Customer Reviews

Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications: A Programmer's Guide (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If only every topic in game and graphics programming were covered as well as math. Over the past several years, a number of exceptionally good books covering math for game and graphics programming have been released, and I've had the opportunity to review most of them. Although, not surprisingly, there is some overlap between them all, each covers unique material and presents information in an original way so that collectively, the books provide an impressive body of work.

Essential Mathematics stands out as one of the best books in the pack, especially in regards to its coverage of the math behind low-level rendering techniques.

The book is broken into 4 parts. The first part, Core Mathematics, covers vectors and matrices, transformations, and number representation. This part will be useful to anyone doing 3D graphics.

Part II, Rendering, covers topics such as lighting and shading, texturing, projection, and rasterization. This part was of particular interest to me because I've been working on a commercial renderer, but it should also be useful to those who want a better understanding of what graphics engines do under the hood.

Part III, Animation, covers curves (very in depth) and representation of orientations (Euler vs. axis-angle vs. quaternions). Finally, Part IV, Simulation, covers intersection testing and rigid body dynamics. There are also a couple of appendices to help you brush up on trig and calculus, if needed.

The book includes many C++ code samples and demos, including a handy math library and a simple rendering/game engine using OpenGL and GLUT. The authors are to be commended for their writing style as well. It's very easy for a book of this nature to get bogged down in an extremely heavy academic tone, but this book manages to avoid that, making for a remarkably easy read.

I'm glad I don't have to choose just one game math book, but if I did, this would probably be the one I'd pick.

I have read many math books for video games and there are two aspects of this book I really like. The first is the book is encyclopedic and terms of the amount of information that it covers. The second reason that I like this book is that it clearly explains where the equations come from not just what the equations are.

The strength of this book lies in its author's ability to make complex subjects accessible to programmers of various levels. The book covers all necessary subjects of 3D development and algorithmic motion, while providing primers in the relevant Math and Trigonometry. The writing is clear, and the examples combine notation in Math, Pseudo Code, and Open-GL implementation. I could see various uses for this book; from reference guide to required course reading. It explains the most fundamental subjects of Vectors and Matrices, and later capitalizes on this knowledge towards subjects that every professional in the field should know. To make sure the book is right for you, I suggest reading the Introduction, which portrays the book accurately and proceeds to recommend alternative and additional resources.

See my other review. I bought this book and the other. I got stuck in that other book. I am learning linear algebra for the first time. This book is doing it! Although it gets quite abstract at times, and seems to be presenting the subject as if it is not related to 3D programming (like solving equations for an n-dimensional space), and it explains something and then says it is not used in 3D programming, it explains the concepts extremely well, and although it may take a while for a new concept to sink in for me, I do not find myself having to go elsewhere for help.

One note though, I tried to email one of the authors to find out about errata for the book and never got a response. I did eventually find it though. Don't expect the authors to be available. They do not have a message board.

As a novice game programming hobbyist, I've written applications using the DirectX SDK to render 3D visuals without really understanding what's happening behind the scenes. Applying a transformation matrix to a model and illuminating it with a spotlight just seemed to be magic beyond my understanding. This book has delivered enough information to get a good foundation in the understanding of the mathematics involved to bring points and images into a visual representation to the screen while going even further to discuss collision detection, interpolation, and rigid body dynamics.

If the reader wanted to develop a 3D application on a platform with no native support or SDK, there's enough material in this book to give the reader a core background to develop a software solution. Even though portions of the graphics pipeline are automatically handled by an SDK or hardware, the concepts are presented so the reader is taken every step of the way.

The reader should know algebra (of course), trigonometry, and calculus if they want to get something out of it. A history of linear algebra also helps, but it isn't necessary since the chapter on matrices that goes over the essential operations. The later chapters on collision detection and physics start getting more math-heavy. Having previously read a couple other books in the Morgan Kaufmann series: Real Time Collision Detection and Game Physics, I was expecting the discussions to be very similar; however, the reader would only get a basic understanding of the topics and would greatly benefit from continuing their reading into the aforementioned books.

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much and it gets my approval for anyone wanting to get into game programming and 3D simulation. The author also provides many resources and accompanies the book with a CD of precompiled visual examples that should better solidify the user's understanding. As previously mentioned, Real Time Collision Detection and Game Physics make fantastic supplements to this book.

This has been one of the most interesting and useful books on my bookshelf. It's great for people trying to learn the kind of math that's needed in computer game development or for people who just want a refresher. This book is such a great help and so clearly written that it would be worth it at $100, for this price it's a huge bargain. Everyone interested in programming games should own a copy.

The strength of this book lies in its author's ability to make complex subjects accessible to programmers of various levels. The book covers all necessary subjects of 3D development and algorithmic motion, while providing primers in the relevant Math and Trigonometry. The writing is clear, and the examples combine notation in Math, Pseudo Code, and Open-GL implementation. I could see various uses for this book; from reference guide to required course reading. It explains the most fundamental subjects of Vectors and Matrices, and later capitalizes on this knowledge towards subjects that every professional in the field should know. To make sure the book is right for you, I suggest reading the Introduction, which portrays the book accurately and proceeds to recommend alternative and additional resources.

This is a great book, however, with the Kindle version being priced only 5 dollars less than the hardcover, one would expect that you would get the same value.

However, you do not, as the CD-ROM that is included with hardcover is not included with the kindle edition. This is an issue, when for instance, you look up line segment to line segment, and find out that source code isn't listed in the book to save space. This doesn't make the book worthless, but it makes it pretty worthless.

If you are thinking about getting the Kindle edition - don't. Get the hardcover edition instead.

Do you know the history of quaternions? About a century ago, they were investigated, as an exercise in pure, abstract maths. Yet in recent years, people in computer graphics found this very useful in defining certain types of rotations. Interested? Well, this book has a good, clear section that explains how they are used. That requires only some basic knowledge of trigonometry and complex numbers.

Much of the book is like this. Though perhaps with concepts more readily apparent than quaternions. Ideas drawn from three dimensional analysis. But with topics that are not typically in maths courses, relating specifically to graphical displays. Like different types of tesselations, different shaders and texture maps.

Some physics also shows up in the book. Often related to ray tracing and approximating the effects of light on a surface.

Nothing too hard, despite some remarks by other reviewers. The really advanced and specialised material, like applying Monte Carlo methods, has been omitted. This is essentially a basic text. You should have mastery of this material to do useful contributions in graphics.

This book has, in the last few weeks, provided me with much inspiration for using mathematics properly in my games and development projects. With a few easy chapters, the authors propel the reader into a universe of interesting ways to use some of the basics of math, geometry, and physics, to entertain users and produce quality content.

I'm having a blast taking the ideas from this book and applying them to my own projects, and I encourage any games developer - or programmer with a simple interest in applied computing and mathematics - to read this book.