   Getting serious about graphics programming
  Hi! During the last few years I've done some graphics programming related projects (eg. a 3D software rasterizer using SDL and a raytracer for a "Computer graphics" course at Uni) but since school kept me quite busy I was never able to work that much with 3D APIs and shaders. Now that I have some spare time I'd like to get serious about graphics programming, so I've decided to come here and ask a few questions.The first thing I've read searching posts in this forum is that I must learn shaders. Since I'm interested in multi-platform development, I bought a copy of the orange book and read the first nine or ten chapters and played around with the sample programs. Although I understand those sample, I've noticed that if I were to implement a new effect from scratch I wouldn't know how to start. How do you learn how to do that?As a side question, during the last few years I also bought (and partially read) some graphics related books such as "3D Game engine architecture" by Eberly and "Real-time rendering" (2nd ed) by Akenine-Möller and Haines. I also found out that the first books from the ShaderX series are now available for free. Is the material contained in those books still relevant today?Thanks in advance for all your answers!--Nacho   
Quote:Although I understand those sample, I've noticed that if I were to implement a new effect from scratch I wouldn't know how to start. How do you learn how to do that?Just try to do it a few times :-)Quote:Is the material contained in those books still relevant today? It depends on what your target platform is. If you shoot for DX8 graphics cards as your min spec (not very uncommon ... all games with a wider audience do this), than you can still use the content. If you program the Wii I assume there is also some useful stuff in there and even maybe for the iPhone ...   ;  I would say that both of those references (Eberly and Haines/Akenine-Moller) are still relevant, but they are not references for cutting edge graphics programming techniques.  They both serve as standard references in my library on a range of necessary techniques and algorithms.If you are interested, you can also check out our online D3D10 book - the link is in my signature.  Again, it's not cutting edge, but serves as a good reference (and it's free [grin])!   ;  Thank you both for your replies, you have been very helpul. And thanks you for making available the D3D10 book online, too!--Nacho   