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• Is This Book for You?

• Mandatory Basics - Basics you have to understand to make sense of everything else in this book, like pixels and colors. 

• Hardware Basics - Intro to the hardware used to make computer graphics output visible.  This can be skipped without much loss from the rest of the book. 

• Graphic Primitives - The basic building blocks we can draw with.  These will be put together in fancy ways in the Modeling chapter to make the images we really want to draw. 

• 3D Vectors and Transforms - An intuitive introduction to some 3D math as it's used in computer graphics.  Some later material by its very nature has to use this stuff, but I've tried hard to minimize what you lose from the rest of the book if you skip this chapter.  I've also presented this material conceptually with lots of pictures and without equations.  So, check it out before you run away screaming from the "M" word. 

• Modeling - How we use the basic building blocks to describe fancy object. 

• The Whole Scene (Lights, Camera, Action!) - This is really modeling, and describes how we go beyond objects to describe entire images, or scenes. 

• Rendering (Converting a Scene to Pixels) - How we take those scene descriptions and create the image from it. 

• Animation - Special issues that come up when we try to make moving images. 

• Saving the Pixels (Image File Issues)

• Where to Go from Here

• Glindex - This is a combined glossary and index.  I've always thought it was silly to have definitions in one section, and page references in another.  The publisher wasn't all that comfortable with this concept, since it was non-traditional.  I'd be curious to get your opinion, whether you think it's the greatest idea since Gutenberg, or about as dumb as a razor with two safety edges. 

The official cover price is $32.95 US, $46.50 Canadian.  Most places seem to discount it about 10% or so, particularly if you are a member of an organization like IEEE, ACM, etc.  Be sure to check this when ordering. 

I also sell it directly for only $25 (US) if you can catch me at a seminar or whatever where such things are allowed.  If you happen to be in Devens Massachusetts (the former Fort Devens army base in Ayer), you can stop by my office, but call first since I'm not always in. 

Here are some places that I know sell it via mail order.  These are just the ones I've bumped into, as I haven't gone out looking for URLs.  Where possible, I've listed two URLs for each store.  The first one is for the store's home page, the second one is as specific to this particular book at that store as I could find. 

If you sell this book via mail order and you'd like to be listed here, send a quick note with the URLs to book@embedinc.com. 

• Amazon: home page, this book
• Softpro: home page, Graphics and Multimedia

While getting paid is nice, I recognize that I've learned much thru the generosity of others.  I believe it's a professional's duty to eventually give this back by helping newcomers to the field.  Let me know if you'd like a talk on computer graphics at your conference, school, college, university, or whatever.  While I can't make blanket promises, all request will be considered seriously.