Ask HN : Best Computer graphics book?

4 points·vizard··4 comments

I took courses in computer architecture, algorithms, theory, compilers etc at school but never did one in graphics. However now I am itching to learn something about computer graphics and maybe play with OpenGL and/or DirectX. Any recommendations about books/lecture notes etc? What will be a suitable project that I could do to learn some graphics?

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Computer Graphics for Java Programmers by Leen Ammeraal is a damn good book and the most complete introduction to computer graphics that I've seen. A professor of mine once called it "the SICP of computer graphics." In that respect, it has clear explanations and great exercises. However, it is also dense and math-heavy, so it will take some discipline to work through the book.

If you just want to play around with graphics or don't like to program in Java, there are programming environments made especially for programming graphics like Processing [http://processing.org] and Nodebox [http://nodebox.net/]. Both are free and have tutorials readily available.

Thanks for the book recommendation :) One of my friends also asked me to look at "Real time rendering" second edition by Moller/Haines. Any thoughts?

You might also look at some of the great early stuff, like Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-574.pdf.

Also, check out the Graphical Gems series from IBM: lots of great algorithms.

Totally out of date but a lot of interesting material nonetheless: Michael Abrash's "Graphics Programming Black Book". Available online at http://www.byte.com/abrash/

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