3D Games, Volume 2: Animation and Advanced Real-time Rendering

The second volume of the 3D games series concentrating on the areas of advanced real-time rendering and animation. The computer games industry continues to consume techniques from off-line graphics as more and more powerful hardware facilitates this. With the launch of GeForce3 and X-box there is a massive leap forward in the techniques that can be implemented in real-time. The theory behind these techniques is addressed in the book, integrated with practical implementations using the accompanying FLYD3 games engine. Suitable for students on computer games courses or on graphics courses with an emphasis on animation. It will suit professional games developers and other games enthusiasts keen to understand the theory behind games development and create their own games.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1 THE ANATOMY OF AN ADVANCED GAME SYSTEM I - THE BUILD PROCESS AND STATIC LIGHTING 1.1 Data Structures 1.2 The Build Process 1.3 Light Map Build 1.4 BSP Management 1.5 Advanced Static Lighting - Radiosity Appendix 1.1 Building In Practice Appendix 1.2 Basic Radiosity Theory 2 THE ANATOMY OF AN ADVANCED GAMES SYSTEM II - REAL-TIME PROCESSES 2.1 Viewing And The BSP 2.2 Camera Control 2.3 Generic Collision Detection And Response 2.4 Specialised Collision Detection And Response 2.5 Generic Path Planning Appendix 2.1 Demonstrations Of Real-Time Processes 3 THE ANATOMY OF AN ADVANCED GAMES SYSTEM III - SOFTWARE DESIGN AND APPLICATION PROGRAMMING 3.1 Types Of Applications 3.2 FLT3D Engine Architecture Appendix 3.1 Writing A Plug-In 4 REAL - TIME RENDERING 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Vertices, Pixels And Maps 4.3 Factorisation Methods 4.4 Brdfs And Real Materials 4.5 Per-Pixel Shading Using Brdfs 4.6 Environment Map Parameterisations 4.7 Implementing Brdfs: Separable Approximations 4.8 Shading Languages And Shaders 5 REAL - TIME RENDERING - PRACTICE 5.1 Basic Shaders 5.2 Render States 5.3 Shader Examples 5.4 Real-Time Rendering In Hardware 5.5 Dynamic Textures 5.6 Effects Appendix 5.1 Using And Experimenting With Shaders Appendix 5.2 Vertex Programming For NVIDIA Geforce3 Appendix 5.3 NVIDIA Register Combiner Operation 6 GEOMENTRY PROCESSING 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Motivating Factors And Definitions 6.3 Ordering Or Error Criteria 6.4 Simplification And Attributes 6.5 Case Studies Appendix 6.1 Mathematical Background Appendix 6.2 Demonstration 7 CHARACTER ANIMATION 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Vertex Animation And Blending 7.3 Skeleton Animation 7.4 Low-Level Animation Management Appendix 7.1 Using Quaternions To Represent Rotation Appendix 7.2 Implementing Quaternions Appendix 7.3 Efficiency Consideration In Character Animation (Optimising For SIMD Pentium3 Instructions) 8 ANIMATING SHAP - METHODS 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Spline Cages 8.3 Free Form Deformation (FFD) 8.4 Extended Free Form Deformations (Effds) 8.5 Curve Deformers - Wires 8.6 Skinning Revisited Appendix 8.1 Scattered Data Interpolation Using Radial Basis Functions 9 ELEMENTS OF ADVANCED CHARACTER ANIMATION 9.1 Introduction - An Anthropomorphic Interface For Games 9.2 Converting Linguistic Representations Into Animation - Examples 9.3 Facial Animation, Visual Speech And Tracking 9.4 Models For Controlling, Rendering And Tracking Facial Meshes 9.5 Visual Speech 9.6 Facial Animation And MPEG-4 9.7 Rendering Issues 9.8 Conclusions And Problems Appendix 9.1 A Pseudo-Muscle Model Implementation 10 ANIMATING CHARACTERS WITH MOTION CAPTURE 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Motion Data 10.3 Skeletons And Mocap - BVH Format 10.4 Basic Manipulation Of Motion Data 10.5 Interpolation In Mocap 10.6 Classic Signal Processing And Mocap 10.7 Signal Processing And Mocap Data 10.8 Motion Editing: Constraint-Based Approaches Appendix 10 1 Demonstration 11 INVERSE KINEMATICS: THE THEORY 11.1 An Example - The Two-Link Arm 11.2 The Jacobian 11.3 Approaches To IK 11.4 Practical Approaches To Inverse Kinematics References Index

About the Author :
Alan Watt, based at the University of Sheffield, is the author of many successful books including 3D Computer Graphics, Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques, The Computer Image and 3D Games Volume 1: Real-Time Rendering and Software Technology. Fabio Policarpo is a software developer and founder of the company Parelelo Computacao based in Rio de Janeiro. He is currently working on independent 3D action multiplayer games.