E-raamat: GPU Pro 4: Advanced Rendering Techniques [Taylor & Francis e-raamat]

Modern video cards used in home computers and game systems are always equipped with a graphics processing unit (GPU). This is actually composed of a number (sometimes hundreds) of separate processor cores equipped with special purpose instructions to accelerate the mathematical operations needed in 3D rendering. Since these cores work in parallel they can build a complex image very rapidly. This volume concerns the details of programming these GPUs to achieve effects such as shading, shadows, simulation of depth of field, reflections, and anti-aliasing. The increasingly important topic in parallel computing of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is given two chapters as well. One nice feature of this text is that, when relevant, a special "algorithm overview" section is provided to lay out how each technique works. There are many excellent color figures showing what can be expected from each technique. Engel is the primary editor along with several others. All editors and contributors are drawn from academia and private industry with backgrounds in 3D graphics and game development. The source code and programs in the book may be downloaded from the publisher's website. It should be noted that these example programs are written exclusively for the Windows operating system. There is no index. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

GPU Pro⁴: Advanced Rendering Techniques presents ready-to-use ideas and procedures that can help solve many of your day-to-day graphics programming challenges. Focusing on interactive media and games, the book covers up-to-date methods for producing real-time graphics.

Section editors Wolfgang Engel, Christopher Oat, Carsten Dachsbacher, Michal Valient, Wessam Bahnassi, and Sebastien St-Laurent have once again assembled a high-quality collection of cutting-edge techniques for advanced graphics processing unit (GPU) programming. Divided into six sections, the book begins with discussions on the ability of GPUs to process and generate geometry in exciting ways. It next introduces new shading and global illumination techniques for the latest real-time rendering engines and explains how image space algorithms are becoming a key way to achieve a more realistic and higher quality final image. Moving on to the difficult task of rendering shadows, the book describes the state of the art in real-time shadow maps. It then covers game engine design, including quality, optimization, and high-level architecture. The final section explores approaches that go beyond the normal pixel and triangle scope of GPUs as well as techniques that take advantage of the parallelism of modern graphic processors in a variety of applications.

Useful to beginners and seasoned game and graphics programmers alike, this color book offers practical tips and techniques for creating real-time graphics. Example programs and source code are available for download on the book’s CRC Press web page. The directory structure of the online material closely follows the book structure by using the chapter numbers as the name of the subdirectory.