Computer Graphics with OpenGL (3rd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: MY SISTER'S PCTURE IS IN THE BOOK
Review: My sister has her picture in the book! I guess this is as close to her 15 minutes of fame as she'll ever get.

Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to CG and OpenGL.
Review: Some months ago I borrowed the international paperback edition of this book and read it from cover to cover. This book is a great introduction to computer graphics and OpenGL. It's very well structured, serves both as a textbook and as a reference, includes sample OpenGL code and all those mathematical algorithms you need for low-level CG programming. This third edition is much better than the previous one. Also, from a pedagogical view, the content presentation is better than in most other introductory CG books. I recently bought a copy of my own.

Rating:
Summary: No shortcuts
Review: There are two, complementary uses for this book. The first is to learn computer graphics [of course]. To this ends, the authors give an excellent hands on discourse. They go through all the major ideas in this introductory course. Like the basic two dimensional drawing algorithms - Bresenham's, filling methods etc. Then they take you into a three dimensional world that you can create. Ultimately, this is where most of you will end up. Today's computers and graphical techniques are so powerful that you can make intricate objects in 3d. Then learn various non-trivial methods to take a plane projection, which is your image.

The authors also cover groovy ideas like using fractals and self-similarity to make random landscapes. This will attract some of you.

All the above is done with the aid of the OpenGL library. So you don't need to hardcode low level routines. OpenGL lets you concentrate on applying the book's algorithms for higher level purposes.

But there is another use of the book. If you're already up to speed on graphics algorithms and want to learn OpenGL, then here is a nice user's manual.

For either purpose, you may baulk at the text's length. But it can't be helped. The subject warrants the level of detail given here. No shortcuts to a good understanding.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! The Best!
Review: This book is the perfect combination of 1)2D and 3D theory and mathematical background, and 2) practical application using OpenGL. This is the optimal way to learn both at the same time. The text is clear, consise, and direct; the diagrams and example code are superb. By far the best I've seen.