The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics [Paperback]

Randima Fernando (Author), Mark J. Kilgard (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Cg is the key to unlocking the power of a new generation of programmable graphics hardware. This book is the definitive introduction to Cg, and will be essential for anyone programming high-quality real-time graphics. The Cg Tutorial will teach you to use Cg to create effects never before available for real-time applications."
--Larry Gritz, Author of Advanced RenderMan (Morgan Kaufmann, 2000) "An important and timely book: Pixel-level procedural textures--animated clouds, fire, water, the whole bag of procedural tricks--finally go from the movie screen to the desktop. Access to computation of this power through a C-like language will usher in an exciting new era for the graphics community."
--Ken Perlin, Professor, New York University

Cg (C for graphics) is a complete programming environment for the fast creation of special effects and real-time cinematic quality experiences on multiple platforms. By providing a new level of abstraction, Cg lets developers more directly target OpenGL®, DirectX®, Windows®, Linux, Mac OS X®, and console platforms, such as the Xbox™, without having to program directly to the graphics hardware assembly language. Cg was developed by NVIDIA® Corporation in close collaboration with Microsoft® Corporation, and is compatible with both the OpenGL API and Microsoft's HLSL for DirectX 9.0.

The Cg Tutorial explains how to implement both basic and advanced techniques for today's programmable GPU architectures.

Major topics covered include:

3D transformations

Per-vertex and per-pixel lighting

Skinning and key-frame interpolation

Environment mapping

Bump mapping

Fog

Performance optimization

Projective texturing

Cartoon shading

Compositing

The accompanying CD-ROM includes the tools needed to run the sample programs in the book.

0321194969B02192003

About the Author

Randima (Randy) Fernando is Manager of Developer Education at NVIDIA.

Mark J. Kilgard is a Senior Software Engineer at NVIDIA.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (March 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321194969
• ISBN-13: 978-0321194961
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #512,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction to Cg, December 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics (Paperback)

My review here is from an experienced OpenGL programmer's perspective.

This is an good introduction to the Cg shading language. It goes well beyond the free introductory PDFs on Cg that you can download from the nVidia site, and will quickly bring you up to speed. If you are unfamiliar with the new generation of graphics cards with programmable GPUs, you will love the introductory chapters. There is also an excellent chapter on bump mapping - the best, practical explanation of the technique I have ever seen. (Other books keep harping about tangent space, without explaining *why* you choose tangent space - never mentioning that it *is* possible to do it in object space.)

Now, for a few gripes:

1. There is no clear explanation for how exactly information (say, a calculated light position) should be passed from the vertex program to the fragment program. There are many ways to do this, and there is no suggested way of doing this. (eg: I can use out float3 var: POSITION, NORMAL, COLOR0, TEXCOORD0 - which one should I use and why?)

2. The vertex and fragment programs are given as such without any calling code. This may be really tough for beginners.

3. It does not provide a good reference to all the built in Cg functions. In many cases, you have to guess whether a function returns a value or modifes a parameter passed in. For example, there is only 1 line in the book about the faceforward(Ng, I, N) call. What is Ng? Does this function return any value?

4. The utility value of this book will plummet after you go through it once, since it is only an introduction. So I feel it should be priced accordingly. $45 is too much. I recommend getting it used, like I did, for half the price.

I like the book, but it is definitely not in the calibre of the Red book. (The OpenGL programming guide)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good intro to shaders, June 4, 2004

By 

Dave Astle (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics (Paperback)

This is a well written book covering the Cg shading language. It contains a lot of useful information about Cg and graphics programming techniques in general. Unfortunately, I felt like it didn't cover as much of Cg as I would have liked, making the book less useful than it could have been.

The book starts with a history of shaders and programmable hardware, an overview of Cg, and a summary of related technologies, such as HLSL and CgFX. It then spends some time covering the syntax and semantics of Cg, and then moves on to the core material of the book, in which the authors explain key graphics pipeline functionality and how it can be implemented using Cg. The book concludes with several appendices covering the Cg runtime, CgFX file format, and Cg standard library, as well as other reference material.

The topics covered include transformations, animation, lighting, environment mapping, bump mapping, fog, shadow mapping, toon shading, and projective texturing. The explanations are all clear and understandable, in particular the chapter on bump mapping, which is one of the easiest introductions to the topic I've encountered. Features of Cg are introduced as needed while explaining these topics, rather than introducing them all at once, which is very conducive to learning. In addition, the authors include warnings and workarounds for techniques which may not be supported on older hardware, as well as advice on attaining optimal performance.

I have two primary complaints about the book. The first is that they never really discuss the application code using the shaders, which made it a bit difficult to understand how they fit in at times. The second is that the book isn't nearly as complete a reference as you might expect. For a great deal of the functions and functionality in Cg, they simply refer you to the Cg reference manual. Although this electronic document is freely available, it's fairly brief at times, so a more detailed explanation in the book would have been appreciated. Similarly, I would have liked to have seen more detailed explanation of CgFX, as well as examples of using it.

Overall, though, this book does a very good job of introducing the reader to Cg and to shaders in general. If you're new to these topics, I'd recommend it. Even if you're a DirectX programmer intending to use HLSL, you'll find this book useful since the languages are identical (though the usage is of course different). If you're already an experienced graphics programmer with some knowledge of shaders, then you'll likely be able to find everything you need in the freely available documentation instead.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference and textbook, March 14, 2003

By 

Kent Haynes (Salt Lake City, Utah United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics (Paperback)

This is an excellent book for the beginning or advanced Cg and Graphics programmer. This book not only does and excellent job of explaining the insides of Cg but also of laying out the math behind what's going on with the effects.

A must have.