Viewing the Scene with Cameras
The camera is responsible for taking the coordinates of objects (specifically, all their vertices and other properties) and transforming them in the modelview
of Figure 4.2. If you consider the vertices of the square mesh we looked at in the previous section, its coordinates are not going to retain those values as it will be moved around in the graphics/game world. The modelview
takes the world location of the mesh and the location of the camera, as well as some additional properties, and determines the new coordinates of the mesh so that it can be rendered correctly. Note that I am being purposefully abstract in describing this process right now as there’s a lot of mathematics involved, and I don’t want to complicate the discussion at this point!
The camera is a virtual object through which the world is visualized. It is the eye of the viewer and can be moved around the environment to provide different points of view. As illustrated...