Product Description

Today truly useful and interactive graphics are available on affordable computers. While hardware progress has been impressive, widespread gains in software expertise have come more slowly. Information about advanced techniques-beyond those learned in introductory computer graphics texts-is not as easy to come by as inexpensive hardware.

This book brings the graphics programmer beyond the basics and introduces them to advanced knowledge that is hard to obtain outside of an intensive CG work environment. The book is about graphics techniques-those that don't require esoteric hardware or custom graphics libraries-that are written in a comprehensive style and do useful things. It covers graphics that are not covered well in your old graphics textbook. But it also goes further, teaching you how to apply those techniques in real world applications, filling real world needs.

* Emphasizes the algorithmic side of computer graphics, with a practical application focus, and provides usable techniques for real world problems.
* Serves as an introduction to the techniques that are hard to obtain outside of an intensive computer graphics work environment.
* Sophisticated and novel programming techniques are implemented in C using the OpenGL library, including coverage of color and lighting; texture mapping; blending and compositing; antialiasing; image processing; special effects; natural phenomena; artistic and non-photorealistic techniques, and many others.
* Code fragments are used in the book, and full blown example programs for virtually every algorithm are available at www.mkp.com/opengl

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #267043 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 672 pages

Review
"I've been using the techniques in this book since their introduction at SIGGRAPH years ago. Those notes, transformed into this superb book, have been the quintessential reference for advanced techniques in OpenGL. Every corner of the subject is analyzed, with enough detail for the expert, but also very readable for the novice. Congratulations to David and Tom for providing an excellent OpenGL reference!"
-Dave Shreiner, Silicon Graphics, Inc., co-author of OpenGL Programming Guide

"You may think you know OpenGL. As a software engineer with ten years of OpenGL experience, I thought I did. However, this book quickly convinced me that I was very much mistaken. David Blythe and Tom McReynolds have taught me much that I did not know, and in the process improved my company's products.

This is a book for computer graphics enthusiasts, both amateur and professional. If you use OpenGL in your work, Advanced Graphics Programming using OpenGL will be your constant companion. Be sure to get your own copy, however - my copy is not leaving my desk under any circumstances!"
-Ian Ashdown, President, byHeart Consultants Limited

About the Author
Tom McReynolds has worked on 3D graphics at Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Gigapixel, 3DFX, and NVIDIA. He has worked in software organizations, writing graphics libraries and drivers, and on the hardware side, writing simulators and verification software for 3D hardware. He presented 3D graphics courses at a number of SIGGRAPH conferences, as well as at a number of Silicon Graphics Developer conferences, an X technical conference, and at LinuxWorld. Tom is currently managing a development team to 3D graphics drivers for embedded GPUs at NVIDIA, and contributing to the evolution of OpenGL-ES by participating in the Khronos working group.

David Blythe has worked in the 3D graphics field professionally for the last 14 years, including serving as Chief Engineer at Silicon Graphics, a representative on the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, editor for the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification, and a frequent SIGGRAPH course presenter. While at Silicon Graphics, David contributed to the development of the RealityEngine and InfiniteReality graphics systems. He has worked extensively on implementations of the OpenGL graphics library, OpenGL extension specifications, and high-level toolkits built on top of OpenGL. David's other industry experience includes embedded and system-on-a-chip design, mobile devices, and wireless networking. David is currently a graphics architect in the Windows Graphics and Gaming Technologies division at Microsoft working on DirectX and OpenGL graphics technologies.

Customer Reviews

Very technical!
Be warned now- this book has the word Advanced in the title and it really means it! This book is not for the beginner programmer, and the book cannot be taken lightly. Right from the off it starts with some tricky concepts, only getting harder as the book goes on.

A very strong knowledge of OpenGL is required before reading this book, alongside a good talent in mathematics.

With patience and your own hard work, this book will definitely pay off big time in the long run- but you've really got to put the effort in while reading the book!

The information in this book I haven't really seen covered in any of the other OpenGL books, this book goes above and beyond the normal standard.

All the source code on the website downloaded and ran file, examples are in C, but with so much of the API in the source code it hardly matters if you're using another language such as C++.

This book is a must for an OpenGL programmer, definitely won't be selling this one on!