hot to learn 3d?

[xoxos]

sorry for the inevitable, white bread enquiry

i sussed the concept of the frustrum independently and devised my preferred 3d to 2d projection (got it jotted somewhere.. it alleviates the distortion of object in the corners to some degree) but i've had a jolly bad time securing free resources for learning 3d graphics. it's one of those things i've assailed many times.

i can do the point and wireframes, but when i dream about solids i don't seem to devise anything that doesn't seem prohibitively expensive.

if someone has a good paid source i'd appreciate the reference.

searching gamedev.net resources usually avails very sketchy and incomplete information

petzold's book? i hope there's something, anything else.. i think i'm allergic to the way he can type (i'd like to change that for him. 'programming for windows' was one of the most malicious acts against mankind i've witnessed, and i've seen people blown up).

found this:
http://sharafat.shaiekh.com/guides/F...and_Java3D.pdf

still going through it and doubtful that the focus on java will retain communicability.

so, how do other people learn to do all the things that other people do, and how can i be like them?

[xoxos]

..perhaps i can place another question that may be informative -

somehow in my mathematics education (up to trig, and, several centuries ago) i didn't seem to be introduced to the concept of matrices, which seem to be common in 3d.

are there perhaps different cultivars of matrices, and if so, can i discretise which ones i should be familiar with? or is a matrix used in dsp/math a matrix, end of story. ?? tia

[waldronate]

I recommend searching on the term "opengl red book". Chapter 3 and Appendix F should provide a good overview of the subject ( http://www.glprogramming.com/red/ if you'd like to avoid the search, but I really do recommend it).

[Redrobes]

My recommendation is this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graph.../dp/0201848406

[waldronate]

I almost recommended the Foley book, but it's woefully out of date (publication date of 1995, but that's just for the most recent edition; the original was published much, much earlier). The basic math background is pretty well done, but the red book discussion ought to be equally useful for this context. If you're after a good reference for CG, the Foley book used to be the gold standard because of the breadth of its coverage. Like most things computer graphics, though, it hasn't aged well. A search turns up what purports to be a PDF of the book, but it doesn't say what edition and I don't know if it's real or not.

http://www.realtimerendering.com/books.html is a good book list and there are a number of free ones in there. For good background on the underpinnings of physics, optics, etc., I heartily recommend Glassner's Principles of Digital Image Synthesis ( http://realtimerendering.com/Princip...sis_v1.0.1.pdf ), and not just for witty commentary like "This is an approximation based on using an ideal spherical cow of radius R."

[xoxos]

they'd be quite good. you could roll them from paddock to paddock. perhaps with a suitable method of inflation a small child could transport dozens with only a length of string.

the foley and red book gives me a foundation for searching, thank you again!

[Hai-Etlik]

You should probably check out the Linear Algebra playlist at the Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/#linear-algebra

[xoxos]

well well

two years later..

lengthy story: been coding since '81, been struggling with windows for god like 16 years.. wireframed in 09.. i hope other people don't suffer from my issues..

online resources for graphics coding have fruited in the most remarkable way since the '00s.. i probably don't need to tell anyone this, but dang, compared to a decade ago, the amount of blogs, forum posts et c. has really changed the game. difficult concepts are now interpreted from dozens of vantages so it's usually easy to find someone who can explain things in a way that is intelligible.

wireframed in '09.. waldronate gave me some big hands up here.. earlier this year i was doing whatever i do and suddenly realised that opaque triangles really are not a significant concept leap.. it took me 5 years, but in some tutorials the conceptual leap is a paragraph or two..

i'd thought about coming back here and starting a "links" thread, but such references are ephermal and given the current rate of increase in resources, would be a waste of time.

inigo quilez's page was a big help for me.. enough that i could grasp the marching cubes algorithm from there.
Iigo Quilez :: fractals, computer graphics, mathematics, demoscene and more

no clue when i'll specifically work on maps again.. my sphere gen was extremely slow but further experience has introduced a few more effective algorithms (like using "fast sine osc" algorithm to replace sin and cos ops with two multiplies).

[waldronate]

Never give up! Never surrender! Use WebGL to make the hardware do all of the heavy lifting!

[Redrobes]

Yeah, getting one pixel drawn or one triangle up on a screen can be hard going and changes between different OS's and whatever API they have to offer. But once you have something - like WebGL - going then I would head off and get this book. Its not cheap but its an excellent read. Maybe see if a library has it to borrow. The other ones that people keep pointing to are Graphics Gems series.
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graph.../dp/0321399528
http://www.amazon.com/s?graphics+gem...s+gems&ie=UTF8