OpenGL® SuperBible, Seventh Edition, is the definitive programmer’s guide, tutorial, and reference for OpenGL 4.5, the world’s leading 3D API for real-time computer graphics. The best introduction for any developer, it clearly explains OpenGL’s newest APIs; key extensions; shaders; and essential, related concepts. You’ll find up-to-date, hands-on guidance for all facets of modern OpenGL development―both desktop and mobile.

The authors explain what OpenGL does, how it connects to the graphics pipeline, and how it manages huge datasets to deliver compelling experiences. Step by step, they present increasingly sophisticated techniques, illuminating key concepts with worked examples. They introduce OpenGL on several popular platforms, and offer up-to-date best practices and performance advice.

This revised and updated edition introduces many new OpenGL 4.5 features, including important ARB and KHR extensions that are now part of the standard. It thoroughly covers the latest Approaching Zero Driver Overhead (AZDO) performance features, and demonstrates key enhancements with new example applications.

Coverage includes

• A practical introduction to real-time 3D graphics, including foundational math
• Core techniques for rendering, transformations, and texturing
• Shaders and the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) in depth
• Vertex processing, drawing commands, primitives, fragments, and framebuffers
• Compute shaders: harnessing graphics cards for more than graphics
• Pipeline monitoring and control
• Managing, loading, and arbitrating access to data
• Building larger applications and deploying them across platforms
• Advanced rendering: light simulation, artistic and non-photorealistic effects, and more
• Reducing CPU overhead and analyzing GPU behavior
• Supercharging performance with persistent maps, bindless textures, and fine-grained synchronization
• Preventing and debugging errors
• New applications: texture compression, text drawing, font rendering with distance fields, high-quality texture filtering, and OpenMP

Bonus material and sample code are available at openglsuperbible.com.

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This book provides a comprehensive overview of video game technical animation, covering the next generation pipelines that industry developers utilise to create their games. It covers the technical animation workflow from start to finish, looking at both software and hardware, as well as the industry standard processes that all technical animators need to know.

Written to be an accessible technical animation resource, this book combines easy-to-understand principles with educational use cases on how to combine the principles and tools taught within. Example test scripts, animation files, and rig assets are provided as tangible examples that can be modified and taken apart to deepen your understanding. It covers the end-to-end pipeline of technical animation, from the very first steps of placing joints in Autodesk’s Maya to breathe life into your static characters, through tools and automation development, all the way to Unreal Engine 5 integration and optimisation.

Additional resources are available on the book’s GitHub repository. From this resource, you will find example files for Maya and Python scripts that will help with your own work and demonstrations featured throughout this book.

This book is essential reading for early-career game technical animators as well as those studying game animation courses. It will also appeal to technical animators working in the film industry.

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