigonometric tables were essential for navigation, science and engineering. The calculation of mathematical tables was an important area of study, which led to the development of the first mechanical computing devices. Modern computers and pocket calculators now generate trigonometric function values on demand, using special libraries of mathematical code. Often, these libraries use pre-calculated tables internally, and compute the required value by using an appropriate interpolation method. Interpolation of simple look-up tables of trigonometric functions is still used in computer graphics, where only modest accuracy may be required and speed is often paramount. Another important application of trigonometric tables and generation schemes is for fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithms, where the same trigonometric function values (called ''twiddle fac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Rendering
Software rendering is the process of generating an image from a model by means of computer software. In the context of computer graphics rendering, software rendering refers to a rendering process that is not dependent upon graphics hardware ASICs, such as a graphics card. The rendering takes place entirely in the CPU. Rendering everything with the (general-purpose) CPU has the main advantage that it is not restricted to the (limited) capabilities of graphics hardware, but the disadvantage is that more semiconductors are needed to obtain the same speed. Rendering is used in architecture, simulators, video games, movies and television visual effects and design visualization. Rendering is the last step in an animation process, and gives the final appearance to the models and animation with visual effects such as shading, texture-mapping, shadows, reflections and motion blur. Rendering can be split into two main categories: real-time rendering (also known as online rendering), and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodore Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. This includes the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Amiga 600 in March 1992. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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