I need some advice on studying maths. I did an A-level (more or less like grade 12 of high school) course in maths but i didn''t take it that seriously - got a grade C. But now i realised i should have put more effort into it. So this is my thought of how to go about studying. First buy ''Engineering Mathematics By Palgrave''. Brush up on the basics, then either go on to ''Advanced Engineering Mathematics'' or get a book on just Linear Algebra. Something like that! Could someone tell me if this is a good route to take. Any advice would be appreciated.

Hmmm. I''m not sure if I personally would be motivated enough to read books as dry and humorless as "Engineering Mathematics" or "Advanced Engineering Mathematics." . And I''ve got a Master''s Degree in Aerospace Engineering---read lots of dry books!

I find it much more motivating to learn from books that are targeted at my area of interest, and just use those dry books as references to look up things I need to better understand the more interesting material. For example, I''d try to learn a bit of linear algebra from "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice" by Foley, van Dam, et al., or perhaps the OpenGL red book, both of which describe 3D transformation matrices in some detail. For physics, "Physics for Game Programmers" by David Bourg is maybe a good place to start if you''ve only completed A-level math courses. The "Game Programming Gems" series have loads of usable math with often good detailed descriptions of what the math means. Don''t buy any book before you have a chance to flip through it, and read a few pages though. You need to be happy with your choice. If you can borrow from a library, do that.

My point is, really, try to do most of your learning from books/papers/web pages that focus on applications you are interested in (game programming), and just use the dry boring stuff like a dictionary to keep on the bookshelf when you need to look up something specific.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read and answer my question. Just out curiosity, from a masters in aerospace engineering to games development? Or is it just as a hobby?

Well, since I love talking about myself, , ..!

I''ve never actually done much Aerospace engineering work. I actually started a Ph.D program in 1995, but dropped it last year because I finally realized I had no passion for engineering. Mostly I''ve done software development, though I admit most of the software I''ve written does support engineering. My first job out of school in 1990 was working for a company that developed a 3D visualization system for displaying the results of wind tunnel analysis. We wrote a windowing system from scratch, and added a full 3D software pipeline for 486-PC''s running in protected mode. I should say that I wrote the full 3D pipeline, which included a 16-bit Z-buffer, smooth shading, phong lighting, 1-D texture maps, real-time interactive clip planes (in a very small window), and polygon offset (which only appeared in OpenGL at version 1.1). Even in school I developed a 3D mesh editor called GEOMAIR. It was used for aircraft design (and still is used at North Carolina State University in the senior aircraft design course).

3D graphics are in my blood, to the point where I spend my own money and vacation time to go to GDC and SIGGRAPH each year if I''m unable to convince my company to pay for the trips (sometimes they pay, sometimes not). Gaming is also in my blood. Every afternoon after school when I was young, we''d play Atari or Colecovision. Friday nights at the arcades. There''s others in these forums who did the same. I developed a couple of complete games on my old VIC-20 computer and later ported one of them to my Atari 400. Naturally, when games started to become sophisticated and when game graphics surpassed engineering graphics, I became interested in developing them. My physics/engineering background sort of adds the interest in gaming physics.

Its more than a hobby. We''re working to grow a game studio here. Tentative studio name is "Quicksand Games" (which one a vote among the team members). My company is investing money in a game demo through our IR&D budget. We licensed the NetImmerse game engine, for another project, but we have permission to use it for the demo as well. We use 3ds max, Photoshop, NetImmerse, DarkTree (for procedural textures), and MojoWorlds (for procedural terrain generation). The game is a 3rd person action/adventure game. Its based on a very exciting licensed property, and I just can''t tell you what it is right now. With a little luck, the demo will be in some kind of showable condition by E3 this year.

So, thank you for asking, and thank you for listening!

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

I''m just approaching the end of A-Level maths and I have found the book "Computer Graphics through key mathematics" by Huw Jones to be very good as a way to get my foot in the door on the maths needed for 3d graphoics. As a plus it''s only £24.50 which is pretty cheap compared to stuff like real time rendering which was over £40 or game programming gems which was over £50.

I too am aproaching the end of A-Level maths, and I found the book "Mathematics for Computer Graphics Applications" a very nice reference indeed. It does the standard matrix/vector math at the beginning ( P6 work for those that are interested ), but then goes into other things such as topology, limits and continuity, set theory, CSG, curves and surfaces and more. A really good book that I suggest you buy.

Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.

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Original post by python_regious
I too am aproaching the end of A-Level maths, and I found the book "Mathematics for Computer Graphics Applications" a very nice reference indeed. It does the standard matrix/vector math at the beginning ( P6 work for those that are interested ), but then goes into other things such as topology, limits and continuity, set theory, CSG, curves and surfaces and more. A really good book that I suggest you buy.

Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.

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Yeah but most people don''t even get to P4 nevermind P6, damn teachers making me do stats modules and decision modules :|

hehe, Decision modules are okay - easy marks but still, I''d rather have done some pure...

I only get to do upto P3, but I read the P5 and P6 vector/matrix/coordinate geometry sections and photocopied a whole load of useful bits... my teacher has just started P3 vectors (last module this year), and has successfully spent 3 lessons teaching us how to add and subtract vectors. woohoo. as if I couldn''t teach a small monkey that in 5 minutes

anyway, on-topic... reading within your area of interest is by far the best approach, you''ll absorb the knowledge if you can relate it to interesting things (to you), and 10x more if you can relate it to practical examples/applications that mean something to you. As an example - I learnt vector maths to somewhere in the P5 region (back a step here!) around abouts the beginning of my A-Level course, all with respect to some Direct3D/3D game programming.... and i''ve not forgotten it. but the way they''re teaching it to me from these a-level texts would be useless... no meaning at all, plain, dull and annoying.

hth
Jack;

I got my lowest mark on decision heh I think it was probably my crappy handwriting that cost me though because I knew the stuff on the paper.

The A Level course isn''t really any good for the maths needed for graphics programming anyway. You don''t do any vector/matrix stuff till the last module in pure ( which no-one does anyway ). The rest of the modules are basically calculus, which gets very dull very quickly. The Mechanics course is very useful, so I suggest you at least try to get to M3.

Apart from that, there is another book called "Mathematics for 3D game programming & computer graphics", which has had really good reviews off amazon. I suggest you take a look...

Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.