Clipping, in the context of

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

, is a method to selectively enable or disable rendering operations within a defined region of interest. Mathematically, clipping can be described using the terminology of constructive geometry. A rendering algorithm only draws

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

s in the

intersection In mathematics, the intersection of two or more objects is another object consisting of everything that is contained in all of the objects simultaneously. For example, in Euclidean geometry, when two lines in a plane are not parallel, thei ...

between the clip region and the scene model. Lines and surfaces outside the view volume (aka. frustum) are removed. Clip regions are commonly specified to improve render performance. A well-chosen clip allows the renderer to save time and energy by skipping calculations related to pixels that the user cannot see. Pixels that will be drawn are said to be within the clip region. Pixels that will not be drawn are outside the clip region. More informally, pixels that will not be drawn are said to be "clipped."

Clipping in 2D graphics

In two-dimensional graphics, a clip region may be defined so that pixels are only drawn within the boundaries of a

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or frame. Clip regions can also be used to selectively control pixel rendering for aesthetic or artistic purposes. In many implementations, the final clip region is the composite (or intersection) of one or more application-defined shapes, as well as any system hardware constraints In one example application, consider an image editing program. A user application may render the image into a viewport. As the user zooms and scrolls to view a smaller portion of the image, the application can set a clip boundary so that pixels outside the viewport are not rendered. In addition,

GUI widget A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through dir ...

s, overlays, and other windows or frames may obscure some pixels from the original image. In this sense, the clip region is the composite of the application-defined "user clip" and the "device clip" enforced by the system's software and hardware implementation. Application software can take advantage of this clip information to save computation time, energy, and memory, avoiding work related to pixels that aren't visible.

Clipping in 3D graphics

In three-dimensional graphics, the terminology of clipping can be used to describe many related features. Typically, "clipping" refers to operations in the plane that work with rectangular shapes, and "culling" refers to more general methods to selectively process scene model elements. This terminology is not rigid, and exact usage varies among many sources. Scene model elements include geometric primitives: points or vertices; line segments or edges; polygons or faces; and more abstract model objects such as curves, splines, surfaces, and even text. In complicated scene models, individual elements may be selectively disabled (clipped) for reasons including visibility within the viewport (

frustum culling In 3D computer graphics, hidden-surface determination (also known as shown-surface determination, hidden-surface removal (HSR), occlusion culling (OC) or visible-surface determination (VSD)) is the process of identifying what surfaces and parts o ...

); orientation (

backface culling In computer graphics, back-face culling determines whether a polygon of a graphical object is drawn. It is a step in the graphical pipeline that tests whether the points in the polygon appear in clockwise or counter-clockwise order when project ...

), obscuration by other scene or model elements ( occlusion culling, depth- or "z" clipping). Sophisticated algorithms exist to efficiently detect and perform such clipping. Many optimized clipping methods rely on specific hardware acceleration logic provided by a

graphics processing unit 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, m ...

(GPU). The concept of clipping can be extended to higher dimensionality using methods of abstract

algebraic geometry Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics, classically studying zeros of multivariate polynomials. Modern algebraic geometry is based on the use of abstract algebraic techniques, mainly from commutative algebra, for solving geometrical ...

Near clipping

Beyond projection of vertices & 2D clipping, near clipping is required to correctly rasterise 3D primitives; this is because vertices may have been projected behind the eye. Near clipping ensures that all the vertices used have valid 2D coordinates. Together with far-clipping it also helps prevent overflow of depth-buffer values. Some early texture mapping hardware (using forward texture mapping) in video games suffered from complications associated with near clipping and

UV coordinates UV mapping is the 3D modeling process of projecting a 3D model's surface to a 2D image for texture mapping. The letters "U" and "V" denote the axes of the 2D texture because "X", "Y", and "Z" are already used to denote the axes of the 3D object i ...

Occlusion clipping (Z- or depth clipping)

In 3D computer graphics, "Z" often refers to the depth axis in the system of coordinates centered at the viewport origin: "Z" is used interchangeably with "depth", and conceptually corresponds to the distance "into the virtual screen." In this coordinate system, "X" and "Y" therefore refer to a conventional cartesian coordinate system laid out on the user's screen or viewport. This viewport is defined by the geometry of the viewing frustum, and parameterizes the

field of view The field of view (FoV) is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment. In the case of optical instruments or sensors it is a solid angle through which a detector is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. Human ...

. Z-clipping, or depth clipping, refers to techniques that selectively render certain scene objects based on their depth relative to the screen. Most graphics toolkits allow the programmer to specify a "near" and "far" clip depth, and only portions of objects between those two planes are displayed. A creative application programmer can use this method to render visualizations of the interior of a 3D object in the scene. For example, a

medical imaging Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to re ...

application could use this technique to render the organs inside a human body. A video game programmer can use clipping information to accelerate game logic. For example, a tall wall or building that occludes other game entities can save GPU time that would otherwise be spent transforming and texturing items in the rear areas of the scene; and a tightly integrated software program can use this same information to save CPU time by optimizing out game logic for objects that aren't seen by the player.

Algorithms

* Line clipping algorithms: ** Cohen–Sutherland ** Liang–Barsky ** Fast-clipping ** Cyrus–Beck ** Nicholl–Lee–Nicholl **

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** O(lg ''N'') algorithm * Polygon clipping algorithms: ** Greiner–Hormann ** Sutherland–Hodgman ** Weiler–Atherton ** Vatti *Rendering methodologies **

Painter's algorithm The painter’s algorithm (also depth-sort algorithm and priority fill) is an algorithm for visible surface determination in 3D computer graphics that works on a polygon-by-polygon basis rather than a pixel-by-pixel, row by row, or area by are ...

References

{{Computer graphics Computer graphics Computer graphic artifacts