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i45_n5 | 4 years ago

Could someone suggest a good book/article(s) about 3d software rendering from scratch. I want to use just plain WIN API or SDL to make let's say a 3d rendered cube. Is "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice" 2nd edition is all that I need or do you recommend other books?

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cropcirclbureau|4 years ago

The suggested site https://LearningOpenGl.com is great and I've seen similar websites for Vulkan and WebGPU.

I also recommend grabbing the suggested book, Real Time Rendering, along. I've found it to be great learning material, having a well detailed chapter dedicated for all the effects used in modern renderers. Works great as a reference though it doesn't have any code samples. Doesn't concern itself too much about API details. In my learning flow, I go through a chapter and try to implement one of the techniques mentioned for the effect; usually referencing one of these web resources.

i45_n5|4 years ago

yeah, I heard about this site. But I need a book about software 3d rendering. I want to build something very simple but without any apis and libraries such as opengl or directx. And Real-Time Rendering 4th chapter is seems like what I need.

pfranz|4 years ago

I'd be curious to hear others chime in, but I feel like the situation is very similar to this article talking about games. Do you want to get pixels to the screen/file? Shaders and materials (authoring or implementing)? How commercial renderers are organized? My job is mostly using commercial tools, but a lot of us have made toy renderers, read books, and taken classes to reimplement the fundamentals.

It's been awhile, but a few common, imho approachable, sources are:

https://github.com/ssloy/tinyrenderer/wiki - a rasterizer that starts with drawing a line

https://raytracing.github.io/ - a basic raytracer that incrementally adds features

https://www.pbrt.org/ - I've heard good things from people who have gone through the whole book. I haven't taken the dive, but thumbed through it and jumped around.

I wouldn't dismiss realtime stuff, either. Often, the concepts are similar but the feedback loop is much faster. I liked the UE4 docs on shaders talking about pbrt and the simplifications they chose when implementing it. There's a bunch of resources out there. I don't think single source is comprehensive. I say, start with something simple and find resources on specific things you want to know more about.

i45_n5|4 years ago

Let's just say that I want to create text file with 3d coordinates of an object (cube or sphere), and my software renderer shoould read this file and display it on the screen. And I can zoom in/out, change coordinates of vertecies with a mouse, rotate and move it. This cube can be wired or colored and if it wired I want to see which edges are visible and which are not. And to render this cube I want to use only setpixel/drawline functions from win api or sdl. Thanks for the links.

Jhsto|4 years ago

This online article series is quite good for Vulkan on Rust: https://hoj-senna.github.io/ashen-aetna/

i45_n5|4 years ago

Seems like some chapters on perspectives is what I need. But I guess I have to buy a book about 3d math for game development.

atan2|4 years ago

Try pikuma.com. It covers a complete software renderer from scratch using C and SDL.