Book about shaders

[ZaPPZion]

Hi,

It's my birthday today and I couldn't think of any good presents, but then I came up with the idea of buying a book about shaders. I searched around a bit and found the shaderX books. What do you think would be a good book to start with? I'm new to shaders, I just managed to get some simple shaders working. I made a gradient shader and some other simple things. So i know how to make a basic shader, but other than that i'm new.

Greetings,
ZaPP

[AriusEso]

I like ShaderX, I'm also rather fond of the GPU Gems series - although GPU Gems is more about theory I would say.

[sybixsus]

Shaders For Game Programmers and Artists by Sebastien St Lauren is a good introductory book. It doesn't teach you bleeding-edge eye candy, but it's a good solid introduction which teaches you the foundations of HLSL and a number of fairly simple effects ( reflection, refraction, shadows, etc. )

The ShaderX books and the GPU Gems books are more like collections of articles than anything else. Great when you know the basics and want to learn specific effects, but probably not the ideal book to get a broad introduction to the subject, in my opinion.

[Zaknafein]

I agree with what sybixsus said about the ShaderX and GPU Gems books. They're rather advanced and won't teach you HLSL, most of the effects in there are very hard to reproduce.

I personally liked the "Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders" by Wolfgang Engel, it's recently been re-edited as "Programming Vertex, Pixel and Geometry Shaders" so that it covers SM4.0 too. This book was my starting point for learning HLSL and it still serves as a reference.

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Vertex-Geometry-Shaders-Second/dp/1584505133

[Raine]

I bought both Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders and the one from Sebastien St Laurent. Imho a good choice to start!

[serial]

Sebastian St Laurent
Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists   ISBN: 1-59200-092-4
The Complete Effect and HLSL Guide         ISBN-10: 0-9766132-1-2

Wolfgang Engel
Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders       ISBN: 1-58450-349-1
 

I don't think you would go wrong with any one of those.  Although I don't think
there is one shader book to rule them all.  These ones complement each other nicely.

[AriusEso]

Forgot to say - Happy Birthday. 

( the others are right about GPU Gems and ShaderX btw - just those series are the only ones I've read so they're the only ones I could mention )

[ZaPPZion]

Thanks everyone
I've been reading some reviews/comments on those books you guys mentioned. I do have a question about "Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists" though. I saw it's all about HLSL shaders, but everything is being done with rendermonkey. Are those shaders compatible with TV3D? I'm asking that because i've seen that some stuff is done in an other way than i've used so far with TV3D. The vertex and pixel shaders are seperated for example. Is it easy to use a shader made with rendermonkey in TV3D?

I decided to buy ShaderX4, since that book covers a lot of interesting subjects (like ambient occlusion, fog volumes, lighting effects etc), but i'm not sure about which one i should buy as an introduction book. I think they are about equal, so i'll just have to pick one .

thanks,
ZaPP

[serial]

What Render Monkey usually adds is code the will map specific semantic in the shader to a control in the render monkey GUI. Once you know what its adding you can just load the shader in notepad and take all of the added stuff out.

You can also go over to microsoft XNA site.  There is a lot of information over there.  I found one document that describes some of the differant projections you will be dealing with.  How they compare to each other and how to move from one to another.

[sciophyte]

So i tried to order "Programming Vertex, Geometry, and Pixel Shaders" by Wolfgang Engel, and this book has been discontinued for some reason.  I checked Amazon for the first version "Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders", and it looks like it may be discontinued as well.

So I guess I will try the Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists by Sebastian, would this be one of the better books as more of a 'HLSL for dummies' type book?  I really wanna learn from scratch.

[Zaknafein]

That's strange. Have you tried directly from the publisher?
http://www.charlesriver.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=170445

[sybixsus]

So I guess I will try the Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists by Sebastian, would this be one of the better books as more of a 'HLSL for dummies' type book?  I really wanna learn from scratch.

Well I haven't read any other introductory books, so I can't compare it, but it's definitely at the "HLSL For Dummies" level, because I started it knowing nothing at all about writing shaders, and now I can write shaders for normal mapping, grass, water and dynamic shadows. I'm nowhere near at the level of people like Arius, Zak, Blind et al, but it definitely helped me get from nowhere to intermediate.

[sciophyte]

thanks sybixsus, i will give it a try.

@Zak:  i didn't try myself directly from the publisher, but my local book store told me the publisher was the one who told them.  I will contact them and ask.  thanks for the link.

[AriusEso]

Well I haven't read any other introductory books, so I can't compare it, but it's definitely at the "HLSL For Dummies" level, because I started it knowing nothing at all about writing shaders, and now I can write shaders for normal mapping, grass, water and dynamic shadows. I'm nowhere near at the level of people like Ariusm, Zak, Blind et al, but it definitely helped me get from nowhere to intermediate.

I appreciate you putting me in that list, even with an "m" . But I promise you, when I get stuck within HLSL I bug Zak and Steve on MSN until they help me. So, lol, I appreciate being written in the same breath( so to speak ) but I don't think it's warranted.

Anyway, I just wanted to say. I never read any introductory books. Google was my best friend, I can't post any links cause I honestly don't remember. I do remember them being few and far between, I had to spend hours rummaging through them to find anything decent. I would say, in terms of HLSL, finding things you want to do is quite important. For example, if you want to do cubic reflection, or shadow mapping, then googling it can turn up more results than just searching for "HLSL tuts/samples". An each time I google a new technique I learn more about the language. So it's important, I think, to recognise that. Now I'm comfortable in the language, nowhere near Steve or Zak, but still I understand what's going on enough to read code. It is worth investing enormous amounts of time in( cause no game worth it's salt nowadays uses any other pipeline but programmable ) but I recognise there aren't as many resources as is usual. In any case, I am glad this thread is still active, cause I've only read theory books( which until about 6 months ago, made sense to me - but not practical implementational sense ) so it's nice to hear about other things.

[sybixsus]

I appreciate you putting me in that list, even with an "m" . But I promise you, when I get stuck within HLSL I bug Zak and Steve on MSN until they help me. So, lol, I appreciate being written in the same breath( so to speak ) but I don't think it's warranted.

Heh, fixed the typo now. That's what I get for sitting too far away from the monitor, I guess. Well, with or without help on MSN, you're still way ahead of me. It's all good though, because without you guys showing the rest of us that these effects are achievable by normal people, I would probably never have attempted to replace TV's stencil shadows with shadowmaps.

[Eurmal]

Just found these two books:

    * Introductions and Tutorials with DirectX 9.0
    * Shader Programming Tips and Tricks with DirectX 9.0

Follow this link to download (page in french but pdf in english)
http://blog.developpez.com/jeux?title=shaderxs_disponible_gratuitement_en_pdf

they were written by Wolfgang Engel.  I don't know if they are worth the download but when it's free...

[sciophyte]

just an update, the publisher for wolgang's books does have the book listed for sale on their website, I contacted them after i posted here but unfortunately I didn't receive any kind of response 

I've ordered the one by Sebastian, can't wait to get started.

thanks for the find eurmal, i'll have to check those links out too.