| Welcome to Advanced Animation with DirectX® ! This book is your guide to getting past the basics of DirectX graphics and into the bigger world of advanced animation! Take the information you already know and learn how to expand it into a vast array of various eyepopping graphical effects.
Keep your highschool textbooks at school, however, because this book won't bore you with pages of theories and algorithms. Instead, you'll see realworld examples of some of the hottest animation techniques used today. Jampacked with easy to understand concepts, fully commented code, and cool demos, this book makes learning the advanced stuff simple and fun!
As you can tell from the table of contents (you did check it out, didn't you?), this book has been developed with intermediate to advanced programmers in mind. There are no beginner sections (well, almost no beginner sections)it's all hardcore theory and programming from the get go!
This means there is no room wasted on teaching basic concepts, such as initializing Direct3D or using Windows message pumps, so you need to know a little something about Direct3D in general before you go on. Whoa! Don't put the book down just yet. I'm talking about the extreme basics, such as initializing Direct3D, using materials and textures, and handling vertex buffers. If you know all that, then you are definitely ready to move on to the advanced stuff, and this book is the place to start!
In this book you'll find 14 chapters full of advanced animation goodies. Each chapter concentrates on a single animation technique; aside from the first few informational chapters, the book is completely modular, meaning you can skip the chapters that don't interest you and get right to the topics that do.
About the Author
JIM ADAMS started his programming career at the ripe young age of 9, when his curiosity and imagination grabbed hold and never let go. Twentyone years later, at the (overripe!) age of 30, Jim still finds himself enthralled in current game−programming techniques such as those in this book. Not one to let anything bog him down, Jim still finds time to raise a family, write a book or two, and help his wife on the rare occasion.
Between his writing and programming, you can find Jim moderating the DirectX forum on the Internet's top gameprogramming Web site, http://www.GameDev.net. Make sure to stop by and give him a ring! |
