Customer Reviews

Introduction To 3D Game Programming With Directx 9.0

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book; I really liked the in-depth coverage throughout the book. However, I bought this book with very little C++ experience and was left in the dust with advanced C++ techniques immediately following the first chapter. This is probably the best DirectX 9.0 book on the market, however, don't buy it unless you are advanced in C++ and know matrix math and trigonometry. Other than that, it is really good. I bought this book, which was not designed for a complete beginner. These other reviews posted here were misleading, especially the one by Emanuel Enrique.

The book is supposed to be an introduction to 3D programming and therefore meant for beginners. lthough it shows how some things are done,it does not give explanations on why things are done, which is necessary for a beginner to do implement things on his/her own . Although there are examples, it does not include a simple game for example showing how the knowledge he impacts is put together in creating a game, which will help a beginner the more. Intermediate/advanced users wil definitely find it useless. Most of the examples are in the SDK- and are very simple ones. I didn't feel I was been taught at all, and had to return the book. Also the book is very small, like a paperback novel.I advise you browse it in a bookshop before buying it.You will learn a lot more from Lamothe's book Regarding voting buttons, I did not see any option for it while writing the review.

I pick up this book and found out that this is the book I always wanted!Not every book I brought did explain everything and everything well.But this one explained every single step well and understandable for me. I personally need to thank the authors themselves for writing such a good book on DirectX 9 in 3D.Buy and read it yourself, you will understand what I meant by THE BEST BOOK I ever had!!

This book is a great start for people wanting to learn Direct3D and a great reference for Direct3D programmers. Frank Luna's book covers several important topics for getting started with 3D graphics using DirectX 9.0, and refrains from any off-topic discussions or biased rants.

The book includes a section on basic math concepts for 3d programming. Also includes sections on Direct3D fundamentals (which explains D3D9 initialization, the Direct3D rendering pipeline, and drawing in Direct3D with vertex/index buffers, color, lighting, textures, blending and stenciling) and applied Direct3D concepts (fonts, meshes, .x files, cameras, basic terrain rendering, particle systems, and "picking"). The author devotes the final section to vertex and pixel shaders and effects using HLSL (high-level shading language). He also includes a quick introduction to setting up a skeleton windows application as an appendix (where it should be located in a book on DirectX).

One final thing to note about this book is that it only covers the Direct3D portion of DirectX 9.0, so you'll need to go elsewhere for coverage of DirectPlay, DirectInput, DirectSound, etc. Howver, the fundamentals of Direct3D are covered with the depth necessary to give a completely understanding of how to begin coding 3D graphics with DirectX 9. After reading several books on DirectX and game programming, this is the book I wish had picked to read first.

a very good book that takes you along the way of 3d programming using Direct3D.and thats all it does.like one of the previous reviewers said it is focused only on Direct3D

I've read many introductory books on DirectX, and this is by far the best. The author does a great job of explaining a lot of concepts both clearly and timely.

The book is very easy to read. He has a short section on math, which made vector, matrix and plane math easy to understand. This is followed by chapters on Direct3D fundamentals that offers a great recap if you already know this stuff. Next, comes chapters on applied D3D that include using fonts, meshes, terrain rendering and particle systems. Finally, he covers shaders and effects.

If you know C++ at a reasonable level (meaning pointers , references structures and classes don't scare or confuse you)
this is book is a very good starting point in your directx quest.
It has the advantage of not spending hundreds of pages on windows programming details or even worse on GDI like the many LaMothelian game programming series books...but it gives you a little framework in which to work with and it explains how it works and why.
Subject coverage is very good, and you will get explanations and working code on interesting subjects like terrain renedering and
mesh loading and manipulating and a bonus of a couple chapters on pixel and vertex shaders. Now this is definitely what I would call advanced topics.. but even if you are a beginner it is nice to read about them just to figure out what these mysteriously sounding entities are ;)
My only grudge with this book is that it is quite a little one.
Lenghtier explanations and a few more examples would could really benefit the beginner.. especially since like for many books of this kind the author is more a programmer than a technical author or tutor so the writing style is pretty much like: here are the basic points about the theory and here is the program I wrote to show you how it works. So you won't get much from this book if you don't dig a lot in the code. The difference with many other similar book on the market is that the author gives you at least some good assistance into it.

Great book indeed! Frank Luna did a great job writing it: he's explaining stuff like *why* we need to use 1.0/0.0 with points/vectors as "w" instead of simply saying "we need to put this number". My math background let's me take advantage of what i know, but this is the only book i seen so far explaining all this math stuff in such a great way. Also, this book greatly cover the basics for pixel/vertex shaders programmin, that's a cool feature at current time. I read something about ps/vs in other books, but they miss the big point that's *WHY* we use them and *HOW* we use them. Thank you Frank!
And congratulations!

the title of the book consists of many words first introduction the author did a good introduction to directx and game programming.
second 3D Game Programming, although the author covered areas in 3d game programming such as math he didnt complete it .. there is no physics , ai ..etc but as the title says its an ( introduction )
in conclusion this book is very good for beginners game programmer. i suggest reading this book after taking c++ course.
Ahmed Saleh , computer graphics programmer.

I can't recommend this book more to those who want to start learning Direct3D game progamming. It elegantly hide the details of COM, Windows programming, etc. for those untrained in these fields, so it's very focused and can get ppl started quickly. The author really explains D3D from a beginner's perspective, and with his own understanding instead of copying chunks of texts from the SDK doc like some other titles on the market do. Of course this book alone won't get you become D3D expert, but it definitely does its job as the bridge that introduce you to the road on becoming an expert. Gone are the days when you were overwhelmed by the complexity and unrelavant or unnecessary details of the SDK doc or some advanced textbook and don't know where to start--grab this book at all cost. Last but not least is its accompanying website where you can post questions and discuz related topic with other dudes and the author. And the author's responses to my questions(I guess to others' questions too) are nothing short of just fast and to the point. He answered EVERY question I asked on the forum, and EVERY time his answer could solve my problem. I mean after reading this book, I think books owe their readers if they don't also provide such excellent service to their customers.