Introduction to Computer Graphics (Graphics Series)

Rating:
Summary: A quality reference, resource, and teaching tool
Review: Now in its second edition, Introduction To Computer Graphics is an instructional text to the science and art of programming computer graphics, from the basics of generating images on a screen to fundamentals such as transformations, rudimentary shapes, and representations of grays and colors to means for modeling three-dimensional objects, ray tracing, radiosity, visualization, specific applications of mapping techniques, and much more. With countless diagrams and illustrations, an overview of graphical software and languages such as OpenGL, an appendix of problem sets to practice the described techniques, and much more, Introduction To Computer Graphics is a quality reference, resource, and teaching tool whether for formal computer graphics classes or self-study.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint of heart
Review: Someone at Charles River Press fell asleep at the switch on this one. The innocuous title "Introduction to Computer Graphics" hardly describes the adventure waiting between the covers.

Within the first 15 pages of chapter one we find the authors breezing on about coordinate transformations and basis vectors, with no preliminary explanations given for first-timers. A bad omen.

The text makes heavy use of set theory (and its notations) with, as in the case of coordinate transformations above, almost no background info provided; I have to assume the authors expect their readers to know that branch of mathematics fairly well before they crack the cover.

It gets worse as the narrative progresses; later chapters discuss topology in some depth. I can't think of many undergraduate computer science majors who've taken those math classes, so anyone lacking experience with mobius strips and their kissing cousins can forget making sense out of the middle of the book.

I don't want this review to come across as a complete slash-and-burn job; I'm sure the authors know their subject, and if you have a solid grasp of upper-division college mathematics you can make some use of the book (oddly enough, interspersed between the algebraic set theory and topological disasters are several down-to-earth sections on computer graphics). But when a reputable publisher like Charles River puts this piece of rough quartz next to the jewels in its computer graphics series it merits a warning to readers.