Introduction

Be creative is the one instruction I find in many CG books that always makes me laugh out loud. Why is the author telling me to be creative? If I wasn’t a creative person, I wouldn’t be interested in computer graphics in the first place.

It always seems to me that authors of tutorials use the phrase be creative when they are not exactly sure what to say. But upon reflection, it’s not really a bad piece of advice if you stop to think about what drives the creative process. Creativity is the ability to make connections between two or more seemingly unrelated things. For example, when chemicals were exposed to light in a particular way, the art of photography was born. Sound vibrations used to carve grooves into a wax tube gave birth ...

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