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Advanced Animation & Rendering Techniques by Alan Watt & Mark Watt Recommended

ISBN: 0-201-54412-1       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 454pp       Price: £29-95.

Categories:   graphics     animation

Reviewed by Michael Minihane in C Vu 5-3 (Mar 1993)

The style is mostly very readable. Code fragments in C are given throughout the text, although these tend to be short and to the point. The essentials of many of the techniques dealt with are illustrated with such code and the reader is expected to produce all necessary support code. There is a balance to be struck here and I would have preferred more code in certain cases, or just some code! However, compared with many other computer graphics texts the amount and usefulness of the code given is excellent. The book is aimed at users of all machines, it is not a PC only 'type and go' handbook.

Following the initial chapter dealing with basics the second section deals with theoretical foundations relevant to both animation and rendering. This foundation is followed by sections dealing with rendering and animation. The topics covered include:

• Rendering
  
• Shadow Generation
  
• Texture and Environment
  
• Mapping
  
• Ray Tracing
  
• Radiosity
  
• Global Illumination
  
• Shading Languages/RenderMan
  
• Volume Rendering
  
• Animation
  
• Motion Specification
  
• Articulated Structures.