Real-time Rendering

The term rendering, as it applies to computer graphics, refers to the mathematically intensive process of creating a picture or sequence of frames based on geometry. The duration of this process is dependent on the complexity of the scene (a forest with many trees and thousands of leaves will take much longer to render than a scene consisting of a white box over a gray background) and the speed of the hardware doing the calculations.

When Pixar's Toy Story was first released, the computer animation community was all abuzz with how it was done, and someone at Pixar mentioned that over 100 SGI workstations were used for rendering the frames over the course of almost two years. Someone else extrapolated this data and figured out that the same movie could have been rendered on one contemporary PC over the course of about 80 years.

The authors deftly answer the question, not only asserting that it can be done, but since this book is a programmer's guide, they list snippets of programming algorithms that help outline how it can be done.

Because the software and hardware is constantly and rapidly evolving due to the insatiable need for more realistic and complex graphics, the book avoids getting too specific. To quote the authors, "The field is rapidly evolving, and so it is a moving target." This lack of specificity doesn't detract from the usefulness of the book, though. Instead, it works at a higher, more abstract level, describing approaches to rendering techniques using generic algorithms. It is up to the programmer to apply these methods to the specific program or system on which it is to be implemented.

Real-Time Rendering describes some very complex methods, and this book is not for the average computer graphics creator. However, if you are working in an industry that depends on real-time rendered animation--like the gaming, medical, or military fields--or you are building the next-generation real-time render engine, this book will offer insight and concepts you can use to build some impressive software. --Mike Caputo

The book does not include code as other books do, in my opinion its a better book due to this fact. Often example code is there to pad out the book and is poorly documented. The authors of this book however, explain the facts clearly and in a very involved way, giving the algorithm on a plate (in most cases), leaving you, the coder to implement it as you see fit.

Its heavy on the maths, but lets face it, any book that claims to teach you anything near as much as this book does "without the maths" is just lying.

Its an interesting read but more geared towards serving as a reference. There is a massive bibliography full of all the material the authors used in writing the book, so if you want more information on a specific topic, you can use the number that the authors commonly mention in the text to look up the appropriate reference, so it essentially allows you to broaden your knowledge outside the scope of the book.

Overall, an exceptional book which should come in very handy for any graphics programming in the foreseeable future.


A concise and useful book.   December 4, 2000
 13 out of 13 found this review helpful

This is a book that covers all aspects of 3D rendering in computer graphics. As the title implies it specialises in Real-Time rendering such as is used in engines for computer games. It provides readily comprehensible explanations for many of the algorithms used in rendering but does not go into the fine details of coding. It is an excellent jump off point to technical references at all stops along the graphics pipeline. The chapter on speed-up techniques is particularly interesting as are the algorithms for real-time special effects e.g. shadows. The web site associated with the book is particularly interesting.