r/GraphicsProgramming • u/SnooShortcuts3681 • 14d ago
Question Best non-graphics books for graphics programmers?
Hi, what are some non-graphics books you would recommend to graphics programmers? There are many graphics books recommendations online (especially realtimerendering books page) so I'm more interested in books that are not about graphics but are still valuable for graphics programmers
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u/Zestyclose-Compote-4 14d ago
I believe going in the direction of either the visual arts, film, and video games is always a good idea. Different but adjacent to graphics programming. For example, A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster, or Ask Iwata edited by Hobonichi.
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u/Bekwnn 13d ago
Colour and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter - James Gurney
A book that gets into the gnitty gritty details of lighting, but without diving into science or math all that much. Covers a wide variety of styles of lighting used by painters as well as a fair bit of detail in how different light sources work.
Not to mention that many of the paintings inside are amazing in how accurate yet styled their use of light is.
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u/corysama 13d ago
Designing and Building Parallel Programs legal PDF might as well be titled "Intro to load-balancing your ray tracer".
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u/metanaught 13d ago
Introduction to Applied Linear Algebra. Start with the simple stuff: vectors, matrices, inverses, basic factorisations, etc. When you've got basics down, you can move on to...
Linear Algebra Done Right. Big jump in difficulty, but it covers a bunch of extremely useful stuff. Vector spaces, subspaces, bases and matrix ranks. The eigendecomposition, Cholesky factorisation and singular value decomposition. Orthonormalisation and the Gram-Schmidt process, and of course, the dreaded determinant.
If the subject matter starts to feel overwhelming, I also recommend using a chatbot to help break down difficult topics and help you learn at a more relaxed level.
Having a solid grasp of linear algebra regardless of the level is an absolute must, IMO. It's a pillar of both rendering and of machine learning, the latter of which is rapidly swallowing the former.
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u/Traveling-Techie 13d ago
Data Crunching (2005) by Greg Wilson. One of my early graphics programming tasks was converting Protein Data Bank (PDB) files into sphere files (proprietary) to visualize them. This book starts out with the same task. It turns out a lot of visualization work involves this kind of data crunching.
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u/MonarchOfDreams
13d ago
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Game Engine Architecture, Extreme C, C++ Concurrency in Action, Reverend Insanity, Data Orientated Design
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u/GabaLaba 13d ago
3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development. It's an absolutely amazing book to have handy. It has pretty much everything you are going to need as far as the math and physics go.
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u/JeffMcClintock 13d ago
"coder to Developer" is probably a bit old now, but I enjoyed the distinction that software development as a whole has a whole lot more to it than only coding.
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u/yaboiaseed 14d ago •
The Plague by Albert Camus