Well, really, you don't need to know anything about DirectX. This book teaches everything from 0, but some background knowledge would help, as the book relies on DXUT, and you might want to know the underlying work being done. But anyways, don't be afraid to read this book, as it's much more than DirectX. It's about making games!!!

thedarkcoder is right - you can learn some of DirectX in GCC4, but it is far from a complete guide. Definitely find other books out there that cover DirectX in detail.

Does anyone have a good suggestion?

I have "Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0c: A Shader Approach" by Frank Luna and it's pretty good. It was my text book back at school. There was also sample code, which I find always helpful.

Here is a link for the newest version of the book (DirectX 11):

amazon.com/Introduction-3D-Gam…ogramming+with+DirectX+11

I know I sound like a bad advertisement, but the Game Institute has a direct3D course split into 2 sections, starting from making your own 3D graphics pipeline, all the way up to shaders.

I find that I learn better by applying concepts that I find examples for. I personally had very little exposure to DirectX, or any other 3D api, prior to getting into GCC3/4. But taking what i've learning from GCC I was able to better understand the DirectX tutorial applications that come with the DirectX SDK.

I now have a basic game engine (based on the GCC architecture) where I have replaced DXUT with my own basic D3D11 manager class that can load "basic" models using ASSIMP and render them in a window. As seen in the file I attached.

I guess my point is, I can read an entire book on a subject, and feel like I've learned nothing. Or I can apply some concepts to a new feature based on some examples, and produce something kind of cool, and feel like i've actually learned something. But that's just how I learn, I guess.

I am exactly the same, I can grasp concepts, but not monotonously writing out example after example.

I have the first course that mholley519 suggested from Game Institute. It's very detailed (few things are "out of the scope of this book") and goes low level into DirectX. Sadly, It only teaches DirectX 9, but other than that I'm very satisfied with it.

ermm... i just realized my reply is off-topic. lol. But just an fyi.

Originally posted by makuto
I have the first course that mholley519 suggested from Game Institute. It's very detailed (few things are "out of the scope of this book") and goes low level into DirectX. Sadly, It only teaches DirectX 9, but other than that I'm very satisfied with it.

Book 2 of Module II is very important for scene Geometry management to add in your scene graph discussed in GCC. It allows you to build and render very large and complex indoor/outdoor scenes very efficiently. It teaches you how to build Quad-Trees, Oct-Trees, KD-Trees, and BSP trees. After the BSP Trees it teaches you Constructive Solid Geometry operations which is a building block for popular 3d modelling and level creation softwares with the aid of the bsp tree. Finally, it wraps up by talking about Potential Visibility Sets by introducing Portals to your BSP trees. Pretty amazing and heavy stuff. BUT very very important to learn especially for a graphics programmer.

Originally posted by mholley519I know I sound like a bad advertisement, but the Game Institute has a direct3D course split into 2 sections, starting from making your own 3D graphics pipeline, all the way up to shaders.

It shouldn't be one or the other. GCC greatly taught me the important components of what a game engine is made of. Game Institute allowed me to further understand and think what i needed to do to improve the game engine GCC left off.

They have alot of new content on route, I am sure they will be updating to DX11

You guys need to check out directxtutorial.com some of the information on it is free, the adv stuff is member only. To become a member its 35$ fee one time and your member for life.

The reason I suggest this is because he teaches really well, and boils down examples to only what you need to see to get the point. Spoon feeding. Check it out some of it is free.

As far as books. Frank D Luna's books are usaully considered the best reference's for directx. MSDN.com is essential they have some tuts on there.

Originally posted by Kl1X
I now have a basic game engine (based on the GCC architecture) where I have replaced DXUT with my own basic D3D11 manager class that can load "basic" models using ASSIMP and render them in a window. As seen in the file I attached.

I'm in a situation where I have Visual Studio 2012 Professional, Windows 8 Professional x64, and the Windows 8 SDK for my development environment. I have to add the June 2010 DirectX SDK into the mix based upon the various documentation found here. This allows me to use D3DX but I'm not sure if I'll run into any problems with DXUT.

Personally, I'd like to build the project without D3DX or DXUT but I realize that may require more work. It's probably best to go through the entire book using everything Mike and Rez teach and then after getting an engine working, consider getting rid of these components. I'd like to mainly get rid of any use of D3DX because it's no longer in the Windows 8 SDK and Microsoft claims it's depreciated. I love when they do this kind of thing :(.

Also, DXUT is on it's way out too, I believe. I've read other posts stating DXUT was used because it's easier to teach concepts with it. If I decide to scrap it, I'll have to get more low-level directly with the DirectX API which will require more work but I'm up for the challenge.

Thus, I believe I'll need to go through the entire book, understand the concepts, and eventually scrap both D3DX and DXUT later. This would probably be another great learning experience. I heard the book Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 could help me more with the low-level stuff. Has anyone ever heard of it or read it?

Originally posted by GetchaDEAGLE
Also, DXUT is on it's way out too, I believe. I've read other posts stating DXUT was used because it's easier to teach concepts with it. If I decide to scrap it, I'll have to get more low-level directly with the DirectX API which will require more work but I'm up for the challenge.

You're right, DXUT was never meant to be anything more than a Tutorial framework.
Since my previous post in this thread, I've shifted course again. I now have a GCC style engine wrapping the Ogre3D rendering engine, and it is working great so far. If you want to avoid a massive amount of work dealing with the renderer, then I would suggest going that route too.

Originally posted by Kl1X
You're right, DXUT was never meant to be anything more than a Tutorial framework.

It's my understanding that DXUT just provides a few shortcuts or easy ways of getting rendering up and running using the Direct3D API. I'm going to explore writing my own rendering framework without DXUT, although basic for the sake of learning.

Originally posted by Kl1X
Since my previous post in this thread, I've shifted course again. I now have a GCC style engine wrapping the Ogre3D rendering engine, and it is working great so far. If you want to avoid a massive amount of work dealing with the renderer, then I would suggest going that route too.

Ogre3D is quite an impressive open source rendering system. I would like to do the same thing and I consider that a goal. Granted, I want to start out with something basic like creating a simple rendering framework first, avoiding DXUT, and then switching to Ogre3D.

BTW, I came across a great article on avoiding the use of D3DX from Frank D. Luna. This would allow using just the Windows 8 SDK instead relying on the June 2010 SDK.

DXUT is similar to GLUT, they are simply just "Utility Toolkit" for getting things up and running, I would suggest not using them from personal experience, setting up windowing and doing your own main loop is trivial, there is no point in adding an additional dependency. They only good reason to use something like that is if you are learning with demos or something.

I would definitely just say to read Frank's Book first before you read GCC. GCC is a hell of a book, but it has many advanced concept. I read Frank's book first and boy am I happy I did that.

Just my humble opinion of course.