3D Game Engine Design : A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology)

3D Game Engine Design : A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Aimed at the working Visual C++ game developer, 3D Game Engine Design provides a tour of mathematical techniques for 3-D graphics, and the source code that's used to implement them in state-of-the-art video game engines. If you work in the game industry (or would like to), this book will serve you well, because it delivers excellent best practices for algorithms and programming techniques that'll help your software keep up with the competition.

This text is a virtual encyclopedia of expertise that's based on the author's own work and research in the gaming industry. It provides the mathematical notation, algorithms, and C++ code (on the accompanying CD-ROM) that are needed to build fast and maintainable game engines. Early sections start with the basics, with the math that's used to work with common 3-D objects (like spheres and boxes). Highlights include a high-powered review of quaternion algebra--in many cases, the preferred way to transform 3-D data.

The chapters on graphics pipelines explain the math that's behind representing and rendering a 3-D world in 2-D with intervening effects like lighting and texture mapping. A variety of current algorithms are provided for representing 3-D scenes, efficient picking (which allows a programmer to determine the object in a 3-D world that has been selected), and collision detection (in which objects collide virtually). In the game software of today, curves--and not individual triangles or polygons--often are used to represent 3-D objects. Algorithms that are used to turn curves into rendered surfaces are provided, too.

Later sections look at the current thinking about animation techniques for characters (including key frames, inverse kinematics, and skinning (in which digital skin is fitted over digital bone to create more realistic-looking movement)). How to represent terrain inside virtual worlds also is explained. The book closes with excellent material on such cutting-edge special effects as lens flare and projected shadows, which can add an extra level of realism to a video game. An appendix examines guidelines for designing object-oriented game software in C++.

Filled with mathematical insight and expert code that puts each principle or algorithm to work, 3D Game Engine Design provides an expert view of what goes into building a state-of-the-art game engine. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

Mathematical methods and sample source code for 3-D game development
Geometrical transformations
Coordinate systems
Quaternions
Euler angles
Standard 3-D objects: spheres, oriented boxes, capsules, lozenges, cylinders, ellipsoids
Distance methods for a variety of shapes
Introduction to the graphics pipeline
Model and world coordinates
Projecting perspective
Camera models
Culling techniques
Surface and vertex attributes
Rasterizing
Efficiency issues for clipping and lighting
Hierarchical scene representation, using trees and scene graphs
Picking algorithms for a variety of 3-D shapes
Collision detection for static and dynamic graphical objects
Oriented bounding-box (OBB) trees
Basics of curves and special curves (including Bezier curves and various splines)
Curves (generating surfaces from curves by using different techniques)
Character animation, using keyframe animation and inverse kinematics
Skinning
Geometrical level of detail considerations
Techniques for generating game terrain
Spatial sorting and binary space partitioning (BSP)
Special effects: lens flare, bump mapping, volumetric fogging, projected light and shadows, particle systems, morphing techniques
C++ language features for effective object-oriented design
Reference to the numerical methods required for game mathematics

Review
"I highly recommend David Eberly's "3D Game Engine Design: A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics". This is from one of the developers behind the NetImmerse 3D engine, and it's a great book, filled with lots of practical information"
- Tim Sweeney, voodooextreme.com

"3D Game Engine Design....is best described as a reference manual for 3D real-time graphics engine programmers. But oh, what a reference manual it is."
-- Game Developer Magazine

3D Game Engine Design : A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology)

3D Game Engine Design : A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology),David H. Eberly,Morgan Kaufmann,1558605932,Computer Books And Software,Computer Graphics - Design,Computer Graphics - General,Computer games,Computer graphics,Computers,Computers - Languages / Programming,Microcomputer Graphics,Programming,Programming - Software Development,Real-Time Data Processing,Real-time programming,Three-dimensional display syst,Three-dimensional display systems,Video & Electronic - General,Computers / Computer Graphics / General

Fun Book:

Fun Book

Recommended Books