, and otherwise the book is near damn perfect.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book. I wish they changed the cover photo though...
Review: This is a follow up to his "graphics pipeline" book, and it is just as good. There's a wealth of material on two-dimensional graphics in this book, and even some signal processing (Fourier transform, DCTs, DFT, this kind of thing.) Now, if you think that a small-size article (a set of which is what this book comprises) is not quite sufficient to cover some of topics mentioned above, well, that is absolutely true. The book, however, gives you a taste of what it is, and a brief overview--if you feel you need more, you'll have to go to more detailed sources. So, besides being a very readable bag of tricks (kind of like "Graphics Gems" series) this one can also be used as a topical catalog of issues you're likely to run into when dealing with graphics programming. Isn't that neat? All in one place. I have both of his books and I like them a lot--EXCEPT for the covers. Perhaps a mathematical/programming gury doesn't need to to look like a male sex symbol, but I'm sure it was possible to come up with a less pretentious, phoney, and unflattering portrait of the author. But, the covers are easy to get rid of <g>, and otherwise the book is near damn perfect.
Rating:
Summary: This is PURE gold
Review: This is an absolutely wonderful book. Readable, yet technical; quite funny in places, yet to the point; insightful, but no incomprehensible "head in the clouds" academic rambling (he rambles a bit, entertainingly and technically, but he explains everything so it's a pleasant experience instead of the deadly difficult reading some of the common graphics texts provide.) There are also some biographical interludes that aren't graphics, strictly speaking, but I found them eminently worth reading. Even if you don't, though, they only represent a very small fraction of the book and you can discount or skip them entirely without loss of technical detail, as they are in their own little isolated portions of the text.
The book itself is a series of separate (but often related) ruminations on various subjects of a graphic nature; the only problem the book has is that it ended way too soon for me.
I was entertained, enlightened, and I went *straight* to our source code and improved a number of things within hours of understanding what Blinn was telling me in more than one place. With immediate and MOST satisfying results, I can add.
:-)
The only problem this book can possibly said to have is that there are many areas of graphics, an admittedly very wide field, that Blinn says nothing about - and after seeing what he has to say on what he *does* talk about, one can only be left with a sense of loss that he doesn't (for example) write about textures here, or perhaps pick apart a few more taken for granted areas, which he does several times in this volume to great effect.
If you write graphics code, you should own this. Buy it now. NOW!
What are you doing still reading? BUY IT NOW!
No, I don't know the guy, and I get no commission or other compensation.
:-)
Rating:
Summary: This is PURE gold
Review: This is an absolutely wonderful book. Readable, yet technical; quite funny in places, yet to the point; insightful, but no incomprehensible "head in the clouds" academic rambling (he rambles a bit, entertainingly and technically, but he explains everything so it's a pleasant experience instead of the deadly difficult reading some of the common graphics texts provide.)
There are also some biographical interludes that aren't graphics, strictly speaking, but I found them eminently worth reading. Even if you don't, though, they only represent a very small fraction of the book and you can discount or skip them entirely without loss of technical detail, as they are in their own little isolated portions of the text.
The book itself is a series of separate (but often related) ruminations on various subjects of a graphic nature; the only problem the book has is that it ended way too soon for me.
I was entertained, enlightened, and I went *straight* to our source code and improved a number of things within hours of understanding what Blinn was telling me in more than one place. With immediate and MOST satisfying results, I can add.
:-)
The only problem this book can possibly said to have is that there are many areas of graphics, an admittedly very wide field, that Blinn says nothing about - and after seeing what he has to say on what he *does* talk about, one can only be left with a sense of loss that he doesn't (for example) write about textures here, or perhaps pick apart a few more taken for granted areas, which he does several times in this volume to great effect.
If you write graphics code, you should own this. Buy it now. NOW!
What are you doing still reading? BUY IT NOW!
No, I don't know the guy, and I get no commission or other compensation.
:-)
Rating: 
Summary: practical, solid, neat
Review: This volume covers the 2D end of the graphics making process - the proper treatment of pixels. Included, amongst others, is some signal processing tutorial, an examination of dithering, a look at the niceties of compositing. Each snack-sized piece is practical, but also attentive of the math and theoretical issues - a balance which Jim Blinn sets the standard for. This all means that if you write graphics software you can learn some neat things from this book that aren't available elsewhere.
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