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Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders Review by Maximus Payne
Review Updated
I've updated my review. I think it is worth the full fives stars, but I didn't feel like erasing it and rewriting it.
The book is really great overall, but mainly I enjoyed the fact it had a working raytracer to play with. It is nice and small and easy to play around with, and it came in very handy when I was trying some crazy technique with OpenGL.
The only downside is the book doesn't cover bump mapping. I don't know if Bump/normal mapping is 'true' lighting equation, but it's important because it allows you to use a very high detailed mesh, and than 'normal map' it so you can use a low poly mesh but preserve it's details in the lighting. If it covered bump maps I really missed it (I skipped around alot but have mostly finished the book).
Excellent book, very fun, heavy on the math (but I've seen most of it, except for equations with double factorials!). It is advanced, but for my background I'd consider it more of a an intermediate in terms of math (not graphics), but I am sure to beginners the equations would scare the tar out of them. No sweat, it isn't that hard and they walk you through it all.