Vector Graphics - Typical Primitive Objects

Typical Primitive Objects

Any particular vector file format supports only some kinds of primitive objects. Nearly all vector file formats support simple and fast-rendering primitive objects:

  • Lines, polylines and polygons
  • Bézier curves and bezigons
  • Circles and ellipses

Most vector file formats support

  • Text (in computer font formats such as TrueType where each letter is created from Bézier curves) or quadratics.
  • color gradient
  • Often, a bitmap image is considered as a primitive object. From the conceptual view, it behaves as a rectangle.

A few vector file formats support more complex objects as primitives:

  • Many computer-aided design applications support splines and other curves, such as:
    • Catmull-Rom splines
    • NURBS
  • iterated function systems
  • superellipses and superellipsoids
  • metaballs
  • etc.

If an image stored in one vector file format is converted to another file format that supports all the primitive objects used in that particular image, then the conversion can be lossless.

Read more about this topic:  Vector Graphics

Famous quotes containing the words typical, primitive and/or objects:

    Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.
    W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)

    Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)