Recommended Reading

What are some good books for computer graphics?

The textbook is

Computer Graphics with OpenGL, 3rd edition
Hearn and Baker
published by Pearson Prentice Hall.
It concentrates on interactive 3D, but there's some good material on other areas of computer graphics as well.

Strongly recommended for anyone doing serious interactive 3D programming is the

OpenGL Programming Guide, 4th edition
Shreiner, Woo, Neider, and Davis
published by Addison-Wesley.
AKA 'The Red Book.' Useful both as a guide and reference. I've owned various editions of this book since 1994 and refer to it constantly. It is expensive, but you may be able to find a 2nd or 3rd edition for much less. Some of the latest OpenGL capabilities such as multitexturing won't be covered, but all the basics are present in the earlier editions. You can also find online versions of the 2nd edition.

A very good second book for interactive 3D graphics is

Real-Time Rendering, 2nd edition
Akenine-Moller and Haines
published by AK Peters
If Computer Graphics were a full year course, this would be the textbook for the second semester. Covers a wide range of advanced interactive techniques: lighting, texturing, curves, culling, level of detail rendering, intersections, optimisation. See the web site for more info about the book itself and an excellent set of links to online resources.

If you are interested in becoming a CGI programmer (as opposed to artist) and one day seeing your name in movie credits, start with

The RenderMan Companion
Steve Upstill
published by Addison-Wesley.
It's old but still the best introduction available. RenderMan is the CGI rendering system used by Industrial Light & Magic (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park), Pixar (Toy Story, A Bugs Life), Weta (Lord of the Rings), and other special effects groups. This book explains how to design and implement programmable animation, shading, texturing, and modelling CGI in RenderMan.

The almost complete reference for every aspect of computer graphics is

Computer Graphics, 2nd edition
Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes
published by Addison-Wesley.
AKA 'The White Book.' This is from 1995, so doesn't cover some of the recent advances such as the widespread use of multipass texturing or programmable GPUs. It does include the history and fundamental concepts of 2D and 3D graphics, both batch and interactive, with an emphasis on algorithmns and underlying theory rather than programming.

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