Focus On Photon Mapping

Rating:
Summary: Often wrong, and lacks detail
Review: I've implemented photon mapping myself in the past, and this book presents one of the worst attempts at "searching in the dark" (pun intended) I've ever seen. The author obviously does NOT understand photon mapping, neither the concepts behind it or nor its proper usage. Even the "sample images" presented lack the quality and correctness of a proper implementation. The author presents ludicrous methods of "improving performance," by reducing the number of photons (which only increases error), and calculating light only at vertices (whats the point of emitting photons at all then?).

Photon mapping is a technique for generating realistic lighting phenomenon, such as diffuse effects, caustics, and soft shadows, efficiently. This book teaches methods that are not only incorrect, but no better than standard, low quality lighting techniques. People who are serious about implementing photon mapping should invest their money in a book that actually teaches the background and methods necessary to understand the technique, not one that blindly tries to pass off sub-standard results as the product of a realistic method.

Rating:
Summary: Often wrong, and lacks detail
Review: I've implemented photon mapping myself in the past, and this book presents one of the worst attempts at "searching in the dark" (pun intended) I've ever seen. The author obviously does NOT understand photon mapping, neither the concepts behind it or nor its proper usage. Even the "sample images" presented lack the quality and correctness of a proper implementation. The author presents ludicrous methods of "improving performance," by reducing the number of photons (which only increases error), and calculating light only at vertices (whats the point of emitting photons at all then?).

Photon mapping is a technique for generating realistic lighting phenomenon, such as diffuse effects, caustics, and soft shadows, efficiently. This book teaches methods that are not only incorrect, but no better than standard, low quality lighting techniques. People who are serious about implementing photon mapping should invest their money in a book that actually teaches the background and methods necessary to understand the technique, not one that blindly tries to pass off sub-standard results as the product of a realistic method.

Rating:
Summary: Often wrong, and lacks detail
Review: I've implemented photon mapping myself in the past, and this book presents one of the worst attempts at "searching in the dark" (pun intended) I've ever seen. The author obviously does NOT understand photon mapping, neither the concepts behind it or nor its proper usage. Even the "sample images" presented lack the quality and correctness of a proper implementation. The author presents ludicrous methods of "improving performance," by reducing the number of photons (which only increases error), and calculating light only at vertices (whats the point of emitting photons at all then?).

Photon mapping is a technique for generating realistic lighting phenomenon, such as diffuse effects, caustics, and soft shadows, efficiently. This book teaches methods that are not only incorrect, but no better than standard, low quality lighting techniques. People who are serious about implementing photon mapping should invest their money in a book that actually teaches the background and methods necessary to understand the technique, not one that blindly tries to pass off sub-standard results as the product of a realistic method.

Rating:
Summary: This book is bad
Review: If you want to know everything about photon mapping this is not the book to buy. The book is full of weak points and lacks many details and, I'm sad to say, the author at some points confuses more than he does anything else. Furthermore the book only goes half the way - there is so much more to the photon map technique.

The true target group for this book is difficult to specify. If you don't know anything about computer graphics it is probably good in some ways if you can detects the errors - very unlikely. If you are an experienced games programmer, this is too introductionary.

Rating:
Summary: Not so bad but not great either.
Review: Long story short: If you are looking for a *very basic* introduction to (non-realtime) computer graphics with a "focus" on photon mapping, this ain't a bad deal. I'd recommend getting it used though.

On to review:

The book has a few typos, but only two or three that really caught my attention. What I found worse however, is the author tends to restate something in two consecutive sentences - or write a long, convoluted sentence where even I could come up with something short and clear. This was annoying, but sufferable. Overall this book could have used a more attentive, hands-on editor... perhaps another day.

That aside, the book provides an practical introduction to photon mapping from the basic level - that is, he covers it's raytracing foundation, super-basic electromagnetic theory, basic scene-graph management, and some similar topics. He then covers the basics of photon mapping itself - what photons are, and how you use them to generate images. This is more of a "practices" book than a "principles" book though, which is good for folks like me who barely remember attending high-school calculus.

Again, these things are great for people who don't know much about computer graphics, but perhaps not so much for those already in-the-know. Sorry guys, but you've already got text by Mr. Jensen himself. :-)

That said, the book certainly leaves a lot for you to discover like others have discussed. You won't be competing with Mental Ray, Brazil or Photorealistic Renderman with just this book. :-)

Given that it doesn't have much depth on the subject and the fact it spends so much time on the basics, I'd have to recommend this only to people with little experience with computer graphics and then probably as a used purchase.

I give it three stars because despite it's problems, I actually did learn a bit from it.

Rating:
Summary: Not so bad but not great either.
Review: Long story short: If you are looking for a *very basic* introduction to (non-realtime) computer graphics with a "focus" on photon mapping, this ain't a bad deal. I'd recommend getting it used though.

On to review:

The book has a few typos, but only two or three that really caught my attention. What I found worse however, is the author tends to restate something in two consecutive sentences - or write a long, convoluted sentence where even I could come up with something short and clear. This was annoying, but sufferable. Overall this book could have used a more attentive, hands-on editor... perhaps another day.

That aside, the book provides an practical introduction to photon mapping from the basic level - that is, he covers it's raytracing foundation, super-basic electromagnetic theory, basic scene-graph management, and some similar topics. He then covers the basics of photon mapping itself - what photons are, and how you use them to generate images. This is more of a "practices" book than a "principles" book though, which is good for folks like me who barely remember attending high-school calculus.

Again, these things are great for people who don't know much about computer graphics, but perhaps not so much for those already in-the-know. Sorry guys, but you've already got text by Mr. Jensen himself. :-)

That said, the book certainly leaves a lot for you to discover like others have discussed. You won't be competing with Mental Ray, Brazil or Photorealistic Renderman with just this book. :-)

Given that it doesn't have much depth on the subject and the fact it spends so much time on the basics, I'd have to recommend this only to people with little experience with computer graphics and then probably as a used purchase.

I give it three stars because despite it's problems, I actually did learn a bit from it.

Rating:
Summary: Out of focus
Review: This book is riddled with errors, and the author clearly does not understand the basics of photon mapping.

E.g. One of the most important steps in creating good quality images using photon mapping is "final gathering". The author does not even mention this technique.

Furthermore, if you follow the methods the author describes you will create images that are simply wrong!

He correctly claims that photon mapping can create truely photorealistic images, but nevertheless the most advanced images he presents are ones of a couple of spheres and boxes - which are incorrectly rendered.

There is another really good book on photon mapping - which I recomend buying instead.

If you know about photon mapping you may get a good laugh when you read the author's misinterpretion of photon mapping.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bad at All!!
Review: This book was helpful to me because I always wanted to learn about photon mapping from a practical step by step perspective. The other book by Henrik Wann Jensen is way out my league because he writes from a high college level. I think this is the second book on the subject that attempts to make it practical and easy. For that I think the book is a good intro for a beginner.

Rating:
Summary: Highly inadequate
Review: Well over half of the book is spent on introductory concepts and "background" material, such as data structures for raytracing, implementation of reflection models, and a section on writing PPM-format graphics. The first 200 pages could easily be replaced with the words "This book assumes a reasonable level of familiarity with the raytracing algorithm."

The example code is somewhat useless as it deals only with very basic photon mapping. None of the useful techniques are even mentioned, such as using shadow photons, building caustic maps, final gathering, or irradiance caching.

Readers will probably learn just as much from any one of the dozens of free web pages that can be found by searching the Internet for "photon mapping." I wish I could have my money back.

Rating:
Summary: Highly inadequate
Review: Well over half of the book is spent on introductory concepts and "background" material, such as data structures for raytracing, implementation of reflection models, and a section on writing PPM-format graphics. The first 200 pages could easily be replaced with the words "This book assumes a reasonable level of familiarity with the raytracing algorithm."

The example code is somewhat useless as it deals only with very basic photon mapping. None of the useful techniques are even mentioned, such as using shadow photons, building caustic maps, final gathering, or irradiance caching.

Readers will probably learn just as much from any one of the dozens of free web pages that can be found by searching the Internet for "photon mapping." I wish I could have my money back.