The capabilities and computational speed of today’s hardware have dramatically enhanced graphics technology. These improvements happen so quickly, however, that it is often difficult for programmers to keep pace. Graphics Programming Methods is a unique collection of application and technique-driven articles that provide practical methods for solving problems facing every graphics programmer. Each article is written by an experienced programmer and details how to apply new techniques or improve upon widely-used methods.

Using interesting and advanced research, the collection addresses key issues in animation, geometry, and rendering. All of the research is presented in a practical and approachable manner and most examples include full source code, making immediate implementation of the techniques possible. This innovative collection is a must-have resource for graphics programmers that will help you think critically, expand your knowledge, and create new methods of your own.

SECTION HIGHLIGHTS:
ANIMATION: Simulating & Rendering Particle Systems, Real-time Animation of Trees, Multiresolution of Hierarchical Bodies, Scripted Bodies and Spline-Driven Animation, Building an Advanced Facial Expression System, Inverse Displacement Constraints in Real-time Cloth and Soft Body Models
GEOMETRY: Automatic Parameterizing on the Cube, Filling Texture Holes Using the Euclidean Distance Map, Code Smoothing Algorithm for 3D Reconstructed Surfaces, Higher-Order Surfaces Using Curved Point-Normal Triangles, Visible Terrain Grid Determination Using the Frustum, Tree Face Portals with Solid Geometry, Framework for Rapid 3D Level Design Using MAXScript ™ Code Generation
RENDERING: Modified Phong-Blinn Light Model for Shadowed Areas, Stochastic Iteration for Non-diffuse Global Illumination, Rendering with Adaptive Integration, Illumination-Based Occlu-sion Culling, Antialiasing for Bump Maps and a Fast Normalization Trick, Pixel Shader Optimization for Terrain Rendering

ON THE CD-ROM:
* The DirectX ® 9 SDK
* OpenGL Utility Kit (GLUT)
* Simple DirectMedia Layer Library (SDL)
* NVIDIA CG Toolkit
* Source code from the articles in C and C++
* Color images, videos, and demos for select articles

Contributors:
György Antal
Ian Ashdown
Tony Barrera
Balázs Benedek
Ewert Bengtsson
Antonio Calomeni
Stéphane Capo
Ignacio Castaño
Waldemar Celes
Juan M. Cordero
Willem H. de Boer
Kenny Erleben
François Faure
Chi-Wing Fu
Alexandre Ganea
Oscar Garcia-Panyella
Thomas Di Giacomo
Anders Hast
Knud Henriksen
Naty Hoffman
Robert James
Jesse Laeuchli
William Leeson
Javier Matellanes
Maciej Matyka
Kenny Mitchell
Siu-Hang Or
Trent Polack
Arcot J. Preetham
R. Grant Reed
Jon Sporring
Conor Stokes
László Szécsi
László Szirmay-Kalos
Mark Theyer
Christopher Tremblay
John van der Burg
Andrew Weber
Jason Weber
Tien-Tsin Wong

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: The DirectX® 9 SDK is required for some applications and is included on the CD-ROM. The code was all compiled on PCs running the Windows operating system. However, much of the code is cross platform and will work properly on the Macintosh and under Linux. Additionally, several samples require access to OpenGL extension headers. These are available at oss.sgi.com/projects/ ogl-sample/sdk.html. Applications using the graphic programming language Cg from NVIDIA require the NVIDIA Cg Toolkit included on the CD-ROM. DirectX is Licensed Software, the use of which is governed by an English language break-the-seal EULA inside the Licensed Software.