Hi,
I'm interested in graphic programming.
As the Christmas Eve is getting close, I'm looking for a book I'd buy.
I already have these books:
-Real-Time Rendering (http://www.amazon.com/Real-Time-Rendering-Third-Tomas-Akenine-Moller/dp/1568814240/ref=dp_ob_title_bk)
-Advanced Global Illumination (http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Global-Illumination-Philip-Dutre/dp/1568813074/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1289297246&sr=8-4)

I'm thinking about this book:
ShaderX7: Advanced Rendering Techniques (http://www.amazon.com/ShaderX7-Rendering-Techniques-Wolfgang-Engel/dp/1584505982/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289297367&sr=8-1)
It looks interesting but there may be other interesting books I haven't found.

Could you suggest some interesting books?:-)

Ever checked out the gpu gems series? The text of the articles is available online but they make a beautiful full color / hardcover book. They've got some neat articles in them, worth checking out for anyone with intermediate to advanced graphics programming knowledge.

Gpu Gems 1
Gpu Gems 2
Gpu Gems 3

Even if you don't buy the books it's good to check out some of the articles online.

I know that series:-) It's a very interesting piece of work!
I was thinking about buying that but I'm not sure I want to spend my money by buying something what I can read online for free.

However, having those books in their hardcover versions in my bookcase at home is a so attractive vision...:-)

Computer Graphics
Principles and Practice
Foley

classic text, old but good

Read as many graphics PDF as you can find online

My library of free downloaded graphics papers come to over 2Gb

Get all the GDC stuff etc.
Read everything that Bungie and CryTek, etc. have written

Isn't the book a bit outdate? I've read some reviews and the people complain that the book is outdate. They say that the book focuses on outdate topics and the topics that are up to date are examined just briefly.
I just read that-I don't know whether it's true:)

Physically Based Rendering, by Pharr and Humphreys. Shows how to write a production quality photorealistic renderer based on ray tracing (and is the basis of LuxRay).

Hmmm, that book looks so interesting! Could you write here your opinion on the book?
However, I think I've found my number one!:-)

[Edited by - Mihulik on November 10, 2010 2:42:45 PM]

I guess the opinions on amazon tell everything :)

As a rating I give the first edition (don't have a copy of the second) gets 4 stars of 5 possible stars, 4 of 5. It doesn't show you clean and proper C++ code, in fact completely lacks const-correctness, but it shows a possible architecture for your rendering system that is extensible and maintainable. Picogen's design is influenced by PBRT at some points btw.

The book itself is written as a literate program, so it always goes top-down from large scale design to implementation detail.

The renderer is licensed under the GPL (hosted on github), so even if you just take the renderer and don't want to go detailed on rendering, the book is still the best reference manual to the renderer.

For covered topics, better look at amazon. The most important differences between the first and second edition, to my knowledge, are that the 1st edition covers a good bit of tone mapping, whereas the 2nd ed. implements a metropolis sampler.

As said it gets 4 out of 5 by me :)

Thanks!
I've read the opinions on Amazon and I think I already know what Santa Claus is to bring me at Christmas:-)
I'll just wait for a few days whether I come across a better choice...I don't think I will:)

...and don't forget to download DX SDK samples,tutorials and help,frely.
One day(may be not this Christmas,but next) you will understand that it's the most useful thing[smile]