{"id":3810,"date":"2014-09-14T16:28:33","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T22:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/?p=3810"},"modified":"2014-09-14T16:58:27","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T22:58:27","slug":"siggraph-2014-book-crop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/siggraph-2014-book-crop\/","title":{"rendered":"SIGGRAPH 2014 Book Crop"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve updated the graphics books listing<\/a><\/strong> hosted at our site. This is excruciatingly dull HTML editing; I hope it helps you out. Many\u00a0of the additions are from CRC, since I was able to view their books at SIGGRAPH – the number of book vendors seemed way down this year, maybe two total? If you find\u00a0(or wrote!) a relevant book that’s not listed, let me know.<\/p>\n

The secret takeaway on our webpage<\/a>: check the additional links I give at the end of most listings. Many\u00a0books have some sort of free preview and a related website with code, lecture notes, etc. For example,\u00a0Multithreading for Visual Effects<\/em><\/a> has a website<\/a> that includes the SIGGRAPH 2013 course notes that the\u00a0book is based on.<\/p>\n

I like that the new book Introduction to Computer Graphics: A Practical Learning Approach<\/em><\/a> has an associated website named\u00a0http:\/\/www.envymycarbook.com\/<\/a>, chosen\u00a0because the book’s overarching project is developing a race driving game. Calling their book Envy My Car<\/em> would have been wonderfully foolish. I guess this is a reason why we still have publishers.<\/p>\n

There are also other interesting resources you can find tucked away in these websites, such as this list of on-line articles<\/a>\u00a0related to\u00a0Game Engine Architecture<\/a><\/em>. A bunch of the URLs listed there are easily-discovered\u00a0wikipedia links, but quite a few are solid blog entries or other web pages you might not find in a quick search. This sort of editorial grooming of web resources is\u00a0valuable. The 2nd edition’s list of URLs is not up yet, and I can understand why. Please don’t remind me how dated a fair bit\u00a0of our own main page<\/a>\u00a0has become – managing links is a giant time suck, so I appreciate it whenever anyone else makes this sort of effort.<\/p>\n

Dig deep enough on some of these book websites and you might find oddities such as this list<\/a> of ten reasons to write a computer graphics textbook. I guess we’re in the bastard category?<\/p>\n

I did do some back-filling, adding older books that could (someday) be relevant to interactive rendering, e.g.,\u00a0Production Volume Rendering<\/em><\/a>. I didn’t add all possible vaguely-related books. From the cover and title,\u00a0The Magic of Computer Graphics<\/em><\/a>\u00a0looks like a coffee-table book, pretty pictures and minimal content. Looking inside, it turns out to be a heavy-duty text on materials and illumination theory. For example, by page 11 you’re exposed to an\u00a0integral for the BRDF, and that’s the ninth equation introduced by then. I left it out mostly because it’s an odd duck. The book Visual Perception from a Computer Graphics Perspective<\/a><\/em>\u00a0looks like a good volume if you’re really really into perception, but not all that\u00a0related to interactive 3D graphics.\u00a0I was also tempted by Digital Geometry in Image Processing<\/em><\/a>, mostly because of the cover – I’m in solidarity with<\/a> anyone who voxelizes teapots. This book sounds like computer graphics, but instead turns out to give a glimpse\u00a0at how huge the world is. There’s a whole area of study of the theory of measurement for pixel and voxel centered coordinates? Wow. But it doesn’t look all that relevant. Feel free to read\u00a0it and prove me wrong, that would be great.<\/p>\n

No book reviews for now, as I haven’t seriously examined the newer books yet. I’ve asked for a (very) few review copies, and hope to cover these in the upcoming months. There is<\/em> one book I know I won’t review (and won’t list), this alternate-universe version of Real-Time Rendering<\/em><\/a>, accidentally issued by CRC Press without the realization that they already had a book with this title. An embarrassment for them, so I feel\u00a0a little rude\u00a0to mention it, but honestly… It was on display at the CRC booth, but not next to their “other” Real-Time Rendering<\/em><\/a>, which would have made a good photo.<\/p>\n

Luckily CRC can’t sue itself for passing off<\/a> and unfair competition. It’s an interesting area of the law – titles are not copyright; trademark applies to only a series of books (e.g. “… for Dummies”). Searching on\u00a0Introduction to Computer Graphics<\/em>\u00a0will turn up about four books, including the new one from CRC<\/a>. This is fair, since the title is pretty generic and none of the books has established itself as the<\/em> well-known one. I look forward to someone testing the waters in the future and publishing Physically Based Rendering: From Hog to Lard<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve updated the graphics books listing hosted at our site. This is excruciatingly dull HTML editing; I hope it helps you out. Many\u00a0of the additions are from CRC, since I was able to view their books at SIGGRAPH – the number of book vendors seemed way down this year, maybe two total? If you find\u00a0(or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3810"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3825,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3810\/revisions\/3825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}