|
|
Volume Rendering Books
Introduction to Volume Rendering
By: Barthold Lichtenbelt, Randy Crane, Shaz Naqvi
Hardcover: Book&CD-Rom edition (March 1998)
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; ISBN: 0138616833
From the Inside Flap , Preface ... Those professionals who regularly inspect three-dimensional sampled data will benefit greatly from the concepts presented in this book. This book will aid students of computer science and engineering who wish to know the best way to interactively view three-dimensional sampled data sets. Anyone interested in volume rendering concepts such as classification, lighting, ray casting, and compositing will find this book useful. ... we strongly believe that a great part of the learning process requires hands-on experience. For this reason, a CD-ROM comes with the book. The CD-ROM includes source code, executable programs, and data sets to use...This book is both a course and a resource guide.... Barthold Lichtenbelt (barthold@verinet) Randy Crane Shaz Naqvi
Rendering With Mental Ray
By: Thomas Driemeyer (Editor)
Paperback: 530 pages, July, 2000
Publisher: Springer Verlag Wien; ISBN: 3211836632; 2nd Book&CDR edition August 2001
Mental Ray(R) is the leading rendering engine for generating photorealistic images, built into many 3D graphics applications. This book, written by the mental ray software project leader, gives a general introduction into rendering with mental ray(R), as well as step-by-step recipes for creating advanced effects, and tips and tricks for professional users. A comprehensive definition of mental ray's scene description language and the standard shader libraries is included and used as the basis for all examples. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review: A reader from Cupertino, California United States: This and volume two are absolute must haves for any CGI professionals using Mental Ray. Very thorough in their explanations and examples these books go to the very heart of the Mental Ray render structure. Both volumes, especially volume two, can be a little bit daunting to the uninitiated at first, but if you really are looking to dig into Mental Ray to get the best quality out of it you can, you must have these books. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
3dsteve from St. Louis, MO United States: If you use 3d studio max and intend this book to really help out in those complex scenes..it wont. This book is written for people who want to know exactly how light is mathmaticly computed in mental ray. Half the book is filled with usless equations that most designers would cringe at. The rendering recipes that it speaks of are useless and confusing. Im sending it back. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Book Info: A reference manual for Mental Ray, version 2.0 and 2.1. Contains an overview over the features of mental ray and continues with the specifications of the mental ray scene description language and the mental ray shader interface.
Real-Time Rendering
By: Tomas Moller, Eric Haines
Hardcover: 482 pages 1 edition (June 15, 1999)
Publisher: A K Peters Ltd; ISBN: 1568811012
One would think that the title of Tomas Moller's and Eric Haines's book, Real-Time Rendering, would be a contradiction in terms. How can such a computationally intensive process as rendering computer graphics ever hope to be done on the fly, in the blink of an eye, without delay--in short, in real time?
The term rendering, as it applies to computer graphics, refers to the mathematically intensive process of creating a picture or sequence of frames based on geometry. The duration of this process is dependent on the complexity of the scene (a forest with many trees and thousands of leaves will take much longer to render than a scene consisting of a white box over a gray background) and the speed of the hardware doing the calculations.... Because the software and hardware is constantly and rapidly evolving due to the insatiable need for more realistic and complex graphics, the book avoids getting too specific. To quote the authors, "The field is rapidly evolving, and so it is a moving target." This lack of specificity doesn't detract from the usefulness of the book, though. Instead, it works at a higher, more abstract level, describing approaches to rendering techniques using generic algorithms. It is up to the programmer to apply these methods to the specific program or system on which it is to be implemented. Real-Time Rendering describes some very complex methods, and this book is not for the average computer graphics creator. However, if you are working in an industry that depends on real-time rendered animation--like the gaming, medical, or military fields--or you are building the next-generation real-time render engine, this book will offer insight and concepts you can use to build some impressive software. --Mike Caputo
Review: jkj2000@yahoo.com from Bay Area: For a long time, I've looked for a book like this. Getting into graphics programming can be a real pain, because you either have books that don't discuss the issues involved with any depth whatsoever, or you wind up with tomes like Foley and VanDam, which can be overpowering to those not already versed in the subject. This book does a fine job of bridging the gap, so to speak. For starters, the authors cover a very wide range of computer graphics topics, and do so in depth. The writing style is quite good, which helps a lot. Also, the text's illustrations and color photos in the middle of the book provide a good counterpoint to the topics being discussed. For those readers who need a math review, or who don't know the math to begin with, an appendix in the back does a good job of going over the important mathematical points relevant to computer graphics. That said, let me warn those of you out there who are "true beginners" that this book assumes you've had at least some previous exposure to computer graphics. It doesn't have to be that much exposure, but this text hits the ground running, and it's a good idea to have another, introductory book on hand to help you out should you get stuck or lost here. I'd reccomend Hearn and Baker's book- a personal favorite. Also, those of you hard-core coders out there may be disappointed to learn that no API specific code is discussed here, with one or two exceptions. This is a theory book, period, and it does its job very well.
OpenGL(R) Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL
By: Mason Woo, Jackie Neider, Tom Davis, Dave Shreiner, OpenGL Architecture Review Board
Paperback: 800 pages 3rd edition (August 6, 1999)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 0201604582
The OpenGL Programming Guide, now in its third edition, is the definitive volume for programmers using this evolving graphics interface standard. Written by members of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, this book offers understandable tutorials and lessons on getting up to speed and getting the most out of the latest version of OpenGL, version 1.2. The guide uses code examples in C and is targeted at programmers who have experience in coding yet are new to coding for OpenGL applications. The opening chapters go into descriptive detail of how OpenGL, the software interface for hardware 3-D chipsets, works and what you can expect from it, which turns out to be much more than you might have thought. Color plates are used, for example, to show how OpenGL handles such effects as motion blur and depth-of-field blur, in addition to shadows and texture mapping. This is not a beginner's guide to programming computer graphics. Some previous knowledge of both programming in general and computer graphics in particular is required. For example, code snippets are used to describe how to implement these effects, but because OpenGL is platform-independent, some code examples may need to be modified when used with your specific compiler.
Filled with the expertise of those who standardized OpenGL, there is no better reference volume for learning and understanding this system. The examples cited are clear, commented, and explained. The only drawback to the book is that it lacks a companion CD-ROM--all examples must be either typed in or downloaded from an Internet FTP site. (The URL is listed in the preface.) --Mike Caputo
Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques:Theory and Practice
By: Alan H. Watt, Mark Watt (Contributor)
Hardcover: (November 1992)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 0201544121
Ingram : An exposition of state-of-the-art techniques in rendering and animation. This book provides a unique synthesis of techniques and theory. Each technique is illustrated with a series of full-color frames showing the development of the example.
From the Back Cover : Features contains a wealth of practical implementation detail includes practical algorithms backed up by details of their implementation using RenderMan all animation techniques based around real case studies of commercially produced work includes 36 pages of color images
Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniquesoffers a balance between theoretical concepts and implementational detail that will be invaluable to professional programmers and students alike.
Review: Hank M Bennett from OR USA: A good book but a lot of it was repeated material from Watt's other books.
Cuneyt Ozdas from Turkey: This book is the one I learned the fundimentals of the computer graphics from. It covers most of the computer graphics subjects and explains them in a quite easy-to-follow way. If you want to learn computer graphics, this book is a very nice starting point. Most of the chapters do not give the implementation details but in my opinion this is a nice thing since helps the understanding the theory and the concepts. It covers: Parametric modelling, Antialising, Shadows, Mapping, Procedural textures, Ray Tracing, Radiocity, Global Illimunation, Volume rendering, Hierarchic animation, soft body animation and procedural animation subjects.
Tel 641-472-2227 Fax 641-472-8131 Email vaytek@vaytek.com
© 2000 VayTek Inc. Information may be reproduced only with permission from VayTek Inc.