Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders [Paperback]

Kelly Dempski (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1556222920 | ISBN-13: 978-1556222924 | Publication Date: October 31, 2004

The world around us is filled with subtle lighting effects, but until recently it was not possible to duplicate these real-world effects in computer games because of the limits of consumer graphics hardware. Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders explains the principles of lighting theory and discusses how to create realistic lighting that takes full advantage of the capabilities of modern hardware. Topics include the physics of light, raytracing and related techniques, objects and materials, lighting and reflectance models, implementing lights in shaders, spherical harmonic lighting, spherical harmonics in DirectX, and real-time radiosity. Upon reading this text, you will: Understand the underlying physics of light and energy. Learn about the visual features of different materials and how they can be modeled for real-time graphics. Find out about the different lighting models. Discover how real-time techniques compare to ray tracing. Learn to use the provided shader implementations to implement lights and realistic materials in real time.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kelli Dempski is the author of Rea- Time Rendering Tricks and Techniques in DirectX (Premier Press) and Focus on Curves and Surfaces (Premier Press). A researcher at Accenture’s Technology Labs for nine years, his work involves developing ideas and prototypes for multimedia, virtual reality, augmented reality, and interactive TV, including work in the areas of photorealistic rendering and interactive techniques.

Emmanuel Viale is an accomplished programmer/CG artist known for writing his own advanced raytracing program.

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers (October 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556222920
• ISBN-13: 978-1556222924
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,373,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review Updated, May 20, 2005

By 

Maximus Payne "Payne" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders (Paperback)

I've updated my review. I think it is worth the full fives stars, but I didn't feel like erasing it and rewriting it.

The book is really great overall, but mainly I enjoyed the fact it had a working raytracer to play with. It is nice and small and easy to play around with, and it came in very handy when I was trying some crazy technique with OpenGL.

The only downside is the book doesn't cover bump mapping. I don't know if Bump/normal mapping is 'true' lighting equation, but it's important because it allows you to use a very high detailed mesh, and than 'normal map' it so you can use a low poly mesh but preserve it's details in the lighting. If it covered bump maps I really missed it (I skipped around alot but have mostly finished the book).

Excellent book, very fun, heavy on the math (but I've seen most of it, except for equations with double factorials!). It is advanced, but for my background I'd consider it more of a an intermediate in terms of math (not graphics), but I am sure to beginners the equations would scare the tar out of them. No sweat, it isn't that hard and they walk you through it all.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars One extreme to the other, August 30, 2006

By 

Andrew Macy "Drew_Almighty" (Sterling Heights, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders (Paperback)

This book is all about extremes. It describes lighting and materials in very simple terms and then proceeds to list the complex equations involved. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground.

I understand that metal is shiny and that tree bark is rough and bumpy. But going from that to the complex equations is quite a leap. I was hoping for a book that explained objects in relation to the settings that 3d programs like 3ds Max use to create their materials...Diffuse, Specular, Glossiness, etc. etc.

I would only recommend this book to you if you can make use of the complex equations used to produce realistic lighting.

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome!, August 6, 2011

By 

Todd Seiler (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders (Paperback)

Concise and to the point.
Though it does skip some stuff, like equation derivations.
The chapter on materials was useless... I know what wood and rocks look like thank you..
I absolutely loved this book though.

I didn't know there were so many different lighting models... I mainly wanted the stuff on spherical harmonics, which was complicated..