Reading List

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.

The textbook is better at explaining the theory and basics of computer graphics for complete beginners. The OpenGL or RenderMan books given below spend less pages on background and more on programming.

If you are serious about interactive 3D programming, you should get one or both of the following:

OpenGL SuperBible, 3rd edition
Wright and Lipchak
published by SAMS.
An excellent guide to OpenGL programming, including coverage of the differences between Mac, Windows, and Linux systems. The latest 3rd edition includes modern OpenGL capabilities and writing shader code for programmable GPUs.

OpenGL Programming Guide, 5th edition
Shreiner, Woo, Neider, and Davis
published by Addison-Wesley.
AKA 'The Red Book.' Useful both as a guide and reference and recommended by just about every OpenGL programmer. 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 3rd or 4th edition for much less which will still cover most of OpenGL.

And once you've got the basics of interactive 3D down, have a look at:

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 and one day seeing your name in movie credits, start with:

Rendering for Beginners: Image Synthesis using RenderMan
Saty Raghavachary
published by Focal Press
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.

Don't worry about the "beginners" in the title. Some of the material on transformations and simple polygon geometry you will already know, but this book teaches advanced modelling, shading, and texturing in 3D by showing how to write your own RenderMan scene descriptions.

An older but still worthwhile introduction to RenderMan is

The RenderMan Companion
Steve Upstill
published by Addison-Wesley.

This book is more technically orientated and has better material on writing programmable shaders, but since it is older it doesn't explain some of the more recent advanced modelling and lighting capabilities RenderMan now has.

Back to Computer Graphics.