ShaderX3: Advanced Rendering with DirectX and OpenGL (Charles River Media Graphics) [Hardcover]

Wolfgang Engel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2004 | Series: Charles River Media Graphics

Welcome to the latest volume of ShaderX! This all-new collection is packed with insightful new techniques, innovative approaches to common problems, and practical tools and tricks that will help you in all areas of shader programming. All of the articles evolved from the work and experiences of industry pros, and all of the sections were edited by shader programming experts. With the rapid advances in DirectX, OpenGL, and graphics cards, vertex and pixel shaders are becoming more widely used in high-end graphics and game development. The challenges of mastering these techniques can be daunting for new programmers, but with this comprehensive collection of ready-to-use techniques, they'll get up to speed quickly. And for the more experienced programmers, they'll find insights and tricks that will improve their efficiency and prevent redundancy. If you are involved in shader programming, this is a must-have reference for your collection.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Wolfgang F. Engel (Frankenthal, Germany) regularly publishes articles that appear on www.gamedev.net and www.gamasutra.com. He is also the editor of the ShaderX series of books, and author of Beginning Direct3D Game Programming, and the forthcoming Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders (July 2004).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 654 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (November 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584503572
• ISBN-13: 978-1584503576
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #865,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia > DirectX
  • #44 in Books > Computers & Technology > Graphic Design > Rendering & Ray Tracing
  • #47 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Graphics & Multimedia > OpenGL

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good series, May 13, 2007

By 

Petr Sikachev (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: ShaderX3: Advanced Rendering with DirectX and OpenGL (Charles River Media Graphics) (Hardcover)

Its hard for me to treat the books of this series separately (ShaderX 3, ShaderX 4, ShaderX 5). They are all very good books of GPU-Gems level or higher. In comparison with GPU Gems, they are more academic, i. e. they are rather short and more applicable to wide range of applications then GPU Gems ones (while GPU Gems series is more scientific, state of the art, considering one particular research) and the accompanying CD is much more better (lots of working examples, most with source code).
Sections (Image-Space, Shadows) are also very helpful to figure out what is useful for you.
This series is not for beginners anyway, so please, go Cg Tutorial or DX SDK Tutorial and don't put 2 or 3 marks for these books because you can't cope with them.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good book for game developers, November 13, 2006

By 

Hu Ling (Shanghai, China) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ShaderX3: Advanced Rendering with DirectX and OpenGL (Charles River Media Graphics) (Hardcover)

I've bought many other rendering books like GPU Gems series, and I think this book is more practical for game developers compared with the other books. It explains many useful algorithms in good details and covers many aspects that a serious game developer should consider. As a game engine programmer, I think this book is a very good reference for me.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Up To Date View of the State of the Art, January 19, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: ShaderX3: Advanced Rendering with DirectX and OpenGL (Charles River Media Graphics) (Hardcover)

This book is a collection of forty-seven articles around the common theme of shading images in real time. Many of these effects have been common in the movie world for many years, but in that application the shading can be done on very expensive machines and the time it takes to produce an image is not important because the resulting image is to be shown on screen rather than immediately on a display. Now, with the increasing power in the PC's in widespread use, these techniques are being brought down to the standard desktop.

In this book a wide selection of authors discuss the start of the art in shading. They are, for the most part, active professionally in the graphics display business. A number of them work for ATI, the video card manufacturer, a number work for gaming companies, or for companies producing software used in gaming.

This approach provides for a fast time to print, rather than one author taking a year to write the book. In this industry a year is a lifetime, well, at least a generation in the software.