Customer Reviews

Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders

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

 

 

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.

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.

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..