Zink, Jason Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 (0367659255)

Direct3D 11 offers such a wealth of capabilities that users can sometimes get lost in the details of specific APIs and their implementation. While there is a great deal of low-level information available about how each API function should be used, there is little documentation that shows how best to leverage these capabilities. Written by active members of the Direct3D community, Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 provides a deep understanding of both the high and low level concepts related to using Direct3D 11.

The first part of the book presents a conceptual introduction to Direct3D 11, including an overview of the Direct3D 11 rendering and computation pipelines and how they map to the underlying hardware. It also provides a detailed look at all of the major components of the library, covering resources, pipeline details, and multithreaded rendering. Building upon this material, the second part of the text includes detailed examples of how to use Direct3D 11 in common rendering scenarios. The authors describe sample algorithms in-depth and discuss how the features of Direct3D 11 can be used to your advantage.

All of the source code from the book is accessible on an actively maintained open source rendering framework. The sample applications and the framework itself can be downloaded from http://hieroglyph3.codeplex.com

By analyzing when to use various tools and the tradeoffs between different implementations, this book helps you understand the best way to accomplish a given task and thereby fully leverage the potential capabilities of Direct3D 11.

Key Features

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• Presents the high level concepts used to design algorithms
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• Describes the nuts and bolts of how to implement the algorithms
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• Explains each of the major components of the Direct3D 11 library
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• Shows how Direct3D 11 can be used in a variety of real-world situations
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• Provides source code and sample programs on a supplementary website