Fundamentals of Computer Graphics

by Peter Shirley, Steve Marschner

Drawing on an impressive roster of experts in the field, Fundamentals of Computer Graphics, Fourth Edition offers an ideal resource for computer course curricula as well as a user-friendly personal or professional reference.

Focusing on geometric intuition, the book gives the necessary information for understanding how images get onto the screen by using the complementary approaches of ray tracing and rasterization. It covers topics common to an introductory course, such as sampling theory, texture mapping, spatial data structure, and splines. It also includes a number of contributed chapters from authors known for their expertise and clear way of explaining concepts.

Highlights of the Fourth Edition Include:

Updated coverage of existing topics
Major updates and improvements to several chapters, including texture mapping, graphics hardware, signal processing, and data structures
A text now printed entirely in four-color to enhance illustrative figures of concepts


The fourth edition of Fundamentals of Computer Graphics continues to provide an outstanding and comprehensive introduction to basic computer graphic technology and theory. It retains an informal and intuitive style while improving precision, consistency, and completeness of material, allowing aspiring and experienced graphics programmers to better understand and apply foundational principles to the development of efficient code in creating film, game, or web designs.

Genres: Computer Science, Programming, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Science, Technical, Reference

748 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2002

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.


This Peter Shirley is an American computer scientist and computer graphics researcher, Distinguished Scientist at NVIDIA.

He earned his PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1991. He then joined the faculty at Indiana University as an assistant professor. From 1994 to 1996 he was a visiting professor at Cornell University. He then joined the faculty at the University of Utah, where he taught until 2008 when he joined NVIDIA as a research scientist. (source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Zephyr]

It is better than real-time rendering imo. It does a better job explaining.

[Enrico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. Very good algorithms with explanations.

[javier · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book does a great job of covering the fundamentals of computer graphics, but leaves some parts of the book too vague for an introductory text. In making my ray-caster and ray-tracer, it would have been helpful to have some of the trickier parts spelled out in more detail.

[Andrew Medlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb book covering all the fundamental techniques and mathematics behind computer graphics. Great for those interested in the engineering behind both CGI and computer games. Includes fantastic full chapter primers on projection, linear algebra and matrices.

[Rudolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very basic introduction to Computer Graphics. Get Wrecked. I love it since it helped me to pass the exam.

[Khashayar Ghavami · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book covers the fundamentals of computer graphics well, it is many times too shallow in terms of explanation and the mathematics behind the models and algorithms

[Fatima · Rating 3 out of 5]

reading it a third time for cs248a this time. I still don't like it! so dry :(. I often fall asleep trying to read it maybe graphics isn't my thing 🤷‍♀️

Second reading was in 2023.

First reading was for cs148a in 2015

[Yeti]

James McNamara