A simple method for computing general position in displaying three-dimensional objects

Abstract

In 3D graphics, the selection of the location of the center of projection (eye) is very important in order to obtain the pictures by which the original shapes of 3D objects can be comprehended easily. The eye position from which the picture of 3D objects with the maximum shape information is obtained is called the “general position”. In the current practice of making pictures, the most general eye position is determined in ad hoc ways, because it is very difficult to determine the view, foreseeing the resultant display image. In this paper, a simple method for computing the general position is presented. First the general position problem based on the line data is formulated as a maximin problem. Then the algorithms of computing the most general eye position by solving this maximin problem are presented. Some examples of performing these algorithms yielding satisfactory results are also presented.