Fernando R. (ed.) GPU Gems: Programming techniques, tips and tricks for real-time graphics

Addison-Wesley, 2004. — 784 p. — ISBN: 0-321-22832-4.This book is an extensive and practical collection of articles about real-time computer graphics, accumulating the knowledge and experience of experts in both industry and academia. Building, in the same style, upon the wealth of the great "Gems" books already available, GPU Gems is a collection of short chapters. However, a number of key characteristics make this book unique and valuable to today's developers as they attempt to harness the ever-increasing power of the graphics processing unit (GPU).
First and foremost, this book focuses squarely on real-time programmable graphics — specifically, on techniques relevant to GPUs. Each chapter was carefully selected to present ideas and techniques that are directly useful in interactive applications, such as computer games. The chapters provide insight and understanding, rather than focusing on low-level API calls or specific mathematical tricks. Furthermore, each chapter is packed with numerous full-color diagrams and images to illustrate and drive home key concepts. Finally, the experience and diversity of the contributors help readers gain a broad understanding, as well as a certain confidence that the advice they are getting comes from experts in the field.
NVIDIA's strongest asset is its people: the depth and quality of their collective expertise inspired the initial idea for GPU Gems. With so much knowledge and expertise at hand, we felt that the thoughts and insights of the teams that brought us many recent advances in real-time graphics would make for a wonderfully instructive book. So, we started the project with an internal call for participation.
Having the good fortune to work with people from leading game development houses, tool developers, film studios, and academic institutions who are shaping the future of real-time computer graphics, we also wanted to highlight their real-world contributions in GPU Gems. Hence, a wider, public call for participation allowed us to coalesce a great amount of talent and refreshing perspective into this volume.
Whether you're creating new effects, architecting a graphics engine, or squeezing out the last bits of performance, we hope that this book provides valuable guidance and saves you from some of the challenges the authors faced on their own projects. All of us who worked on GPU Gems hope that it will help you to adopt new ideas and take your projects to the next level of graphical realism.Part I Natural Effects
Effective Water Simulation from Physical Models
Rendering Water Caustics
Skin in the Dawn Demo
Animation in the Dawn Demo
Implementing Improved Perlin Noise
Fire in the Vulcan Demo
Rendering Countless Blades of Waving Grass
Simulating Diffraction
Part II Lighting and Shadows
Efficient Shadow Volume Rendering
Cinematic Lighting
Shadow Map Antialiasing
Omnidirectional Shadow Mapping
Generating Soft Shadows Using Occlusion Interval Maps
Perspective Shadow Maps: Care and Feeding
Managing Visibility for Per-Pixel Lighting
Part III Materials
Real-Time Approximations to Subsurface Scattering
Ambient Occlusion
Spatial BRDFs
Finite-Radius Sphere Environment Mapping
Texture Bombing
Part IV Image Processing
Real-Time Glow
Color Controls
Depth of Field: A Survey of Techniques
High-Quality Filtering
Fast Filter Width Estimates with Texture Maps
The OpenEXR File Format
A Framework for Image Processing
Part V Performance and Practicalities
Graphics Pipeline Performance
Efficient Occlusion Culling
The Design of FX Composer
Using FX Composer
An Introduction to Shader Interfaces
Converting Production RenderMan Shaders to Real-Time
Integrating Hardware Shading into Cinema 4D
Leveraging High-Quality Software Rendering Effects in Real-Time Applications
Integrating Shaders into Applications
Part VI Beyond Triangles
A Toolkit for Computation on GPUs
Fast Fluid Dynamics Simulation on the GPU
Volume Rendering Techniques
Applying Real-Time Shading to 3D Ultrasound Visualization
Real-Time Stereograms
Deformers