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Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach
The third edition of this classic tutorial and reference on procedural texturing and modeling is thoroughly updated to meet the needs of today's 3D graphics professionals and students. New for this edition are chapters devoted to real-time issues, cellular texturing, geometric instancing, hardware acceleration, futuristic environments, and virtual universes. In addition, the familiar authoritative chapters on which readers have come to rely contain all-new material covering L-systems, particle systems, scene graphs, spot geometry, bump mapping, cloud modeling, and noise improvements. There are many new spectacular color images to enjoy, especially in this edition's full-color format.
As in the previous editions, the authors, who are the creators of the methods they discuss, provide extensive, practical explanations of widely accepted techniques as well as insights into designing new ones. New to the third edition are chapters by two well-known Bill Mark of NVIDIA and John Hart of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on state-of-the-art topics not covered in former editions.
An accompanying Web site (www.texturingandmodeling.com) contains all of the book's sample code in C code segments (all updated to the ANSI C Standard) or in RenderMan shading language, plus files of many magnificent full-color illustrations.
No other book on the market contains the breadth of theoretical and practical information necessary for applying procedural methods. More than ever, Texturing & Modeling remains the chosen resource for professionals and advanced students in computer graphics and animation.
*New chapters procedural real-time shading by Bill Mark, procedural geometric instancing and real-time solid texturing by John Hart, hardware acceleration strategies by David Ebert, cellular texturing by Steven Worley, and procedural planets and virtual universes by Ken Musgrave.
*New material on Perlin Noise by Ken Perlin.
*Printed in full color throughout.
*Companion Web site contains revised sample code and dozens of images.
As in the previous editions, the authors, who are the creators of the methods they discuss, provide extensive, practical explanations of widely accepted techniques as well as insights into designing new ones. New to the third edition are chapters by two well-known Bill Mark of NVIDIA and John Hart of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on state-of-the-art topics not covered in former editions.
An accompanying Web site (www.texturingandmodeling.com) contains all of the book's sample code in C code segments (all updated to the ANSI C Standard) or in RenderMan shading language, plus files of many magnificent full-color illustrations.
No other book on the market contains the breadth of theoretical and practical information necessary for applying procedural methods. More than ever, Texturing & Modeling remains the chosen resource for professionals and advanced students in computer graphics and animation.
*New chapters procedural real-time shading by Bill Mark, procedural geometric instancing and real-time solid texturing by John Hart, hardware acceleration strategies by David Ebert, cellular texturing by Steven Worley, and procedural planets and virtual universes by Ken Musgrave.
*New material on Perlin Noise by Ken Perlin.
*Printed in full color throughout.
*Companion Web site contains revised sample code and dozens of images.
688 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 13, 2012
A fairly solid overview of a wide range of common procedural graphics techniques.
The only problems are:
* It's a little dated now - there's only one chapter that specifically addresses realtime rendering, and it's not much more than an introduction to pixel and vertex shaders.
* While it presents the theory of the techniques nicely, it's a bit lacking on practical pipeline concerns. Procedural techniques are the bane of many an art team because they're difficult to tune and tweak to produce exactly what the artist has in mind, so it would have been nice to get more on that.
* It focuses more on showing existing procedural solutions than on teaching you how to approach designing your own generative things. Fundamentals like Voronoi cells and Perlin noise are discussed but it would be helpful to see more worked examples of using them to build up more interesting structures.
If you want a deeper understanding of the theory, though, it's a good book to have.
The only problems are:
* It's a little dated now - there's only one chapter that specifically addresses realtime rendering, and it's not much more than an introduction to pixel and vertex shaders.
* While it presents the theory of the techniques nicely, it's a bit lacking on practical pipeline concerns. Procedural techniques are the bane of many an art team because they're difficult to tune and tweak to produce exactly what the artist has in mind, so it would have been nice to get more on that.
* It focuses more on showing existing procedural solutions than on teaching you how to approach designing your own generative things. Fundamentals like Voronoi cells and Perlin noise are discussed but it would be helpful to see more worked examples of using them to build up more interesting structures.
If you want a deeper understanding of the theory, though, it's a good book to have.
October 21, 2007
I've been reading (and re-reading) this book for the last 2 years, and it's fantastic! So many tremendous names in Computer Graphics contributed to this book, so you know it's got terrific information. Ken Perlin and Stephen Worley both contribute chapters on their respective noise algorithms, so you're hearing their wisdom first hand!
Like I said, I'm still reading it - I jump around a lot, and mostly read the lighting/texturing side of the book. I haven't spent much time reading the modeling stuff, but I think its safe to assume that it is equally good.
One of the best CG books I own!
Like I said, I'm still reading it - I jump around a lot, and mostly read the lighting/texturing side of the book. I haven't spent much time reading the modeling stuff, but I think its safe to assume that it is equally good.
One of the best CG books I own!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews