'Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders' has anyone read it?

I've got it and read probably about 2/5 (and haven't got round to getting back to it yet.) My impression so far was very good, although opinions can vary, YMMV, etc. It starts off with a grounding in light theory, goes over the terminology and physics aspects. It also recommends some further reading that includes material by Richard Feynman which gives a ever so slightly higher opinion of the book. Just slightly though :) . Probably best I stop here, and continue once I've had another look at the book as its been a while since I lasted picked it up, but I definitely found the content to be interesting. It takes you through the implementation of different types of lights, and then continues with material details including BRDF and variations. Which I think was about as far as I got. Its only recently I've had time to get shaders up and running in my framework so I haven't had the impetus to go back and read the rest of the book yet, but I will definitely do so as its the only book I've found so far that seemed to cover this topic in detail and with relevant examples.

Yeah I've only started flicking through it too, but I think its a really good book, covers the basics of pritty much everything (including raytracing, texture generation, radiosity etc), and goes into some of the more advanced stuff too (eg: spherical harmonics).

Unlike other books which cover this kind of theoretical material, there are also code snippets and examples all throught it. Diagrams are neat too.

Its one of the best all-round-graphics books I've come across, definately recommended if you dont already have any books covering these areas.

Thank you for the comments. I've ordered it.

Does it use any specific shading languages?

It uses all 3 different shading languages in variuous places, and has frameworks for all of them (HLSL, Cg and GLSL) on the disk. The most important things is that the book teaches the techniques and theory well enough so that it doesn't matter which language you use, it should be easy to implement it in any of them.

The chaper list is:
1) The Physics of Light
2) Modeling Real-World Lights
3) Raytracing and Related Techniques
4) Objects and Materials (how different surfaces reflect light, purely descriptive of the appearance of objects by the way the reflect/absorb/transmit light).
5) Lighting and Reflectance Models (including BRDFs and variations)
6) Implementing Lights in Shaders
7) Implementing BRDFs in Shaders
8) Spherical Harmonic Lighting
9) Spherical Harmonics in DirectX
10) Toward Real-Time Radiosity
Appendix A) Building the Source Code
Appendix B) Sample Raytracer Implementation
Appendix C) The Lighting and Shading Frameworks

damn you! you've just become the cause of more money leaving my bank account [sad]

Yeah I just ordered it too (along with ShaderX3). 9-10 days from Amazon damnit :(

-Mezz

yeah, i noticed that, however i already had an order with Game Programing Gems 5 and a couple of DVDs which were due to be delivered around 9-10 days from now as well so i just bundled it in with that, gives me a chance to finish reading one of my other books, heh

Yes I got ShaderX3 with it as well.

Can anyone post the content in the CDROM online??

Can anyone post the content in the CDROM online??

If the author has not posted the content publicly, then you should not expect someone else to do it either. If you have legitimately purchased a copy of this book, then contact the publisher/author with your situation and see if they will send you a copy of the data.

Please stop asking people to upload content that isn't theirs - that is against the copyright of the material.

I plan to take a look at it in the near future as well.

I actually tried to search for this book in Germany (amazon.de) and it comes up with a different book cover than that shown on (amazon.com). I also see that the U.S. version is from 2005 while the one on the German site is from 2004... I'm taking a trip back to the U.S. in July, so maybe I'll have to order the other book and pick it up later...

I actually tried to search for this book in Germany (amazon.de) and it comes up with a different book cover than that shown on (amazon.com). I also see that the U.S. version is from 2005 while the one on the German site is from 2004... I'm taking a trip back to the U.S. in July, so maybe I'll have to order the other book and pick it up later...

I can only find the 2004 version on Amazon.com, (its a purple cover with Teapot, sphere and torus.)

What is the link for the 2005 version?

Thanks

[quote name='Jason Z' timestamp='1307957171' post='4822679']
I actually tried to search for this book in Germany (amazon.de) and it comes up with a different book cover than that shown on (amazon.com). I also see that the U.S. version is from 2005 while the one on the German site is from 2004... I'm taking a trip back to the U.S. in July, so maybe I'll have to order the other book and pick it up later...

I can only find the 2004 version on Amazon.com, (its a purple cover with Teapot, sphere and torus.)

What is the link for the 2005 version?

Thanks
[/quote]
Here is the link for the strange looking version (only available on Amazon.de): link
On second look, it seems that both have a 2004 publish date - not sure how I missed that...