When I was starting out I found these a great walk through of some of the basics in D3D and OpenGL (don't forget the nehe tutorials and the D3D SDK Docs as great starting points also).

Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0c: A Shader Approach, Author: Frank Luna

OpenGL Programming Guide: fly.cc.fer.hr/~unreal/theredbook/

Then for the detail my go to books are:

realtimerendering.com/

and

3D Game Engine Design, Second Edition: A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics, Author: David Eberly

I haven't really faced an issue which isn't covered by one of these two books yet in terms of 3D programming but I'm not a low-level rendering specialist so I'd have these on anyone's must have lists.

The Eberly book is fairly maths intensive though.

I have ''3D Game Engine Design'' and ''3D Game Engine Architecture'', both by David Eberly, both are really good books but as bonus uk has already stated.they are very math intensive especially the first mentioned and older book of the two. There is much in the 3D Game Engine Design that goes straight over my head..lol

Allen Sherrod's ''Ultimate 3D Game Engine Design and Architecture'' is a very good book for beginners to 3D Engine programming, the engine can be added to and built upon and its written in C++ and uses OpenGL and covers WindowsXP, MacOSX and Linux..so as I said..good for a beginner in the field.

''Real-Time 3D Terrain Engines using C++ and DirectX9'' by Greg Snook is quite good, its the only book I own on real-time terrain at the moment so I have nothing to compare it too...I do have another one on the way, I ordered it before Xmas..but its coming from the states and seems to be taking forever.

''Programming an RTS Game with DirectX'' by Carl Granberg has some useful stuff in it and has been a very valuable book to a couple of people I know who like their RTS games.

As bonus uk has already said, the Frank D'Luna books are quite good, and is probably the most general DirectX book that I own actually, I have the older one of his books ''Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX9''

I have a couple of OpenGL books as well, I haven't had them long though so I haven't finished them, they seem ok though so far..from what little I have read of them.

Of course there is your book's Mike..:) which are very good, fine specimens that are both entertaining and full of goodies..:)

My other favourite books are the 'Game Programming Gem's' books, I only have 3 of them, but they are all very good, I know they are not strictly 3D programming, they cover all different things, but still very good books with some really useful info in them.

By the way Mike, when is your new book due to be published/hit the shops..? I see that the second edition of your book is currently selling on Amazon .co.uk for £267 ($382) for the cheapest copy, the other 3 copies are all over £300, the most expensive being £329.30($469)

I second on Frank D Luna's book as well as Real-Time Rendering. Real-Time Rendering provides a really good theoretical base, and Frank D Luna practical. I haven't really got any favourite for OpenGL coding though.

GREAT question.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this and have the following list:

1. Game Coding Complete (2nd Edition). Its awesome for so many reasons. Solid 2D coverage. Solid compression, scene graph, event mgr, process mgr, physics layer, and the sample game to top it all off.

2. Advanced Visual Effects with Direct3D (Peter Walsh) is good, as it runs through graphics programming specific examples. It is D3D specific (which is exactly what I was looking for), and has some material on TCB splines for paths, shaders, and video.

3. Advanced 3D Game Programming with DirectX 10.0 (Peter Walsh) is also good. He's written this same book three times (DX8, DX9, and now DX10), with additions here and there.

4. 3D Game Engine Programming (Stefan Zerbst) is good. Nice architecture from the start, good background on a distributed subsystem, through LIBS and DLLs. Good math material, with IEEE optimisations, all specific and needed. The book culiminates in a 3D deathmatch, and also tools editor. The shader material is mostly ASM, and the code is very early DX9, so lots of re-working to be done.

5. 3D Game Engine Design Second Edition (David Eberly). This is a good, but the author takes no prisoners! I'm a big fan of 3D math (love it actually), but this stuff is heavy. What I do like about this book, that so many others overlook is the fact that the Author abstracts the renderer. This is something I would love to see more of in 3D game programming books. EVEN if the book deals 99% with DX9/10/11, leave the design flexible enough for OpenGL extension.

Lastly, I've heard GREAT things about this book: Programming Vertex, Geometry, and Pixel Shaders and its predecessor Programming Vertex & Pixel Shader by Wolfgang Engel. I've ordered them, so just waiting for both to arrive.

I've read:

Frank Luna's "Introduction to 3D Game Programming" and found it to be severly lacking. Poor OO from the outset, and the samples are really just a walkthrough of the DirectX9 API / CHM. This book should not have the name "GAME" in it, as it is just "GRAPHICS PROGRAMMING".

Carl Granberg's "Programming an RTS with Direct3D". It was ok, had UML (which is great to see), but the code has bugs, and HACKS. The pathfinding is pretty poor (checks for a recursion depth of 500 instead of properly using A*...). The book is full of U-Turns.

Jim Adams' "Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX Second Edition" is good. Solid discussion, logical progression. Uses a stack-based approach as opposed to Events/Process Mgr.

That's my list (there are a few others, but not necessarily solely 3D based.)

I have a (long) wishlist of things I would love to see in an intermediate level 3D GAME PROGRAMMING book, but I suppose thats material for another thread...

B.

Originally posted by jediboy
Frank Luna's "Introduction to 3D Game Programming" and found it to be severly lacking. Poor OO from the outset, and the samples are really just a walkthrough of the DirectX9 API / CHM. This book should not have the name "GAME" in it, as it is just "GRAPHICS PROGRAMMING".

Well, I must say I prefer that he doesn't go through a lot of game stuff in that book, imo. I think it's better to have one/a couple of really good 3D programming book in addition to a couple of good game development books(with GCC at a strong #1 place in my list) They complement each other, as well as covering things at a much higher level of detail. The "game" part of the book I guess is just because the examples are very game oriented.

I must partially agree with you though regarding the OO-design, it isn't very good at certain points.

5. 3D Game Engine Design Second Edition (David Eberly). This is a good, but the author takes no prisoners! I'm a big fan of 3D math (love it actually), but this stuff is heavy. What I do like about this book, that so many others overlook is the fact that the Author abstracts the renderer. This is something I would love to see more of in 3D game programming books. EVEN if the book deals 99% with DX9/10/11, leave the design flexible enough for OpenGL extension.

I agree totally with jediboy on this one.

I look at Luna's book purely from the point of someone starting out in games programming. It's a good walk through of where to start with D3D and only a start in programming with D3D.

There are better places than an introductory book in D3D to try to teach someone new to the field about OO design, especially when the person this book is aimed at is more likely to be struggling with grasping surfaces and the basics of linear algebra. Any more and it'd just be overwhelming at that point.

The books he listed are the best books available over many countries. But domestically for each country , there are many good books too.

I have a vast number of excellent books on my shelf behind me, but GCC aside (I will avoid re-stating the obvious, going to get my hands on volume 3!! :)), I find I consistently go back to the following for reference:

1) Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9 (Frank D Luna)
2) Advanced 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9 (Peter Walsh)
3) 3D Game Engine Design (David Eberly)
4) 3D Game Engine Programming (Stephan Zerbst)

What about Real-Time 3D Rendering with DirectX and HLSL: A Practical Guide To Graphics Programming?
Anyone read this one?