Product Description
By showing how the various commands should be used and how they interact, this book teaches not just what Direct3D commands are available, but why they do what they do and how to put them to best use. The CD-ROM contains approximately 150 high quality 3D objects that when sold separately have a market value of $100 to $500 each. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (55)

This book is out of date, save your money
Unless you like working with resource hungry technology of yesterday then give this book a miss. Anyone who knows even a touch of direct X knows that retained mode has been abandoned for a couple of years, not a surprising as it was very rarely used and certainly not used in game development. I find it hard to believe that this book is still being sold, let alone at this price. Save your cash.

Good.....but not interesting....
I bought this book four months ago. However, I have started read five weeks ago. Why?

When I read pg. #3 four months ago, I was embarassed. On pg. #50, I saw too many aliens. Finally on pg. #60 I became an dead man. At that time, I was perfactly beginner on computer graphics and Kovach's book looks terrible and like alien. However, now I would like to say "Thank You" to Kovach for writing such a wonderful book.

After reading an elementary stuff on graphical mathmatics, DirectDraw and so on, I can understand what the alien is and how it works.

It is the point what I want to say that this book is good for intermediate reader who are familiar with WIn32 programming and have some basic skills on DirectDraw, but if you are completely beginner at computer science or Win32, this book make you mad.

All thing have pros and cons. All codes on this book is not so good to read and understand.

Very very imformative -- ashame the code is laid out poorly
This book really has some good stuff in it and for someone who doesn't know where to start in rendering a 3D environment, moving around it, adding collision detection, special FX - including lighting, sounds, animationsets, loading pre-built 3D objects into your world and adding textures& mipmaps it's great. It shows many other features of Windowed mode andimmediate mode programs, and will greatly enhance your knowledge ofcreating advanced 3D virtual environments. The main problem this book hasis a lot of the code in the book is snippets from the accompanying CD sothe only way to understand which parts of the program the code is from isby loading the appropriate chapters from the CD and searching for it. Iwill agree with an earlier comment that the section on terrain creation isnot very well explained and the code is a nightmare to understand. It's notall bad though because this book is definitely worth a read. Your knowledgewill be increased from none to huge amounts within a few days of readingand fiddling with the code. All round this book is worth having in yourpogramming library.

extremely messy code
I decided to buy this book after I finished reading the introduction and first chapter. But little I knew how messed up the code in this book is. I haven't really look into the DirectX documentation yet so I am not going tocomment on that. But I do believe people saying that part of the book is"cut and paste" from somewhere else, they just don't make senceat all... I started notice the problem in Chapter 2 where there are quite abit of typo and wrong information about the CD. Once I get into Chapter 3.This situation become worse, there are tones of code segment which I haveno idea where to put. I could never find any makefileX in any directory(according to the book). What kind of publisher or author is this? At leastthey should take some time to check the consistency between the code andthe CD... I DO NOT recommend this book !

Code is quite confusing but some topics are a bit helpful.
Its a book thats aimed for a person who has a lot of time to waste in the understanding of code not making any sense, especially the code pertaining to terrain generation, which is very confusing and without any explanation.Secondly this book focuses basically on the retained mode and just copiesthe documentation of DirectX5 SDK help for immediate mode. One good thingabout it is code and explanation handling of joystick and sound. Apart fromit I don't find it any more useful. One can learn better reading the SDKhelp and code for other things. ... Read more

Product Description
3D Game Art f/x and Design covers the technology of game elements including 2D and 3D effects.This book discusses each part of computer games from an artist's view: interfaces, menus, characters, game textures, 3D models, and games levels or worlds.It teaches all the pieces used to design a computer game.The reader will learn the specialized skills, tricks, and techniques used to create professional quality game art and be able to use those design segments when building individual games.Upon completing this book, you will have created all of the 2D and 3D art assets for a 3D game and assembled them into a running game.CD-ROM is included containing a large assemblage of game development software and art elements. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Excellent first book
Whenever I am contemplating a new game development book the first thing I look at is the copyright year. Software books become obsolete so quickly but..... You don't have to do that with this one.
This is not about coupling up with the latest software and understanding how to make game graphics. This is about understanding the principles behind graphics for games. and that means it is very relevant.

It teaches how to create, manage, and manipulate textures and tiles and how to create seamless tiling. Lots of other stuff too including a nice, but short, tutorial on how to use the genesis 3d game engine to create a game. Very useful tutorial.The genesis 3d engine is open software and a copy of it comes on the CD with the book. This alone is nice because you can take this book and actually make a game. Everything is right there including software, tutorial and sample textures.

Perfect book for the person looking to make a 3d dungeon type game but has never tried to make a game before.


I found the tutorials easy to follow except that it uses Photoshop and if you are a starving game maker like me you probably can't afford photoshop so you will have to work through your own translation into your paint program. I use Paint Shop Pro which is superb and about 1/10 the cost of photoshop.

All in all it is a great book to teach you some fundamentals of game art and I refer to it over and over.

A good starting point for the aspiring mod maker or mapper
I picked this book up without much research. After a quick flip through the pages I decided it was better to have around than no reference material at all.

Strong points: Luke Ahearn goes through a step-by-step process regarding building texture libraries, and efficient ways to structure your directory trees for referencing.These are all valid lessons that apply directly to working in a professional environment, so pay attention!Also, his feedback on tiling and cleaning up of digital images is relevant, although not comprehensive.

As far as the other game art tips included, I haven't tried them yet.I use a different mapping engine (Quake 3 / GTK Radiant) but the tips and interfaces between many engines are similar, so if you don't have a commercially supported editor, I assume Wild Tangent's Genesis 3D one is adequate (it's really designed for web-based 3D gaming, and doesn't require 3D cards for all applications).At any rate, this book is not the end-all-be-all of game art and level design books, but rather a very good place to start.

Weak points: The author puts a lot of information into the book without focusing on any one particular area.Perhaps that is due to the nature of the work.Be a good 2D artist and make textures.Be a good 3D artist and make models.Be a good level designer and put everything together.It's a lot to handle, and a lot of it is crammed into the book but no one area is really focused on entirely.Also, if you're not using Photoshop for texturing, have fun adapting these lessons to another application.

Given Mr. Ahearn's professional experience (he did the level work and artwork for America's Army: Operations - the free 1st person shooter released by the US Army powered by the Unreal engine) it's safe to say he knows what he's doing.Don't purchase this book thinking it'll be the only tome you need to read to become a fantastic 3D artist or level artist, but consider it if you want to have a handy reference manual on how to make effective textures and intriguing levels for your games.Since modern day games can get very complex very quickly (bot pathfinding and logic, creating shaders and sky boxes, etc.) it's good to start with the essentials and build up from there.

There aren't a lot of books out there that cover this type of work, so my suggestion is pick it up, work through it, and hit some message boards to learn how to do the tricky stuff.

A good start, though a way to go
The learning curve to produce good 3D content is pretty steep. As human beings, we are very familiar with what 3D spaces should look like, and therefore it can be very irksome to us when something looks bad, unreal, or out of place. This book attempts to act as a primer on how to create art for compelling worlds.

I work professionally as a developer on a 3D authoring application and so I'm pretty familiar with many of the skills required to create 3D content. There are many steps from concept to final, and some of them require at least a rudiment of artistic or design background.

The author at least does a good job of taking the reader through most of the important steps, and certainly focuses on the design related ones. The author gives some good source material and basic techniques for dirtying up and making textures tileable, though some of the tasks require at least a moderate knowledge of Photoshop. He also offers a few key tidbits of advice in modeling and lighting environments, though nothing groundbreaking.

A large portion of the book goes to explaining how to use Genesis3D, an open source 3D application that comes on the CD with the book. I applaud the author in at least packaging a pertinent program so the reader can be given a chance to use their skills. Unfortunately it is typical of 3D-game world editors and isn't very easy to use. I would recommend at least looking around and trying other editors before investing much time in learning one. Though this is certainly a necessary evil to learn at least one if you plan on doing any level editing.

I'd say the main weakness of the book is that it is geared primarily towards the creation of typical first-person shooter worlds. Fortunately these are very popular, and surrealistic enviroments tend not to require as much finesse because limited or extreme lighting and environments can be used to hide limitations in modeling experience. It tends to be much more difficult to create 3D enviroments of the familiar (i.e. offices, house interiors, etc.) though who wants to make those anyway, that's what everyone is trying to escape from in the first place, right? ;)

In closing, this book is a good start, however, even though the author may be a really great level designer he definitely hasn't imparted all of his tricks in this book. I don't mean to offend, though it possibly might be from lack of experience. The fact that he talks about how to get rid of "flash burn" from a camera instead of teaching techniques on how to avoid it in the first place, such as buying an [inexpensive]off-camera flash (or if you can't afford that, at least putting tissue paper in front of the flash to act as a diffuser)

For more information of how to create good textures, I'd recommend reading anything Hayden Duvall has written in Game Developer Magazine or on game development Web sites.

For more information of fundamental lighting techniques, I'd recommend [digital] Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn. Or, if you can afford it, take a technical theater course on lighting design at a community college.

Unfortunately, for 3D game level design there aren't very many good resources, they're all broken up by what editor is used to create the levels, so first pick your game/editor and then just look for forums dedicated to that one.

From a programmers perspective
I am reviewing this book from a Software Engineer's point of view. I have zero experience with generating game art. Which is precisely why I bought this book. So keep that in mind as you read this.

The book is dived into two parts. "Part 1 - 2D Interactive Game Art" is devoted to designing and building textures in Adobe Photoshop. This was a bit disapointing as I can't afford to pop ($) for Photoshop. But I imagine the techniques are pretty much the same regardless of the software you use (assuming that part of the industry uses any kind of a standard). Part 1 also has a few detours into things like "Logos" and their design process and "Menu's and Interfaces." In my opinion, these detours are bonus materials. The author uses a tutorial based approach for learning how to build textures in Photoshop. Each tutorial focuses on a basic method, i.e., Creating A Rust Texture, Creating Brushed Metal. Then, a group of tutorials is followed up by a multi texture project that may or may not use the textures you created in the previous tutorials.

The texture tutorials are a bit vague. They basically follow this kind of format (I'm paraphrasing each step):

To create a rust texture in Photshop, follow these steps:

1. Creat a new image document and make it 600x600...
2. Fill the background with a light brown...
3. Add noise to this layer with the Noise filter: Choose Noise|Add Noise. Set the amount to 40, Gaussian and make it Monochromatic.
4. Blur this layer by choosing Filter|Blur|Motion Blur. Set the angle to 45 and the Distanceto 45...

If you are already a texture artist, maybe you know what "Set the amount to 40, Gaussian and make it Monochromatic" means. But I would have liked an explanation of these types of things.

The problem with the tutorial approach is it is specific to Adobe Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop to follow along with, it is hard to understand what is happening in these steps.

I would have liked a better explanation of designing textures for tiling. There are tutorials for designing seamless textures, but again, without having Photoshop (and zero game art experience) it is really hard to follow.

Part 1 also has some good insight into creating and managing your texture library.

Part 2 - World Building: Genesis3D and Reality Factory, focuses on building game levels for use in the Genesis3D game engine (Reality Factory is an upgraded and improved version of the Genesis3D engine). Part 2 of the book is, again, a tutorial based approach to building a game world with the level editor. In fact, all of the tutorials are part of one project that part 2 focuses on: building a castle, courtyard and models (to place in the castle gameworld). The last chapter of the book focuses on Reality Factory and the goodies it adds to Genesis3D.

My goal is to write my own level editor and game engine. I have the software knowledge to do so and now this book has given me a peek at what a level editor should do and how it goes hand in hand with the game engine. At first I was put off by the tutorial approach until I realized that in order to learn this stuff you need to do this stuff. And to do it you need some software. So on second thought it was only natural for the author to pick some software and teach you how to use it. In doing so, he succeeds in teaching you about "3D Game Art and f/x Design."

SOFTWARE ON THE CD
Of course, the CD does not come with Photoshop. But the author does provide other game art resources including an free GNU Photshop-like application (...).

I was a bit upset when I realized the minimum OS requirement for software on the CD was Windows 98. I am still running a 1997 version of Windows 95! (I know, I know... I'm in the process of ordering a tricked out Alienware machine!). But, having experience with these type of requirements, I decided to install everything anyway. And it works! At least the level editor and Genesis3D game engine work. As my machine is a 166 MHz P II, I'm not even going to attempt to run the Reality Factory (min reqs: P II 200 MHz, 64 mb ram, NVidia TNT-class 3D accelerator. recommended: P II 400 MHz, AGP NVidia TNT2-class 3D accelerator). Fair warning now, Reality Factory will not run without a 3D accelerator.

The CD comes with a test game. Genesis3D uses the DirectX API. My machine does not have a 3D accelerator so Genesis3D runs in software mode. My frame rate at 640x480 was a whopping 5 frames/second (yes, I'm being sarcastic)! But the author does warn you about this.

When all is said and done, I was very pleased with this book. It gave me some good insight to Game Art. The level editor and Genesis3D game engine were bonus materials.

A Gamer
When I got this book I was like WOW! This Is good.But after I
read It 3 times and did what It said I was very disaponted!It said what a game shoud be but not how to do it!It only does a few short lines of That.If you want two completely copy Doom Get this Book,If not,Don't. ... Read more

Product Description
This book constitutes the refereed revised post-workshop proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video, NOSSDAV '95, held in Durham, New Hampshire, USA in April 1995.
The 24 full papers included were selected from a total of 101 submissions; together with overviews by the session chairpersons they reflect the state of the art in networking and operating systems support for multimedia. The papers are organized in sections on advance reservation systems, operating systems support, resource management and quality of service, audio and video systems, and scheduling and synchronization. ... Read more

Product Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the First International Workshop on Languages, Methodologies and Development Tools for Multi-Agent Systems, LADS 2007, held in Durham, UK, in September 2007. The workshop was part of MALLOW 2007, a federation of workshops on Multi-Agent Logics, Languages, and Organizations.

The 15 revised full papers, presented together with 1 invited paper reporting the aims and achievements of the OpenKnowledge project, were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on agent reasoning and semantics, declarative languages and technologies, methodologies and design, and development frameworks.

Product Description
Focus On 3D Models covers today's most popular 3D model formats! Every programmer can take advantage of this 3D model and animation reference because it contains models that range from simple to complex based upon the skills and knowledge of the programmer and their intended use. Beginners can experiment with the easy-to-use basic 3D model formats. Intermediate and advanced programmers can expand their 3D modeling skills by mastering other popular formats presented in this book. The CD contains all source code from the book (including the necessary media and executables), Gmax, Paint Shop Pro 7 demo, Milkshape 3D, sample 3D models, and various freeware and shareware modeling programs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Not great, not awful
While the model formats discussed are the more popular ones, there are quite a few details that were omitted in the book about them. On the other side of the coin, there aren't many books specifically for model formats. All the information that is missing, is easy enough to find with a little research.

Not bad, definately not great
This book is more of an overview on how to load 3D models from files more than anything else.

By overview, I do mean quite sketchy.

The file formats talked about are:
.obj (ASCII, poor coverage)
.3ds (3DS Max)
.md2 (Quake II)
.ms3d (Milkshape 3D)
.mdl (Half-Life)
.md3 (Quake III)

(Note that the .obj format was not discussed correctly. The code that comes on CD is actually a very poorly done .obj loader with minimal functionality. The library known as GLM is an .obj loader that is well written and outperforms the authors code by a large margin.)

The .md3 and .mdl coverage is somewhat skant of details.

Overall, this book is not a definitive model format book - you can get the same information on the web for free, with much better written loaders and the likes.

If you can pick this book up for under 5$ go for it, otherwise forget it.

Small, short and to the point
Explains some of the more common 3d models and includes an appendix with links about other formats not covered.This book only briefly explains some technologies, like skeletal modeling, and otherwise just tells you what you need to get them rendered.

Just enough to get you started.

Good beginners intro
An excellent starting point for somebody that knows nothing at all about 3D models, but can only be considered a stepping stone to other books that gloss over the basics.

He starts with a good intro to matrices and quaternions, followed by a good intro to modeling concepts, and then describes a few formats in detail.Unfortunately, he doesn't go into any more advanced discussion on how to put things together... i.e. how to *use* the models.A few pages are wasted explaining how to use some basic "C", but I've seen worse...

Overall, I give it four stars because, if you know nothing of the topic, it is an excellent jump start.If you do have knowledge of the topic, then you aren't the target audience.

Fulfills its stated purpose well
This book covers the loading and handling of 3D models from the programmer's point of view (not the artist's, which may not be immediately obvious from the title). Like other Focus On books, it's short (checking in at just under 200 pages), but doesn't spend a lot of time on introductory material or subjects not related to the main topic.

The model formats covered by this book are Quake 2 (.md2), .obj, MilkShape, 3D Studio Max (.3ds), Half-life (.mdl), and Quake 3 (.md3). All of these formats are covered quite well, with sample code showing how to load, display and (when applicable) animate them. The exception is the Half-life format, for which he just uses the SDK, so there's no real information on the format itself. In addition to the specific formats, there are chapters on skeletal animation and useful tips on working with models.

My only real complaint is that about 1/4 of the book's pages are spent on covering vectors, matrices, quaternions, and STL vectors. Although knowledge of these topics is important for understanding the rest of the book, I'd suspect most readers will already be familiar with them. I would have preferred to have these chapters included on the CD instead, freeing up space for more useful information (detailed coverage of the Half-life format, perhaps?).

Overall, though, I was happy with the book. It's compact, inexpensive, an easy read, and it's nice to have the most common formats covered in one convenient volume. If you're looking for an introduction to using 3D models, or just want a physical reference for these formats to keep on your desk, I'd recommend it. ... Read more

Product Description

“The GPU Gems series features a collection of the most essential algorithms required by Next-Generation 3D Engines.”
—Martin Mittring, Lead Graphics Programmer, Crytek

This third volume of the best-selling GPU Gems series provides a snapshot of today’s latest Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) programming techniques. The programmability of modern GPUs allows developers to not only distinguish themselves from one another but also to use this awesome processing power for non-graphics applications, such as physics simulation, financial analysis, and even virus detection—particularly with the CUDA architecture. Graphics remains the leading application for GPUs, and readers will find that the latest algorithms create ultra-realistic characters, better lighting, and post-rendering compositing effects.

Major topics include

• Geometry
• Light and Shadows
• Rendering
• Image Effects
• Physics Simulation
• GPU Computing

Contributors are from the following corporations and universities:

3Dfacto
Adobe Systems
Apple
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
CGGVeritas
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Cornell University
Crytek
Czech Technical University in Prague
Dartmouth College
Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment
Eindhoven University of Technology
Electronic Arts
Havok
Helsinki University of Technology
Imperial College London
Infinity Ward
Juniper Networks
LaBRI–INRIA, University of Bordeaux
mental images
Microsoft Research
Move Interactive
NCsoft Corporation
NVIDIA Corporation
Perpetual Entertainment
Playlogic Game Factory
Polytime
Rainbow Studios
SEGA Corporation
UFRGS (Brazil)
Ulm University
University of California, Davis
University of Central Florida
University of Copenhagen
University of Girona
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
University of Tokyo
University of Waterloo

Section Editors include NVIDIA engineers: Cyril Zeller, Evan Hart, Ignacio Castaño, Kevin Bjorke, Kevin Myers, and Nolan Goodnight.

The accompanying DVD includes complementary examples and sample programs.

Customer Reviews (3)

Even better, than GPU Gems 1/2
Though I had no time to read most of the articles, I can say that this book is even better than GPU 1/2. It is still more narrative than educational (comparing to ShaderX series), but nevertheless I got useful material from it.
For example, the methods for ray-marching (multiple robust reflections and refractions chapter) are going to be used in our company.
I would recommend it for all professionals in 3D graphics, image/video processing and GPU (GP GPU) computing.

Good book, i would like to see more code
The third version of the GPU Gems serie is also the best version i think. Every topic is up-to-date and gives the reader a lot to think about. I have read the whole book (some of the chapters i just skimmed through) and i must say that this book is good! The reason i only give it 4 stars is the disc that comes with it. Not every chapter comes with example code (only executables and/or videos)! To be able to take fully advantage of the book you have to know, among other things, 3D programming using Direct3D 10 already. The "Intended audience" should know the fundamentals of DirectX or OpenGL. I think it takes some more than just the fundamentals to be able do something good other than just copy-paste the code from the disc.

It's a good thing to read this book even if you are not an excellent programmer already. You will learn things that you will find hard to learn from somewhere else. Read the book to update yourself to the new generation of rendering.

Students; If you are looking for topics for bachelor or masters thesis, then this book has a lot of good examples, in theory, of what you can do to improve the techniques.

Pros/Cons
+ Covers new and good techniques
+ Easy to read, excellent!
+ Disc has some good and useful stuff

- Some techniques will be hard to implement if you are no expert because the chapters (not all!) are too shallow (writer assume that the reader knows a lot already).
- Some chapters come without (full) source code


Maybe this was not a precise review of the book but i tried to describe my view. Buy this book, it's really good and as a serious developer you should have this book on the shelf!

A five star book for advanced graphics programmers only
It seems to me that this edition of GPU Gems is a step up from Volume 2. The articles are much better illustrated with more pseudocode and with the background mathematics better explained than in the previous edition. Like the other books in the series, there is not enough complete information to write an application from start to finish, but if you have a background in computer graphics it should be enough to get you started. However, the entire book assumes that you are already a professional graphics programmer well-versed in some higher-level language that also has a good grasp of advanced mathematics and even some physics. For example, a knowledge of partial differential equations is required to completely understand the chapter on real-time simulation and rendering of 3D fluids. Other chapters require a background in digital signal processing. It is also assumed that the reader is famililar with graphics API such as DirectX or OpenGL and their associated high-level programming languages - HLSL,GLSL, or Cg. Therefore it will probably be the rare individual that will be able to fully comprehend and utilize the entire book. I would recommend this book for the professional graphics programmer to add to their reference library. The following is the detailed table of contents and the contributors in each case:

Part I - GEOMETRY
Chapter 1: Generating Complex Procedural Terrains Using the GPU
Ryan Geiss, NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 2: Animated Crowd Rendering
Bryan Dudash, NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 3: DirectX 10 Blend Shapes: Breaking the Limits
Tristan Lorach, NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 4: Next-Generation SpeedTree Rendering
Alexander Kharlamov, Iain Cantlay, Yury Stepanenko - NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 5: Generic Adaptive Mesh Refinement
Tamy Boubekeur, Christophe Schlick - University of Bordeaux

Chapter 6: GPU-Generated Procedural Wind Animations for Trees
Renaldas Zioma, Electronic Arts/Digital Illusions CE

Chapter 7: Point-Based Visualization of Metaballs on a GPU
Kees van Kooten, Gino van den Bergen - Playlogic Game Factory
Alex Telea, Eindhoven University of Technology

PART 2 - LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
Chapter 8: Summed-Area Variance Shadow Maps
Andrew Lauritzen, University of Waterloo

Chapter 9: Interactive Cinematic Relighting with Global Illumination
Fabio Pellacini, Dartmouth College
Milos Hasan, Kavita Bala - Cornell University

Chapter 10: Parallel-Split Shadow Maps on Programmable GPUs
Fan Zhang, Hanqiu Sun - The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Oskari Nyman, Helsinki University of Technology

Chapter 11: Efficient and Robust Shadow Volumes Using Hierarchical Occlusion Culling and Geometry Shaders
Martin Stich, mental images
Carsten Wächter, Alexander Keller - Ulm University

Chapter 12: High-Quality Ambient Occlusion
Jared Hoberock, Yuntao Jia - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Chapter 13: Volumetric Light Scattering as a Post-Process
Kenny Mitchell, Electronic Arts

PART 3 - RENDERING
Chapter 14: Advanced Techniques for Realistic Real-Time Skin Rendering
Eugene d'Eon, David Luebke - NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 15: Playable Universal Capture
George Borshukov, Jefferson Montgomery, John Hable - Electronic Arts

Chapter 16: Vegetation Procedural Animation and Shading in Crysis
Tiago Sousa, Crytek

Chapter 17: Robust Multiple Specular Reflections and Refractions
Tamás Umenhoffer, BLászló Szirmay-Kalos - Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Gustavo Patow, University of Girona

Chapter 18: Relaxed Cone Stepping for Relief Mapping
Fabio Policarpo, Perpetual Entertainment
Manuel M. Oliveira, Instituto de Informática--UFRGS

Chapter 19: Deferred Shading in Tabula Rasa
Rusty Koonce, NCsoft Corporation

Chapter 20: GPU-Based Importance Sampling
Mark Colbert, University of Central Florida
Jaroslav Kr¡ivánek, Czech Technical University in Prague

PART 4 - IMAGE EFFECTS
Chapter 21: True Impostors
Eric Risser, University of Central Florida

Chapter 22: Baking Normal Maps on the GPU
Diogo Teixeira, Move Interactive

Chapter 23: High-Speed, Off-Screen Particles
Iain Cantlay, NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 24: The Importance of Being Linear
Larry Gritz, Eugene d'Eon, NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 25: Rendering Vector Art on the GPU
Charles Loop, Jim Blinn - Microsoft Research

Chapter 26: Object Detection by Color: Using the GPU for Real-Time Video Image Processing
Ralph Brunner, Frank Doepke, Bunny Laden - Apple

Chapter 27: Motion Blur as a Post-Processing Effect
Gilberto Rosado, Rainbow Studios

Chapter 28: Practical Post-Process Depth of Field
Earl Hammon, Jr., Infinity Ward

PART 5 - PHYSICS SIMULATION
Chapter 29: Real-Time Rigid Body Simulation on GPUs
Takahiro Harada, University of Tokyo

Chapter 30: Real-Time Simulation and Rendering of 3D Fluids
Keenan Crane, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ignacio Llamas, Sarah Tariq - NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 31: Fast N-Body Simulation with CUDA
Lars Nyland, Mark Harris - NVIDIA Corporation
Jan Prins, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chapter 32: Broad-Phase Collision Detection with CUDA
Scott Le Grand, NVIDIA Corporation

Chapter 33: LCP Algorithms for Collision Detection Using CUDA
Peter Kipfer, Havok

Chapter 34: Signed Distance Fields Using Single-Pass GPU Scan Conversion of Tetrahedra
Kenny Erleben, University of Copenhagen
Henrik Dohlmann, 3Dfacto R&D

PART 6 - GPU COMPUTING
Chapter 35: Fast Virus Signature Matching on the GPU
Elizabeth Seamans, Juniper Networks
Thomas Alexander, Polytime

Chapter 36: AES Encryption and Decryption on the GPU
Takeshi Yamanouchi, SEGA Corporation

Chapter 37: Efficient Random Number Generation and Application Using CUDA
Lee Howes, David Thomas - Imperial College London

Chapter 38: Imaging Earth's Subsurface Using CUDA
Bernard Deschizeaux, Jean-Yves Blanc, CGGVeritas

Chapter 39: Parallel Prefix Sum (Scan) with CUDA
Mark Harris, NVIDIA Corporation
Shubhabrata Sengupta, John D. Owens - University of California, Davis

Chapter 40: Incremental Computation of the Gaussian
Ken Turkowski, Adobe Systems

Chapter 41: Using the Geometry Shader for Compact and Variable-Length GPU Feedback
Franck Diard, NVIDIA Corporatiion ... Read more

Product Description
The Story: Radio astronomer Zane Zaminsky believes he's picked up a cosmic noise that signals extraterrestrial intelligence. His desperate search for answers leads him to Mexico and a mysterious power plant, Where he is arrested for the murder of a scientist. Zane must escape with his proof of the world-shattering alien invasion in this intense sci-fi thriller movie..... Beginning ten years after the end of the film, The Arrival CDROM Game puts the you in the role of Zane Ziminski, played by Charlie Sheen in the film. You have been captured by the aliens after discovering their base, hidden deep below the New Mexico desert. You awaken in a holding cell onboard the alien space station, and your goal is to thwart their plans for a second attempt to take over Earth (they're planning to inject a gas into the atmosphere to terraform Earth to their liking).

The Arrival is not just another static screen pixel hunt. The high resolution graphics and animations are eerily beautiful, and there's always some little flash of nuance to catch your eye-blinking lights, discharges of steam,busy robots, etc. The Arrival's spectacular graphics, wall to wall digital sound, non-linear path, and multipleendings will provide many hours of intriguing exploration. Turn off the lights, crank the subwoofer. and go for it." - PC GAMER

"Until recently, many movie-based games were little more than thinly veiled attempts to cash in on the massappeal of popular films. The Arrival actually makes a better game than it did a movie." - PLAYBOY Magazine ... Read more