Today truly useful and interactive graphics are available on affordable computers. While hardware progress has been impressive, widespread gains in software expertise have come more slowly. Information about advanced techniques—beyond those learned in introductory computer graphics texts—is not as easy to come by as inexpensive hardware.

This book brings the graphics programmer beyond the basics and introduces them to advanced knowledge that is hard to obtain outside of an intensive CG work environment. The book is about graphics techniques—those that don’t require esoteric hardware or custom graphics libraries—that are written in a comprehensive style and do useful things. It covers graphics that are not covered well in your old graphics textbook. But it also goes further, teaching you how to apply those techniques in real world applications, filling real world needs.