Good book/resource for the maths for 3D programming.
3 replies, posted
In my spare time I make 2D games and generally fuck around with XNA, and for work I'm an in house coder using PHP and HTML, so while I'm no means a brilliant coder, I know my way around relatively well. However, I know I'm being held back quite badly by my lack of math knowledge. As soon as I start trying to learn any kind of 3D coding, I hit matrices, projections, vertices, etc and my brain just shuts off. I'd love to be able to start doing 3D gaming stuff, but it's just like this wall I can't get through. I've tried working through Riemer's 3D section, and again, it's the lack of understanding that's annoying me. Sure, I can just copy the code, but I really need to learn what the code actually means.
Does anyone know any good books (eBooks would be awesome too, huzzah for Kindle!) or sites that teach the concepts more thoroughly? Code examples and everything would be great, but some really good explanations on 3D concepts. Anything and everything would be helpful :D
I can't recommend a specific book. I took college courses for these kind of things (although a good deal of what you learn there does not apply to game engine development).
The particular subjects you should be looking for are:
Trigonometry (arguably this is the most important to the process; know it well)
Vectors (an introductory college physics course or calculus 3 course will cover these)
Linear Algebra (for knowledge about matrices. Studying this will help you with matrices; knowing how two matrices are multiplied, and what orthonormal basis vectors are is the most important things here).
Over the past few years, I've been collecting a lot of resources related to math related to game programming.
Here's a set of slides I've found particularly useful and concise that covers the topics I've mentioned (of course, you'll occasionally have to wade through the typical formality that accompanies mathematics):
[url]http://www.essentialmath.com/[/url]
I can however recommend [URL="http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Graphics-Development-Wordware-Library/dp/1556229119"]this[/URL] specific book.
It is absolutely amazing in covering the details of all the required aspects ranging from trigonometry to matrixes to quaternions. It is a very thorough book, so you will never find something that is not explained properly. However, that means it is also a very dry book to read, as it covers it all very well. From how the various mathematics are used to how they are derived.
