Behind the scenes - 3D computer graphics

Computer graphics is an area where huge progress has been made during the last decades. In this article I will try to give the reader an overview of the different techniques that constitutes the foundation of the broad field of computer graphics. The generic idea when talking about computer graphics is to produce two-dimensional images that can be shown on a computer screen. This can be done in many various ways, but this report will only cover the techniques used to produce the images based on three-dimensional models. The model that represents an object can be described in many different ways. The most famous one is polygon based representation, where the object is made up from a number of triangles, that together form the surface of the object. This is the representation that is most commonly used to produce 3D computer graphics. There is a number of other models that used in computer graphics, where most of them are based on mathematical formulas.