Customer Reviews

Computer Graphics with OpenGL (3rd Edition)

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

 

 

There are two, complementary uses for this book. The first is to learn computer graphics [of course]. To this ends, the authors give an excellent hands on discourse. They go through all the major ideas in this introductory course. Like the basic two dimensional drawing algorithms - Bresenham's, filling methods etc. Then they take you into a three dimensional world that you can create. Ultimately, this is where most of you will end up. Today's computers and graphical techniques are so powerful that you can make intricate objects in 3d. Then learn various non-trivial methods to take a plane projection, which is your image.

The authors also cover groovy ideas like using fractals and self-similarity to make random landscapes. This will attract some of you.

All the above is done with the aid of the OpenGL library. So you don't need to hardcode low level routines. OpenGL lets you concentrate on applying the book's algorithms for higher level purposes.

But there is another use of the book. If you're already up to speed on graphics algorithms and want to learn OpenGL, then here is a nice user's manual.

For either purpose, you may baulk at the text's length. But it can't be helped. The subject warrants the level of detail given here. No shortcuts to a good understanding.

I must agree with J. Davis. After going through about 3-4 different types of CG courses and experimenting with my own seminars I find that this book is just way too wide of a scope. It seems like it tries to cram general computer graphics, interactive computer graphics, and advanced computer graphics in one... and do a bad job at it. Looking through the book I seriously doubt that some topics can be covered in one chapter, especially some of the viewing chapters. How can you cover all aspect of 2D and 3D viewing, even in breadth only and no depth, in one chapter? That's just ridiculous. It almost feels as if they are saying that you need a separate major for CG completely, one course for overview, one for 2d, one for 3d, one for interactive graphics, and a few for advanced topics in computer graphics... but the problem is that that is too narrow of a scope for any 4 year college degree. Plus you can't even start some of the basic discussions without general education in the fundamental math like linear algebra, calculus, discrete math, and so forth. So this book is sort of making a statement that can't be backed in the real world. Though this does offer a good overview for people who are just curious. It touches on a wide variety of things and has very practical approach to having a workable project using openGL.

Now as for Davis's comments on a good book. I think Foley and van Dam has actually a pretty good book for undergrads, especially when you set appropriate prequisits for the course. Keeping in mind that CG should be a junior-senior level undergrad course. I studied CG1 when I was an art major and found the Foley van Dam book to usable, though dry, but usable. I found other books later on to be useful, but they are a bit specialized. A few good ones I must suggest for graphics math is essential mathematics for games by van verth and bishop to be good. I also recommend realtime graphics by akenine-moller and haine for interactive graphics. For some specialized ones you have to look around but I do recommend my professor's (david breen) book on cloth animation. But yeah, to sum it up, stick with Foley van Dam for your intro courses... maybe use this as an added supplement, especially when considering OpenGL for your teaching tool.

I teach an intro graphics course. I found that this text didn't cover the full set of things that are usually found in such a course (or covered them too superficially.) I do find its OpenGL examples embedded directly into the text to be useful for my students, but for me that doesn't forgive the lack of sufficient explanation of topics I care about.

I should note that I'm not aware of a 5 star text either. Although Foley-vanDam-et.al. is sufficiently complete its a little hard for some undergrads. I haven't yet checked out Angel or Watt or Shirley but they seem popular alternatives.

Some months ago I borrowed the international paperback edition of this book and read it from cover to cover. This book is a great introduction to computer graphics and OpenGL. It's very well structured, serves both as a textbook and as a reference, includes sample OpenGL code and all those mathematical algorithms you need for low-level CG programming. This third edition is much better than the previous one. Also, from a pedagogical view, the content presentation is better than in most other introductory CG books. I recently bought a copy of my own.

Source code is downloadable only if you are an instructor.
Can you prenhall guys get more stupid than this?

First off this book is in full colour, which gives a lot of people a nice image of this book. The layout of this book is good though the topics are not arranged quite well. This book is not as good as the second edition in the topic arrangements. It jumps from teaching 2d to 3d and revert back to 2d........... so on.Very good explanation given on every single topic except for advanced topic eg. "ray tracing". I highly recommend you to get the 2nd edition before you get this edition.
PS : this book have no cd accompanying it...........so codes must be written out yourself thats another cons.

I studied this book as an undergraduate in my junior year. I find it important to mention that the CG course was one of the most enjoyable and motivating courses I have taken. Sadly though, this book was one of the worst I studied (or rather, dealt with) for a number of reasons. I found it to be (and my classmates agree!):

1. Disorganized:
the way it jumps from one topic to the other with no harmonization of ideas, added to that the lack of headings and titles.

2. Misleading and inconsistent:
example: when it explains the mechanism of the shadow-mask CRT, the illustration shows 3 electron guns, each producing an electron beam of a different color, which is not true at all. The color is determined by the mask not the beam. (and this is just one example)

3. Confusing:
when it explains several methods of doing something, it mentions the drawbacks of one method under the title of another method! Confusing and also irritating.

4. Incomplete information
we had to rely almost completely on our professor's lectures and ended up ignoring the book altogether!

It has some good qualities. For example: the appendix was a good reminder of most of the required linear algebra and calculus. The algorithms in the book are very clear.

This book was obviously written for students starting a programming course on OpenGL. Almost every page (in full colour) has diagrams, pictures, graphs, formula and code. On first sight, this is a very impressive book with a nice neat layout. Beginners (and intermediate programmers) should get a lot out of this book, and although more advanced users will use this as a reference, it isn't really a book for the advanced CG programmer. If you want to learn OpenGL and you are new to OpenGL and even C/C++ programming, then this book is perfect. As a bonus, there are chapters on GLUT so you can quickly create windows applications with menus, mouse and keyboard input, without having to learn anything specific about Linux/Windows programming. There is no CD and I have not investigated if you can download the code, however, in a book like this, it doesn't seem to matter. The book is enough!

The textbook is in good condition as described. This is what my computer graphics class requires. However, I want it to have more source code rather than illuminations.

I have a number of computer graphics texts including Fundamentals of Computer Graphics (Shirley, Marschner) and Interactive Computer Graphics (Angel). The Hearn and Baker is the best and has become my "go to book" for anything theoretical. Hearn and Baker explains the theoretical and mathematical background for computer graphics very well. Many other textbooks either skim on this, or assume that you're some kind of math genius and just give you equations rather than explaining to you what each thing does. Hearn and Baker also covers a lot of topics that many newer texts don't, such as rasterization, curves, NURBS, etc.

The biggest failing of the book is that the name of the book "with OpenGL" suggests that it covers the practical programming aspects of computer graphics. Take note, it doesn't. The OpenGL examples merely reinforce the theoretical topics covered in the book, so that you can re-create the algorithms and gain a better understanding of what's happening 'under the hood'. The book doesn't actually teach you how to code in OpenGL so the title is somewhat misleading. Professors wanting to teach a more practical course should look to combine this book with another OpenGL book like the OpenGL SuperBible (Wright) or the Red Book (Shreiner).

Another failing of the book is that it seems somewhat dated in that it doesn't really cover recent advancements in graphics such as the use of vertex and pixel shaders. The fourth edition of the book is coming out soon, so I have high expectations of that edition.