HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Computer Graphics:

[1a, 1b, 1c] Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice Series [2] Physically Based Rendering [3] Real Time Rendering

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[1a] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-James-Fo... [1b] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... [1c] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Theory-Imp... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Rendering-Third-Tomas-Akeni...

⬐ kendallpark

Any resources you'd recommend for learning about 3D volumetric rendering via voxels (not polygons)?

⬐ GaryNumanVevo

NVIDIA has some good papers on Sparse Voxel Oct-trees (GPU backed of course). Typically voxel rendering is done via raytracing.

⬐ kendallpark

Thanks!

Do you have any opinion of voxel cone tracing vs raytracing?

⬐ __exit__

I acquired Pbrt in order to learn the basics of computer graphics rendering in a practical way. However, I struggle even with the most basic things (math mostly).

Do you happen to know of any resource that provides a good mathematical foundation directed at computer graphics?

Sigh, the canonical reference on 3D graphics "in software" has been the Foley and Van Dam tome "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C" [1], followed closely by "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics" [2] by Newman and Sproul. Followed closely by the Graphics Gems series, and then Watt's eponymous "3D Computer Graphics" [3] and "Real Time Rendering" [4] by Moller and Haines.

All wonderful texts and can tell you everything you want to know about doing 3D graphics in software. They won't help at all (generally) for GPU based graphics sadly.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice-...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Interactive-Computer-Graphi...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-3rd-Alan-Watt/dp/020...

[4] http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Rendering-Third-Tomas-Akenin...

⬐ _delirium

There's some good information in those books, but I don't think this one is redundant with them (admittedly, I've only skimmed it so far). Differences: 1) open-access; 2) interactive HTML5 demos of most of the concepts.

⬐ ChuckMcM

My opinion is that the killer project would be to combine them, which is to say put together interactive text/exercises around each concept so that you could read all the theory then see it in action.

⬐ nint22

Hey, I'm Jeremy - the author of the book in question. I'm happy to say I completely agree, and proudly own two of the book in question! My book's goal was to be a simple read with little overhead in allowing readers to start writing code and see results immediately. Though C is incredibly powerful (goes without saying), many students have a very hard time understanding that C is a language, not a library, and thus has a hard time "outputting" real-time interactive graphics. HTML5 / Canvas, on the other hand, are ready to go without any sort of installation!

Regardless, in my next update I'll be making this point explicitly clear to readers :-) I am not trying to become any sort of tome in the library of great computer-graphics books.

One of the best intros I've seen:

http://duriansoftware.com/joe/An-intro-to-modern-OpenGL.-Tab...

Also:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596804831

And then personally I've found this to be the clearest theory:

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice-...