3D Books

Honestly, I was kind of excited to see a book written about Maxscript and the corresponding SDK. Unfortunately, this book is mostly MaxScript and some SDK knowledge. As stated in another review, it doesn't help you master anything; it just introduces you to it.

Also, notice when it was written. This book was published for MAX R3. Since then, about 70% of 3dsMax functionality has been added to the package, so this book is absurdly out of date. I would not recommend it over the current help-file included in 3dsMax.

The Max SDK has gone some improvements since this book was written but the general idea is the same. This is book is an excellent book to start writing your own plug-ins for MAX. It's too bad that it's the only book out there with the SDK. I hope this author comes out with some more of these books.

I THINK THIS IS THE DEFINITIVE SOURCE FOR ANYONE WANTING TO GET EVERYTHING THEY CAN FROM THE LATEST VERSION OF MAX. I LOVED THE PRACTICE FILES IN THE CD ALSO..

First of all, there isn't really anything else on the market, so if you have to write a 3DStudio plugin this is it. On the otherhand the coding examples are only average. As in learn to code somewhere else, and just use the API exposed in this book to do the plugin. Don't have global varibles everywhere. Use standard library containers, don't write your own.

Aimed at advanced users who need complete control over 3D Studio MAX, this manual teaches the black art of MAXScript writing. The last third of the book also covers the Software Developers Kit (SDK), which enables you to design your own plug-ins.

If you have no programming experience then Mastering MAXScript was designed for you. Through over 11 chapters, which begin with a basic overview and conclude with a look at MAXScript extensions, you'll be able to gain unprecented control over MAX R3 and its previous versions.

On the other hand, if you want to make the most out of the SDK you'll need knowledge of C++ (MAX' native language) and Win32 programming. Not for the fain-hearted.

When I got this book I was like WOW! This Is good.But after I
read It 3 times and did what It said I was very disaponted!It said what a game shoud be but not how to do it!It only does a few short lines of That.If you want two completely copy Doom Get this Book,If not,Don't.

Whenever I am contemplating a new game development book the first thing I look at is the copyright year. Software books become obsolete so quickly but..... You don't have to do that with this one.
This is not about coupling up with the latest software and understanding how to make game graphics. This is about understanding the principles behind graphics for games. and that means it is very relevant.

It teaches how to create, manage, and manipulate textures and tiles and how to create seamless tiling. Lots of other stuff too including a nice, but short, tutorial on how to use the genesis 3d game engine to create a game. Very useful tutorial. The genesis 3d engine is open software and a copy of it comes on the CD with the book. This alone is nice because you can take this book and actually make a game. Everything is right there including software, tutorial and sample textures.

Perfect book for the person looking to make a 3d dungeon type game but has never tried to make a game before.


I found the tutorials easy to follow except that it uses Photoshop and if you are a starving game maker like me you probably can't afford photoshop so you will have to work through your own translation into your paint program. I use Paint Shop Pro which is superb and about 1/10 the cost of photoshop.

All in all it is a great book to teach you some fundamentals of game art and I refer to it over and over.

I picked this book up without much research. After a quick flip through the pages I decided it was better to have around than no reference material at all.

Strong points: Luke Ahearn goes through a step-by-step process regarding building texture libraries, and efficient ways to structure your directory trees for referencing. These are all valid lessons that apply directly to working in a professional environment, so pay attention! Also, his feedback on tiling and cleaning up of digital images is relevant, although not comprehensive.

As far as the other game art tips included, I haven't tried them yet. I use a different mapping engine (Quake 3 / GTK Radiant) but the tips and interfaces between many engines are similar, so if you don't have a commercially supported editor, I assume Wild Tangent's Genesis 3D one is adequate (it's really designed for web-based 3D gaming, and doesn't require 3D cards for all applications). At any rate, this book is not the end-all-be-all of game art and level design books, but rather a very good place to start.

Weak points: The author puts a lot of information into the book without focusing on any one particular area. Perhaps that is due to the nature of the work. Be a good 2D artist and make textures. Be a good 3D artist and make models. Be a good level designer and put everything together. It's a lot to handle, and a lot of it is crammed into the book but no one area is really focused on entirely. Also, if you're not using Photoshop for texturing, have fun adapting these lessons to another application.

Given Mr. Ahearn's professional experience (he did the level work and artwork for America's Army: Operations - the free 1st person shooter released by the US Army powered by the Unreal engine) it's safe to say he knows what he's doing. Don't purchase this book thinking it'll be the only tome you need to read to become a fantastic 3D artist or level artist, but consider it if you want to have a handy reference manual on how to make effective textures and intriguing levels for your games. Since modern day games can get very complex very quickly (bot pathfinding and logic, creating shaders and sky boxes, etc.) it's good to start with the essentials and build up from there.

There aren't a lot of books out there that cover this type of work, so my suggestion is pick it up, work through it, and hit some message boards to learn how to do the tricky stuff.

The learning curve to produce good 3D content is pretty steep. As human beings, we are very familiar with what 3D spaces should look like, and therefore it can be very irksome to us when something looks bad, unreal, or out of place. This book attempts to act as a primer on how to create art for compelling worlds.

I work professionally as a developer on a 3D authoring application and so I'm pretty familiar with many of the skills required to create 3D content. There are many steps from concept to final, and some of them require at least a rudiment of artistic or design background.

The author at least does a good job of taking the reader through most of the important steps, and certainly focuses on the design related ones. The author gives some good source material and basic techniques for dirtying up and making textures tileable, though some of the tasks require at least a moderate knowledge of Photoshop. He also offers a few key tidbits of advice in modeling and lighting environments, though nothing groundbreaking.

A large portion of the book goes to explaining how to use Genesis3D, an open source 3D application that comes on the CD with the book. I applaud the author in at least packaging a pertinent program so the reader can be given a chance to use their skills. Unfortunately it is typical of 3D-game world editors and isn't very easy to use. I would recommend at least looking around and trying other editors before investing much time in learning one. Though this is certainly a necessary evil to learn at least one if you plan on doing any level editing.

I'd say the main weakness of the book is that it is geared primarily towards the creation of typical first-person shooter worlds. Fortunately these are very popular, and surrealistic enviroments tend not to require as much finesse because limited or extreme lighting and environments can be used to hide limitations in modeling experience. It tends to be much more difficult to create 3D enviroments of the familiar (i.e. offices, house interiors, etc.) though who wants to make those anyway, that's what everyone is trying to escape from in the first place, right? ;)

In closing, this book is a good start, however, even though the author may be a really great level designer he definitely hasn't imparted all of his tricks in this book. I don't mean to offend, though it possibly might be from lack of experience. The fact that he talks about how to get rid of "flash burn" from a camera instead of teaching techniques on how to avoid it in the first place, such as buying an [inexpensive]off-camera flash (or if you can't afford that, at least putting tissue paper in front of the flash to act as a diffuser)

For more information of how to create good textures, I'd recommend reading anything Hayden Duvall has written in Game Developer Magazine or on game development Web sites.

For more information of fundamental lighting techniques, I'd recommend [digital] Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn. Or, if you can afford it, take a technical theater course on lighting design at a community college.

Unfortunately, for 3D game level design there aren't very many good resources, they're all broken up by what editor is used to create the levels, so first pick your game/editor and then just look for forums dedicated to that one.

I am reviewing this book from a Software Engineer's point of view. I have zero experience with generating game art. Which is precisely why I bought this book. So keep that in mind as you read this.

The book is dived into two parts. "Part 1 - 2D Interactive Game Art" is devoted to designing and building textures in Adobe Photoshop. This was a bit disapointing as I can't afford to pop ($) for Photoshop. But I imagine the techniques are pretty much the same regardless of the software you use (assuming that part of the industry uses any kind of a standard). Part 1 also has a few detours into things like "Logos" and their design process and "Menu's and Interfaces." In my opinion, these detours are bonus materials. The author uses a tutorial based approach for learning how to build textures in Photoshop. Each tutorial focuses on a basic method, i.e., Creating A Rust Texture, Creating Brushed Metal. Then, a group of tutorials is followed up by a multi texture project that may or may not use the textures you created in the previous tutorials.

The texture tutorials are a bit vague. They basically follow this kind of format (I'm paraphrasing each step):

To create a rust texture in Photshop, follow these steps:

1. Creat a new image document and make it 600x600...
2. Fill the background with a light brown...
3. Add noise to this layer with the Noise filter: Choose Noise|Add Noise. Set the amount to 40, Gaussian and make it Monochromatic.
4. Blur this layer by choosing Filter|Blur|Motion Blur. Set the angle to 45 and the Distanceto 45...

If you are already a texture artist, maybe you know what "Set the amount to 40, Gaussian and make it Monochromatic" means. But I would have liked an explanation of these types of things.

The problem with the tutorial approach is it is specific to Adobe Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop to follow along with, it is hard to understand what is happening in these steps.

I would have liked a better explanation of designing textures for tiling. There are tutorials for designing seamless textures, but again, without having Photoshop (and zero game art experience) it is really hard to follow.

Part 1 also has some good insight into creating and managing your texture library.

Part 2 - World Building: Genesis3D and Reality Factory, focuses on building game levels for use in the Genesis3D game engine (Reality Factory is an upgraded and improved version of the Genesis3D engine). Part 2 of the book is, again, a tutorial based approach to building a game world with the level editor. In fact, all of the tutorials are part of one project that part 2 focuses on: building a castle, courtyard and models (to place in the castle gameworld). The last chapter of the book focuses on Reality Factory and the goodies it adds to Genesis3D.

My goal is to write my own level editor and game engine. I have the software knowledge to do so and now this book has given me a peek at what a level editor should do and how it goes hand in hand with the game engine. At first I was put off by the tutorial approach until I realized that in order to learn this stuff you need to do this stuff. And to do it you need some software. So on second thought it was only natural for the author to pick some software and teach you how to use it. In doing so, he succeeds in teaching you about "3D Game Art and f/x Design."

SOFTWARE ON THE CD
Of course, the CD does not come with Photoshop. But the author does provide other game art resources including an free GNU Photshop-like application (...).

I was a bit upset when I realized the minimum OS requirement for software on the CD was Windows 98. I am still running a 1997 version of Windows 95! (I know, I know... I'm in the process of ordering a tricked out Alienware machine!). But, having experience with these type of requirements, I decided to install everything anyway. And it works! At least the level editor and Genesis3D game engine work. As my machine is a 166 MHz P II, I'm not even going to attempt to run the Reality Factory (min reqs: P II 200 MHz, 64 mb ram, NVidia TNT-class 3D accelerator. recommended: P II 400 MHz, AGP NVidia TNT2-class 3D accelerator). Fair warning now, Reality Factory will not run without a 3D accelerator.

The CD comes with a test game. Genesis3D uses the DirectX API. My machine does not have a 3D accelerator so Genesis3D runs in software mode. My frame rate at 640x480 was a whopping 5 frames/second (yes, I'm being sarcastic)! But the author does warn you about this.

When all is said and done, I was very pleased with this book. It gave me some good insight to Game Art. The level editor and Genesis3D game engine were bonus materials.

While it is true, that things in 2007 are far different than when this book was written, I found it to be a striking reminder of where this queer nation came from. I simply could not put this book down.

I've read Frank Browning's THE CULTURE OF DESIRE on several occasions over the years, and it is well researched and Browning's thoughfulness is a real treat. Stylistically, Browning settles into an anecdotal breeziness that is dry, direct and refreshing.

But I did have some issues - Browning sticks close to a very canonical take on all things gay, and he flirts with a certain myopia here - typical gay meccas are increasingly out of the price ranges of many gay people, and a certain shift back to the provinces is investigated here, but not with nearly enough depth. Getting out of San Fran (to a greater degree than he attempted) would have deepened this work tremendously.

Similarly, Browning is a bit more philosophically nostalgic for a bygone era of gay hedonism, and indulges in a fair amount of rehashing past pecadilloes. This is fine, but it is a touch distracting, especially when Browning attempts - unsuccessfully - to expand the hormonal behavior of available guys into some sort of sociopolitical worldview. One gets the distinct impression that Browning feels that there is one 'official' way to be gay, with a small handful of 'official' places to live, and there is precious little room for exceptions to that here.

Far from worthless, this is an often engaging, restless and thought-provoking - if also occasionally maddening - book.

-David Alston

"An incisive analysis of what it means to be a gay man in the modern world; examines various gay communities across North America and documents the struggle of gays to define both their community values and personal identities."--© zebraz

Smart, sexy, and as cutting edge now as when it was published six years ago, "Culture of Desire" is required reading for anyone who likes to think of themselves as informed about the state of American/Western European gay male culture (if "culture" is the right word). I have yet to meet anyone who hates this book who didn't buy it for the cover.

Frank Browning's The Culture of Desire (Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today) is a series of essays exploring aspects of gay men lives (no longer quite "today" as this book is bordering on a decade ago). These essays are hit and miss but there are enough little bits of interest to keep most of the readers happy and lead them successfully through the collection. It is very anecdotal and no conclusions can be truly be drawn from this book but it is successful in showing the diversity that existed in gay America and has only continued to grow since this book. It is not an important read but can be, at times, an interesting one.

First of all, the book is very Maya-specific, though a lot of the early chapters cover fundamental concepts (quite well actually) that apply to most any 3d package. Second, the book has a ton of great information (though half of it is semi-interesting interviews with industry professionals). In general it covers a lot of great techniques clearly and concisely and is easy to follow and presented well.

That having been said, there are some glaring, annoying negatives that warrant attention. There are a few type-os and oversights (key steps missing from tutorials and flat-out incorrect statements). To find your way around these errors requires an already present understanding of the concepts which a beginner simply wouldn't possess.

My biggest complaint is the downloadable content. Some of the files require pre-setup in order to match up what the book says is supposed to already be there. The finished result from most chapters isn't present, so you can't check your work against what you're supposed to end up with. Finally, the "ch16_finalResult" exhibits rigging methods and techniques that AREN'T COVERED IN THE BOOK. Upon exploration of the rig there are clearly things going on that aren't even mentioned, let alone explained in any detail. I find this to be incredibly frustrating. In addition to all this, I'm not even sure the content is available anymore so for that reason alone, bypass this product and check out the cgtoolkit product line.

I bought Inspired 3D Character Setup hoping to find a smarter workflow for my own character rigs. As a veteran animator, I am always looking for new and more efficient techniques.

I found this book full of great tips and knowledge on character setup, but unfortunately it was also full of errors and missing steps. I managed to find my way around the mistakes and eventually get the desired setup (I think), but it wasn't an easy task. I was pulling my hair out on more than one occasion and I've been doing this for seven years.

Overall, I would not recommend this book to a beginner if you plan to learn from the tutorials. The authors should have taken more time to proofread and test their workflows or at least included a supplementary guide on the website that corrects the obvious errors.

This book leads you from the most important knowledge needed to create a good character setup to the high-end setup demonstrated in the last several chapters. It's very crucial to follow the chapters from the beginning to get an clear understanding of the tools. Honestly, I read and exercised through them very fast and then followed the tutorials. It goes so deep and sophisticated that when I finished the setup, I couldn't fully understand what I was doing. I went back to the first several basic chapters and learned that actually I did a lot mistakes...such as translation and rotation tools and joint orient that you never think it's important. Those chapters are a great help too when you finish the setup and go back to read them again! You'll find new things every time you read the book. Tutorials are worthy of doing them again. They all refer to the concepts described earlier which are very basic but very easy to forget their importance!

Hard for me to rate this book, while the presentation is very good with real world application and opinions on the CG industry, the material jumps around too often with no apparent cohesive to follow for one example to another. It does present very good information on rigging characters, but as I mentioned it really needed organization of the material in a clear and structure manner instead of being all over the place. I MUST mention that this book will go very nicely if you are a MAYA user, but will be problematic for non-MAYA users as all the examples require Maya to follow along, and are of course very MAYA specific.

I have been using Maya extensively now for two years and bought this book to try to take myself into the intermediate level of character rigging.
The first problem I encountered with this book is that I opened it and the spine broke! Not exactly what you would expect from a [$$$] book.
I think it went downhill from there. Yes the pictures are beautiful and the it really showcases what you can do with Maya(or what others have done), but the editing in this book is terrible. Examples include naming of nodes that on the same page have two different names. The downloads don't match the book. e.g. ch13 has the low-res geo download that doesnt include the sphereCTRL or the cubeCTRL but sure has the proxyGEO. Anyone think i'm messed up? send me the right one please..
Otherwise, you are better off with the Art of Maya, or Secrets of the Pros. I think this is one not quite worth the money.

This book goes over very basic concepts that you should easily be able to find in the manual of your software. Save yourself the money.

I bought this book, even though it seemed a little pricey, and LOVED IT.
I still use the software manuals for technical help, but this book gives me a lot more information about modeling and the business in general that can ever be found in the software manuals.
The readers that advise using the software manuals probably have not read this book. This book is clearly not intended to replace software manuals.

3D Modelling and Texturing book in this Inspired 3D series was more of a book that describes the different modelling processes used in the industry, and pre-visulation method which is important. It gave the basic concepts behind modelling and texturing... but was lacking in tutorials/examples that you can do along with the book to establish a good understanding.

Do not buy this book if you are looking for tutorials or examples on how they achieve the look in production environment. You will find more useful information on the web in tutorials or playing around in Maya yourself.

nothing new here, unless you are a beginner looking for an overview

This book goes through all of the techniques used to create professional models and textures.

The tutorial chapters are advanced enough to keep the experienced users challenged, and the background information is easy enough for students and novices to understand.

There is material in this book I have been looking for, and is not available in any other books out there. This is one book that everyone that is interested in creating 3D graphics should get.

This book is good. It gives you a graphical picture of what networking is all about. It is easy to read. Nice to have.

you will not forget any important information you read from this book it is helpfull, clear, you can use to establish general networking information in long and funny time.
Read it, read it

Here's a dictionary, teach yourself the English language. This book was written with that mentality in mind. Possibly a good resource book, but by far a good teaching manual, despite the title.

If you are looking to be a Network Admin. or to be able to design and implement a new network, then this book would be no more than an appetizer.

This book is really good for those of us who just have some questions and want to be able to understand how things work a little better. After reading this book, I realize I have more to learn.

The book is simply old!! The book which was written 3-4 years ago obiously doesn't cover many important aspects of networking.

This is a good book for getting started with Machinima. It has a lot of detail on creating Machinima with Machinimation and Unreal. This will get you started with two of the popular machinima game engines and get you familiar with the basics and quite a bit of the detail work.
This really is a how to book. If you just want to learn more about Machinima then look at some of the other titles before settling on this book, though it's introduction to Machinima will give you a good overview.

I heard of machinima about a week ago in the Economist magazine which also featured comments from Paul Marino, this book's author. A week later and I've got the book, but I'm a little let down but what the book has added to my knowledge.
I'd say someone who has only heard of machinima and hasn't designed their own level in a 3D game would get tons of gems from this book. Whereas poor me with a week's worth of Google searches looking for tutorials on UnrealEd 3.0 and so forth - well I only got enough information to round out my status as a serious machinima beginner.
In fairness, however, after a couple of hours with the book I was able to get the finishing touches I was looking for and successfully burned my first machinima movie to DVD. So it was a small boost I got but a very welcome one (the boost included my spending $29 for the full version of Fraps). So, yeah it will give you the tools in one place to get a finished product.
I am disappointed that Marino ends the book with a tutorial on character modeling. The tutorial is well-written but by its end you'll be looking at a cute character cast in concrete (no words on skinning or rigging, etc). Worse this character will be stranded in a program called Silo (by the way blender from blender.org seems just as good and is cross-platform and a free download) with no hint of the challenge of getting this spaceman into a 3D level designer.
The machinima community would be better served with a tutorial on how to get custom sounds and meshes into UnrealEd et al, and how to do lipsynching.
In short too much time spent teaching you how to use tools (tools generally come with their own instructions and tutorials anyway).
I was also disappointed to find no samples of machinima movies on the cd. These are such a pig to download after all. How about including one and then some kind of analysis about what makes that one sample special.
The book is called the Art of Machinima but it seems more like the Activity of Futzing with Tools.

This is well written walkthrough of filmmaking with game engines like Quake and Unreal. It starts with a basic introduction to the field. He then goes into installing and using the Machinimation application that you will use to choreograph your film.

The book then follows the path of increasing complexity, starting with moving lights around, then adding actors, animating the actors, controlling the characters and adding visual effects. He then continues all the way through to capturing the video and audio and completing the filmmaking process.

One of the best chapters is the section of cinematography where the author strays from the introductory form to give practical advice about how to make a better film. The chapter on character development is also excellent, showing the development of a character from rough sketches to a full three dimensional model.

I enjoyed this book. It was a well written introduction to a whole new field of artistic expression. Definitely a must buy for those interested in the field. Those who are curious may want to browse it, but won't find enough outside of the strict walkthrough to make it worth the price.

3D Game-Based Filmmaking: The Art Of Machinima by Machinima and animation film director and designer Paul Marino is a guidebook for anyone who wants to make a 3D animated film on their PC but isn't sure where to start. Step-by-step instructions teach the reader how to apply tools from best selling games such as Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake III Arena to create Machinima, a new term coined to describe animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3D world. Everything from virtual sets to memorable character design, fluid cinematography, tips on editing and distributing Machinima productions, and much more pack this informative guide especially for anyone seeking to fullfill their drive creative expression at extremely low cost.

Marino does a superb job of detailing Machinima's short history, hitting on the high points in its growth from a spark to a major media storm banging down on mainstream media's door.

3D Game-Based Film Making covers most of the basics in the creation of a machinima film while at the same time informing the reader of the many ways that machinima and conventional filming share some of the same techniques and history but also showing the power that machinima welds that sets it apart.

The tutorials in the book are geared for people just getting their feet wet in this vast new medium. Marino takes a slow but meaningful pace so that readers can "walk through" the lessons and have a chance to review the steps they have just taken without getting lost in the process.

The book does have it's shortfalls but I guess this is due to the world of machinima being so vast. Having some of the tutorials examples on the disc would have been nice to have something to compare you work to. Also having some machinima films to watch so there can be some visual reinforcement of what you are trying to create but I suspect it was due to legal issues that they could not be included.

Overall well worth the price for the beginner who is just getting into the medium. The amount of information is staggering but when you go through it, it enriches the journey of discovery into this brave new world.

I found Mr Gallardo's book extremely informative on the history, theories and science of light. Also, the light array models used in the tutorials gave me some nice insights for my own work.
Unfortunatley when I went to use the tutorials I found that the required plug-ins of the third party texture creator (Dark Tree) didn't work with 3D Max 4. The demo for the upgrade of this product wasn't available and I had to try to simulate the tutorial using Max's on material editor. I'm dissappointed that the author did not use these materials in the first place. I would also caution anyone utilizing these tutorials to have a decent computer to run them on. Some of the exercises use a lot of grouped lights along with raytracing and it can take some time to see the results.

I would like to second the Amazon Technical review. This is a fantastic book that covers everything from theory to application. For students who really want to understand the whys, whats and hows of lighting I think this book is indispensable. In fact I will be using this as a text for a lighting and materials 3D animation class that I teach.

Darkling Simulations now have their updated Max r4 plugin (Simbiont) as well as the updates for LW 6.5/7.0b and trueSpace 5.1 and are available online as a demo if you do not have Darktree 2.0. This update will make it possible to use the tutorial scenes with MAX r4.

This book should be thrown in the waste basket. I have no doubt that Mr. Gallardo knows his stuff, but he really can't explain it to an average MAX user. Majority of book was full of run-on sentences and prepositional phrases strung together. His writing style was so distracting, I had to throw the book in the waste basket to calm me down. I have the feeling that Mr. Gallardo had to fill those pages so the book will look more impressive. Don't impress me. Stop printing this book and save the forest.

This book looks and reads so much like a textbook that it made me think back to my high school biology class. It's a big solid book, and walks through definitions of a lot of terms and concepts, but unfortunately it wasn't very useful or relevant to rendering 3D scenes.

I wish that more of the sections had been tied together or made relevant to 3D graphics. For example, the lengthy chapter on the anatomy of a human eye could have been copied from an encyclopedia or anatomy book, and just seemed pasted-in to this book, without leading into any conclusions or techniques related to making your own images.

Some of the most important parts of the lighting process (that I'd like to do more of in my projects!) weren't covered at all - there was nothing about matching the lighting from real-life background or combining and compositing your renders with real footage, there was nothing about casting and receiving shadows and reflections from real-world scenes, or rendering multiple layers and compositing them to build more realistic surfaces.

The actual images and sample scenes in the book were very basic - the author never moves to anything more sophisticated than lighting that same statue head and model of his desk scene, none of the images in the book are any more challenging or professional. (I give this book 2 stars to reward the author's effort, but if I were grading this book on how useful it was to me I only would have given it only 1 star, because it didn't teach anything new or useful.)

I think Peter Walshs book The Zen of 3D Game Programming in DirectX 8.0 is the best book written for Direct3D beginners to own for initially starting out in Direct3D. Period. This book, however, isn't in the same league, It feels like something he inherited from somebody else and tried to fix up rather than something he did from scratch.
It does provide some interesting insights into network based game interaction and an interesting chapter on game AI. It also provides some interesting source code relating to a networkable game engine.
However, it covers the same old entry level "this is how 3D stuff works" and "this is how to initialize direct3D" that Non-Advanced books cover as well as numerous other introductory features out of place in an "Advanced" book.
And, unfortunately, when all is said and done, most of the really Advanced material is covered in a less than thorough manner. Many truly important topics in advanced Direct3D like Animated character mesh objects (Skin and Bones) are covered skimpily at best.
Also, at least on my system (1.4ghz 64mb Geforce3), the example codes performance was much less than you would hope for. The main Game engine codes primary example is only usable in a networked client / server environment. Maybe if theyd said Networked Game Programming instead of Advanced it would have been better.
All in all, If you are a Direct3D programmer and especially if you have a genuine interest in client server based games, it is probably worth owning this book for the odd bits you can pick up. Peter still knows a great deal more about D3D than I do and I will no doubt buy any more books that he continues to make.
Frankly though I wish Peter would go back to the style of his previous book and make a Advanced version of it. Perhaps building on the starter Game engine he provided in that maybe adding collision detection, character animation sequencing and actual game construction info.

Instant shipping of great item. Good seller!

After recently purchasing SAMS learn DirectX 7 in 24 hours I was put off programming for a while, it contained a lot of unexplained code, that the reader was expected to remember without understanding.

When I received this book for christmas however I was delighted to find that right from the start every peice of code is explained. The author also explained the advantages of various operating systems and programming langauges, which I found quite usefull. I was also pleased to see that the book not only explained just the direct X programming langauge, but also covered many other aspects of game programming, such as the creating of windows, using the message pump and various other functions in the windows API. The CD which comes with the book also contains some very usefull source code including the Quake 3 engine source code.

To sum things up this is a great book, for programmers who wish to write efficient code and understand what they are actually writing. I would recommend it to Advanced programmers, Intermediate programmers and possibly even ambitious beginners.

Having enjoyed Mr. Walsh's Zen book so much, I purchased this book without thumbing through it first. Big mistake.

Chapter one is a rewrite of information you can get from the help disk included with Visual C++.

Chapter two is a rewrite of parts of the DirectX SDK.

The name of chapter three should have been a signal of the true content. What is a chapter entitled "3-D Math Foundations" doing in a book with "Advanced" in the title? This chapter covers, yet again, basic 3-d math, vectors, matrices, etc. This chapter also contains a rewrite of some of the DirectX SDK. The only thing here worth noting is a minor treatment of Binary Space Partitions.

Chapter 4 is a complete disaster. Beginning with more basic chase algorithms, the author attempts to describe genetic algorithms and neural networks, failing miserably. The description on page 248 is minimal at best, the examples are not really explained at all. A huge misprint occurs on page 252-3.

I cannot comment on chapter 5 as I am not interested in network play. Quite simply, I haven't read it.

Chapter 6 another rewrite of another part of the DirectX SDK.

Chapter 7, the only part of the book which might be called "advanced" never really covers any subject in detail. A lot of this chapter, like a lot of the book is page after page of unexplained code taken directly from the included CD.

Chapter 8 is yet another rewrite of yet another section of the DirectX SDK.

Chapter 9 finally describes how to use the BSP trees which were touched upon back in chapter 4.

There is almost nothing here which would justify the word "advanced" being used in the book's title.

An almost laughable situation which occurs throughout the book is when the author explains that he cannot cover some subject or other in detail due to space limitations. One wonders how much he could have written if 80% of the book wasn't a rewrite of the SDK.

This thoroughly disappointing book is saved only by the fact that it contains very little of Andre LeMoth's gnarly rad surfer dude vernacular.

I really like the style of this Author, as he does not *rewrite* *SDK* helpdocs*. He tries to give you his understanding
of what he sees going on from his experience of coding. I find this very helpful, as he is always turning over lots of things,
and illustrating them so I feel I understand them better.
The title of the book is DirectX 8, so there isn't alot of handholding on constructing the C++ end of the code.
You are warned about this in the intro, and it is true. Wrappers, and alot of *advanced*
coding stuff are used, and It is up to you to puzzle the language of it through.
Also, alot of necessary details regarding changes Microsoft made to Direct3D, which the Author had no choice but to cover.

This book provides a great educational resource for elementary 3D graphics. Even though the algorithms presented may be a bit simplistic compared to, for example, those used in the QuakeIII engine, they offer a great insight into the mathematics behind 3D graphics. C code optimization is also well presented in this book, but again a bit outdated, as modern compilers make macros for speed a thing of the past! This is a great book though, and ALL algorithms described have good mathematical background provided. You can also disregard the source code and use this just as a book on the math behind 3D graphics.
Covered are: vectors, matrices, planes, lines, surfaces and all possible intersections thereof. Interpolation is also covered.
I took the ideas in this book to write a very efficient C++ class library for my own use, and currently am rewriting for Java. This book is especially good if you only require wire-frame or simple shaded images.
The book is also very good on the subject of C programming techniques (and tricks) alone (for those newbies who are scared of pointers, this book will convince you they're worth getting 'under your belt'!!), but as I said, with modern C++ compilers you'd be better off rewriting the code in C++. For example if you write a Vector class and overload the [] operator, all the macros will still work! In the book, they type a vector simply as array of float, ie a pointer, so a macro like:
#define sub_vec2(ab, a, b)\ /* 2D vector subtraction */
( (ab)[0] = (a)[0] - (b)[0],\
(ab)[1] = (a)[1] - (b)[1] )
will still work with your class if you overload the [] operator, even though the macro was originally intended for float arrays!
As said above, you get the same performance implementing the 3D operations (+,-,scale, magnitude, normalize etc) as member functions rather than (harder to debug) macros.

A basic understanding of math and vectors/matrices would be an advantage before reading this book, but the equations are well explained.

In a nutshell, this book is DEFINITELY worth a read, just don't expect to be able to write a cutting edge 3D engine from what you learn 8^)

This book provides a great educational resource for elementary 3D graphics. Even though the algorithms presented may be a bit simplistic compared to, for example, those used in the QuakeIII engine, they offer a great insight into the mathematics behind 3D graphics. C code optimization is also well presented in this book, but again a bit outdated, as modern compilers make macros for speed a thing of the past! This is a great book though, and ALL algorithms described have good mathematical background provided. You can also disregard the source code and use this just as a book on the math behind 3D graphics.
Covered are: vectors, matrices, planes, lines, surfaces and all possible intersections thereof. Interpolation is also covered.
I took the ideas in this book to write a very efficient C++ class library for my own use, and currently am rewriting for Java. This book is especially good if you only require wire-frame or simple shaded images.
The book is also very good on the subject of C programming techniques (and tricks) alone (for those newbies who are scared of pointers, this book will convince you they're worth getting 'under your belt'!!), but as I said, with modern C++ compilers you'd be better off rewriting the code in C++. For example if you write a Vector class and overload the [] operator, all the macros will still work! In the book, they type a vector simply as array of float, ie a pointer, so a macro like:
#define sub_vec2(ab, a, b)\ /* 2D vector subtraction */
( (ab)[0] = (a)[0] - (b)[0],\
(ab)[1] = (a)[1] - (b)[1] )
will still work with your class if you overload the [] operator, even though the macro was originally intended for float arrays!
As said above, you get the same performance implementing the 3D operations (+,-,scale, magnitude, normalize etc) as member functions rather than (harder to debug) macros.

A basic understanding of math and vectors/matrices would be an advantage before reading this book, but the equations are well explained.

In a nutshell, this book is DEFINITELY worth a read, just don't expect to be able to write a cutting edge 3D engine from what you learn 8^)

If you're looking for a book to give you details of Graphics programming, I would strongly recommend Fast Algorithms for 3D Graphics. Although Fast Algorithms was originally written for Dos and Unix, I found the text and source to be complete enough to be able to port the source to any Operating System. The text and the code is easily readable; I enjoyed reviewing the real-time shadow algorithm in particular. After reading the book I was able to understand a lot of the graphics work being done while working at Alias/Wavefront. Since then I have become more interested in 3D Graphics and look forward to reading "Open Geometry", Prof. Glaeser's next addition. Over all, I found this book to reveal a lot technical questions I had about graphics programming. The code provided a real time solution to the questions at hand, not like other books that give snippets or pseudo code.

The algorithms provided in this book have nothing to offer over the standard ones everyone uses in the games industry. If you're just getting started, this book might be fine. If you're a professional, stick with Foley/ van Dam and Graphics Gems.

For those who like a hands-on approach to learning a subject this can be an excellent intro to 3D graphics. Glaeser provides a minimal (and occasionally cryptic) introduction to the subject in prose alongside most of the C source code you will need to implement the concepts. He explains the ideas just enough that you can understand the code.

But be forewarned: the floppy disk containing source code is fairly worthless. It does not correspond to the source in the text, it seems to be a much more advanced version of the system he developed on an SGI Iris running Unix. If you happen to have such a machine, perhaps you can get it to compile. But even if you did, you would have a "black box" consisting of a lot of code that is difficult to understand (and with very few comments). I decided instead to type in sections by hand, coming to understand everything I put in, fixing some glaring errors even before compiling, and bringing up sections incrementally. I also had to provide a good bit of my own code to actually make a functioning system. For me this was a good learning experience. The book is valuable but it would benefit by a second edition.

The worst part of the book is the license for the software on the disk, which states that you may have no more than one copy and that "Springer-Verlag has the right to audit your computer". Since I didn't wind up using anything from the disk I take it that the license doesn't apply to me, but who knows? A new addition with an "open source" style license and a reworking of the organization would be very welcome.