Book Description
Most of the rendering techniques are based on vertex and pixel shaders.
Included are three different techniques for generating shadows, reflection and refraction, Bezier surfaces, matrix palette skinning, bump mapping, image processing, and much more. There are also several techniques which are not based on shaders. There are chapters that cover using the stencil buffer, video textures with DirectShow, picking, timing, 2D drawing, and drawing text efficiently. Each chapter presents the theory behind the technique before walking the reader through the shader and application code that makes each technique possible. Each chapter ends with a short discussion of performance considerations, limitations, and ideas for improvements. After studying a given technique, the reader will understand what the technique is, why it works, and how it works.
The CD includes several tools, as well as all of the application code, shader code, and media needed to implement the techniques. It also includes sample applications and technology papers from nVidia and ATI. As readers understand each technique, they can go to these third party resources to see how other people have approached similar problems. The book and CD give the reader a well rounded view of these exciting rendering tricks and techniques.
