Mathematics

These lessons serve to either introduce or refresh your knowledge on various areas of mathematics important to the field of computer graphics.

It's not necessary to read these lessons before starting with the programming lessons. In fact I hope for most people with a background in programming, the maths in the main set of tutorials is already familiar to you.

But if not, or if you need a reminder, or if you just never formally learned mathematics, don't worry! You can use these lessons as both study reference, or on certain topics to dive slightly deeper into the underlying mathematics than is otherwise strictly necessary in order to learn to code graphics.

Core Concepts

An introduction to the basic mathematical terms and building blocks of graphics.

Dot Products

We introduce the dot product and see how it can be useful for lighting calculations.

Cross Products

We look at the cross product, and see how it can be used to calculate lighting normals.

Matrix Essentials

An introduction to matrices and their basic properties and use cases.

Transformation Matrices

We look at how matrices can be used to convert between one coordinate system and another.

Projection Matrices

We look at this special matrix for projecting the 3D world onto a 2D image for our screen.