ShaderX5: Advanced Rendering Techniques [Hardcover]

Wolfgang Engel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1584504994 | ISBN-13: 978-1584504993 | Publication Date: December 14, 2006 | Edition: 1

Shader X5 Advanced Rendering Techniques is the newest volume in this cutting-edge, indispensable series for game and graphics programmers. This all new volume is packed with articles covering state-of-the-art shader techniques and tools written by programming professionals from around the world. These authors have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the field, and each section is edited by an industry expert to ensure the highest quality and usefulness! The collection is broken into nine comprehensive sections. The geometry section covers improved N-Patches, how to generate dynamic wrinkles on animated meshes and much more. In the rendering section you'll discover how to generate a tangent space ordinate system in the pixel shader, how to setup an area light for games, and a variety of other techniques. Practical and useful multi-frustum shadow maps like Cascaded Shadow Maps and Queried Virtual Shadow maps are covered in the shadow section. The environmental techniques section features the beautiful volume particle approaches: Rain and Godrays under water. The global illumination section covers techniques that should work in next-gen games. The new mobile section lays out the basics of shader driven next-gen mobile development and some advanced effects tailored to the devices. Many shader-relevant engine design decisions are covered in the 3D Engine Design section. It also deals with post-processing effects, how to design shader plugins, and how to bind shader data. The Beyond Pixels and Triangles section covers a printf for the pixel shader, random number generator on the GPU, and many more.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 602 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (December 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584504994
• ISBN-13: 978-1584504993
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #484,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Computers & Technology > Graphic Design > Rendering & Ray Tracing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 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
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ShaderX5: Advanced Rendering Techniques (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.