Customer Reviews

Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

AART is all in all a good book. It covers many graphics related topics and is very interesting reading although some of the topics are not all that relevant for modern 3D hardware accelerated computers.

The book is divided into 3 parts:

The first part is an ultra compact summary of the computer graphics needed to understand the rest of the book. This part is virtually impossible to understand for people new to graphics - so I recommend reading Foley, et al: Computer Graphics - Principles and Practice first.

The second part covers rendering and is an introduction to shadows, mapping, ray tracing and radiosity.

The third part covers animation techniques such as bones and blending.

The book tries to cover as many things as possible and the consequence is, at times, that it does not use enough space on some things to make them comprehendable. I guess, this is probably only intended as a survey of alternative techniques and references to the original articles are given for interested readers.

Finally, the book contains a fair number of errors (one every couple of pages) many of which is in vital equations. There has been no corrections done to the book since its original release in 1992 and the official errata isn't good either.

For the sake of other readers I have therefore compiled an unofficial errata list for the book and I recommend that all readers take a look at it. Find it by searching for "watt errata" on Google.

I regret not buying this book sooner, cause it would have saved me a lot of thinking. This book is maybe not for beginners, but for the more experienced it's a great reference.

This book is the one I learned the fundimentals of the computer graphics from. It covers most of the computer graphics subjects and explains them in a quite easy-to-follow way. If you want to learn computer graphics, this book is a very nice starting point. Most of the chapters do not give the implementation details but in my opinion this is a nice thing since helps the understanding the theory and the concepts.

It covers: Parametric modelling, Antialising, Shadows, Mapping, Procedural textures, Ray Tracing, Radiocity, Global Illimunation, Volume rendering, Hierarchic animation, soft body animation and procedural animation subjects.

I'm ordering another copy of this, because like the other people I know who program renderers, I've loaned out yet another copy that I'm having trouble getting back. This is one of the classic overviews of rendering techniques, and particularly for its age is an extraordinary book. Though if you program anything involving rendering or other 3D graphics, don't you already own this book?

I bought this book solely based on the reviews at amazon. This was a huge mistake. I don't know if these people are related to the others in any way. All this book does is list a bunch of formulas with very little explanation and merely references journal papers for the details and proofs. It would be easier to get the journal papers.

I've read several other computer graphics books including the Foley & van Dam book. This book does not even compare. The prose is equivalent to verbal diarrhea. I particularly hated chapters three and four.

The code in the book is a welcome sight, but it contains essentially no useful comments and is not explained in the slightest in the text.

If you are at all serious about purchasing this book. I highly recommend that you first borrow it from the library. Read the first few chapters and then make your decision.

Furthermore, the text is riddled with errors, most of which are not documented in the errata.

This book is not worth the paper it's printed on!!!!!

Alan and Mark Watt accomplished an almost impossible task. They explained the most complex techniques in such a simple way that even ordinary people can understand, not only Ph.D. on advanced mathematics!!! From modelling 3D objects to rendering using ray-tracing techniques, from illumination models to soft object animation, everything is there. If you are looking for ONE book on 3D computer graphics, you should consider this one seriously.

This is the most usful book about CG in my shelf. It is a must-have for those who need to work on computer graphics!

Its a wonderful book which covers various topics and enhances your knowledge. I have used it during my masters program, for the games/ game engine i develop and defintely in the future.

Generally this is a good book. It covers some algorithm to the depth. But many topics it covers are not useful to game development, which I am interested. It does not cover some important animation related topics like vertex blending.

A good book but a lot of it was repeated material from Watt's other books.