Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 1st Edition

by Jason Zink (Author), Matt Pettineo (Author), Jack Hoxley (Author)

36 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1568817200

ISBN-10: 1568817207

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Direct3D 11 offers such a wealth of capabilities that users can sometimes get lost in the details of specific APIs and their implementation. While there is a great deal of low-level information available about how each API function should be used, there is little documentation that shows how best to leverage these capabilities. Written by active members of the Direct3D community, Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 provides a deep understanding of both the high and low level concepts related to using Direct3D 11.

The first part of the book presents a conceptual introduction to Direct3D 11, including an overview of the Direct3D 11 rendering and computation pipelines and how they map to the underlying hardware. It also provides a detailed look at all of the major components of the library, covering resources, pipeline details, and multithreaded rendering. Building upon this material, the second part of the text includes detailed examples of how to use Direct3D 11 in common rendering scenarios. The authors describe sample algorithms in-depth and discuss how the features of Direct3D 11 can be used to your advantage.

All of the source code from the book is accessible on an actively maintained open source rendering framework. The sample applications and the framework itself can be downloaded from http://hieroglyph3.codeplex.com

By analyzing when to use various tools and the tradeoffs between different implementations, this book helps you understand the best way to accomplish a given task and thereby fully leverage the potential capabilities of Direct3D 11.

Key Features

Presents the high level concepts used to design algorithms
Describes the nuts and bolts of how to implement the algorithms
Explains each of the major components of the Direct3D 11 library
Shows how Direct3D 11 can be used in a variety of real-world situations
Provides source code and sample programs on a supplementary website

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 packs in documentation and in-depth coverage of basic and high-level concepts related to using Direct 3D 11 and is a top pick for any serious programming collection. … perfect for a wide range of users. Any interested in computation and multicore models will find this packed with examples and technical applications.
―Midwest Book Review, October 2011

The authors have generously provided us with an optimal blend of concepts and philosophy, illustrative figures to clarify the more difficult points, and source code fragments to make the ideas concrete. Of particular interest is the chapter on multithreaded rendering, a topic that is essential in a multicore world. Later chapters include many examples such as skinning and displacement, dynamic tessellation, image processing (to illustrate DirectCompute), deferred rendering, physics simulations, and multithreaded paraboloid mapping. As if all this is not enough, the authors have made available their source code, called Hieroglyph 3. Books do not get any better than this!
―David Eberly, Geometric Tools

About the Author

Jason Zink, Matt Pettineo, Jack Hoxley

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ A K Peters/CRC Press; 1st edition (July 27, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 648 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1568817207
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1568817200
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.95 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.8 x 1.4 x 9.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,906,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17 in DirectX Software Programming
- #179 in Rendering & Ray Tracing
- #240 in Physics of Light (Books)

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Taranis

Great DirectX11 supplement material

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2021

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This is a much needed book dedicated for the DirectX11 API, as it gives detailed description of rendering pipeline, shaders, resources and HLSL references. And the usage is more up to date compared with other books. However this is not a beginner tutorial. And the main focus is what those APIs are for, not how to use them. The sample code is not learner friendly either. Instead of having separate projects for each topic, the sample code is an amalgamation of all topics. So it is harder to find exactly the material in the book is applied.

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Dietmar Suoch

I really wanted to like it. It has some good content and I ...

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2017

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I really wanted to like it. It has some good content and I like what it tries to achieve. But I have to admit I am quite disappointed by it.

1) horrendous quality
By print quality this is the worst book I ever purchased in the last years. And I have bought a ton of books.
Mine seems to have print mistakes on the cover and the pages that would make sense to have colored syntax are barely readable because they chose to do greyscale prints.

2) content
some goodies here and there and it has a good introduction, but also quite missing a thread or consistent through all the chapters. It feels like chapters stitched together and none of the authors had a holistic vision about this book. There is also quite some repetition and a lot of almost copied content from the official documentation / reference.

It is not worth the steep price. Sadly it is still one of the better D3D books out there :(

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A. M. Hernandez

Most Impressive. Maybe The Best DirectX 11 Book on the Market.

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2014

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I was thoroughly impressed by Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 by Jason Zink. Microsoft’s Direct3D API is certainly not for beginners, and neither is this book. But, at the same time, the author does a great job of explaining the material in a way that is approachable. The book assumes you are already comfortable with C++, and doesn’t hold your hand with the syntax. This is great, since you really should have an understanding of C++ before jumping into 3D graphics programming. It’s also not the kind of book that expects you to type in long pages of example code into your computer. In fact, there are not really any complete examples listed in the book at all. Instead the author chooses to highlight specific API calls and explain how different techniques can be implemented using the GPU.

This is in stark contrast to the last DirectX 11 book I read by Frank Luna. Luna’s text was great, don’t get me wrong. But it was very focused on producing functional demos to showcase certain effects (like shadow mapping or ambient occlusion). Instead Zink chooses to go totally knee-deep into the API itself and, as a reader, I came away much more confident that I understood the material. Just as an example, early on in the book there is a 100 page chapter just on resources. Most other tutorials would briefly show how to create a buffer, and then move on other stuff. Not here. In fact, the next 200 pages of the book is just about how the pipeline works. It’s really great, and rare to find such insight.

Don’t be fooled, there is certainly code in these pages, and there are a few examples. The book covers some topics like deferred rendering, multi-threaded graphics, dynamic tessellation, and physics. What I liked about the examples is that only the bare minimum amount of code was shown. Just enough to understand the key concepts without getting bogged down with boiler-plate code. It also made reading along much nicer, without having to feel like you need to get up every 5 minutes and type something in on a PC. Plus, the source code for the examples, and the author’s engine, are available for free online. So no need to type either way.

One thing I really enjoyed was the discussion on DirectCompute and on compute shaders. There are hardly any books covering DirectCompute, so it’s great to see so much space dedicated to the API. I am very interested in using this in my own engine, though it’s difficult to find information on the topic. Practical Rendering and Computation includes several chapters using compute shaders, for example to do image processing (blur). There was also a good amount of space given for tessellation. So if you are at all interested in these specific topics, it’s pretty much a no-brainer to get this book.

One other thing. Mad props to Jason Zink for being available to the community. You’ll find him on the gamedev.net forums, even helping out newbies with their 3D questions. Much respect.

All-in-all, this was quite an eye-opening read. I mean, after reading the Luna book and doing some online tutorials, I thought I knew about DirectX 11. Well, I knew something. But this book went much further than what I had previously seen on the topic. I would even recommend reading this *before* Frank Luna’s book, as I think that would flow a little better. Get the foundation solid, and then start learning how to code specific effects. Anyway, this book comes highly recommended by me if you are attempting to learn Direct3D.

5 people found this helpful

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Sebastian

Just the book I needed.

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2011

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After playing with Direct3D 11 for a while and being a convert from D3D9 I was still getting a bit of headaches. As it often turns out, the problem was between a keyboard and a chair. In my case the documentation provided by Microsoft, as well-done as it is, couldn't answer completely the very basic question - How to code modern graphics with this API using ALL its features. Then I found this book and it did the job. It filled the gaps in the whole picture. What I like the best is the amount of effort spent on freshly-introduced elements of D3D11. All in all, authors made it clear they want a reader to get to know API so well so that he could implement any idea on its own. Of course, it's not one book that makes you a master, that's practice. However one has to start somewhere. When you are looking for a well-paced guided walk through foundations that's the book I recommend.

PS. I hope to see a part 2 of this book starting where this one ended.

One person found this helpful

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FrankieC

Awesome!

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2011

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I have only read the first 76 pages of this book thus far and have skimmed through the rest of it. I must say, this is the best book that I have seen on Direct3D. Whether you are just getting started with Direct3D (and have C++ programming experience) or if you are a very experienced implementer of D3D does not matter as this book will be a good fit for both types of audiences. It's well worth the money and will be a companion on my desk for as long as D3D 11 remains a viable API in the industry. I highly recommend this book. It's a must have tool for anyone seriously developing wtih this API.

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Chris Donnelly

THE ABSOLUTE standard for DX11 reference. Not a "guide" or "framework" or "engine" book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2017

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The book isn't a "how to start being a game programmer" book - and that's a good thing.

While promoting the code used as an "engine", placed live on a codeplex website, the book focuses on all the detail in DirectX 11.
There's les of a feeling of story and progression, like most books of this nature - which aim to teach you to use specific frameworks and effects preferred by the author - it's partially a reference book, with very deep coverage of essential DirectX flags, values, functions and structures, and looks regularly at CPU and GPU registers to show how the workings tie together in DX11.

Alessio T

Excellent book for learning and understand how Direct3D 11 works and how to use it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2011

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Excellent book for learning and understand how Direct3D 11 works and how to use it.
I am a newbie on graphics and DirectX programming, and maybe for some users this book could be difficult to read without a small background of 3D-graphics and object oriented programming... But the content of this book clears a lot of dark corners of the Direct3D programming up, especially if you do not have a solid understanding how the API works.
The book could be divided into two parts, one form those want to know more about the base of the API (and also for those don't know nothing or quite nothing about Direct3D 11), and a second part about some intermediate and advanced topics and techniques that could be done with the last version of Direct3D.
The first parte explains very clearly the fundamentals of Direct3D, starting with a small overview of the API itself, then explaining every single notion in the right order to understand how Direct3D works and how use it, from the resources (buffers and textures), to the rendering pipeline (showing every single stage, including high-level pipeline functions). It also teaches very well the two new most important additions since Direct3D 10.x: the tessellation pipeline and the computation pipeline. It also has a chapter about HLSL (High Level Shader Language)
The second part is more about advanced topic, like multithreaded rendering, tessellation, deferred rendering and water simulation. These topics are approached to show the potential of Direct3D 11, so if you are searching traditional algorithm and basic render operation you should search elsewhere (the MSDN library could be a good point to start ' ).
The book doesn't provide the traditional CD with the sources and the reference of the example, but the authors have preferred to provide a full , complete and free rendering library (under MIT license) available on its project website ([...]
So if you are searching a book to learn and understood Direct3D 11 this book is for you. You will not found the traditional approach (or the approach of many books) where you have a lot of dummy example where you found "hey, this program draw a triangle and fill it with yellow... well, this line do this, this and this..., this is another thing, this other is just a pattern... oh yes here we have the 5 lines (of more than 350) that I will explain for this example"... With this book you will understand the Direct3D API in its rules better than all other book I have found around the web, and you will learn how use all this rules to do what you exactly have in mind.

5 people found this helpful

3D developer

Fantastic, illustrative book for lookups and read-through

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2015

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This book is filled with illustrations and covers almost everything you need to know to make your application work with DirectX 11.

One person found this helpful

Dipl.- Ing. (FH) Michael Czybor

Windows DirectX GPU Programmierung

Reviewed in Germany on December 1, 2018

Verified Purchase

Mit diesem Buch ist es möglich, einen guten Einstieg in die DirectX-Programmierung zu erhalten. Ich habe es speziell für die Nutzung der GPU als "Rechenmaschine" (keine Grafik!) benötigt.

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reimann

A fast way to the inner concepts of the D3D11 Low Level API

Reviewed in Germany on April 7, 2012

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This is a book that developers will like! But developers means developers. Some knowledge about coding in C/C++ and developing for Windows Applications might be helpfull. The provided homepage with the well documented library HIEROGLYPH3 shows an interresting approach how to handle the D3D11 APIs in a professional manner. For me it's not the beginning in Parallel Computing or some kind of "low level graphics coding" but the Authors of the book are giving more than just "a hand" to anybody who is interested in understanding and mastering the D3D11 APIs in detail.
Many lacks in the known online documentation from MS are filled with informations and SOLUTIONS that can help You fast to dive deep into the possibillities that are provided with that D3D11 stuff (and more) covered in the book. A lot of well known samples, that any developer (or ongoing developer) can find about ATL/MFC dealing with D3D (for free at e.g. msdn) are provided at the homepage too. This helps to bring all the mass of given informations into the context of realistic development scenarios and practical (=professional) rendering and 3D coding.

I'm happy 'couse it would have taken me several months(maybe years) to bring all that informations and "how to knowledge" - especially provided inside HIEROGLYPH3 - together.

It means NOT a warning when I'm writing here: This is NOT a "hands on book!". If You've passed the tutorials and the typically "hands on time" that is needed to understand the basic concepts of 2D/3D programming and last but not least the very basics of D3D (no matter if D3D9/10 or OpenGL was Ya home) THIS book should lay on the table, next to Your keyboard, if You want to save (a lot of) time during the hard way climbing up the high mountain where the "Professionals" reside.

A few thoughts at the end:

I like the book. It saved a lot of my time making myself familiar with the new concepts DirectX 11 provides.
I'm used to code in different environments (IDEs) on several hardware (e.g. NVIDIA or AMD). What a good book
about the use of a library will never tell You is how to set up Your hardware and software. Both is under a
permament change. It's up to anybody to solve this problems on his own, isnt't it?

Stefan Reimann
from Bavaria - Germany 4/7/2012

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Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 1st Edition

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