About the Book

3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development, Second Edition.

Written by Fletcher Dunn and Ian Parberry.

Published by A K Peters / CRC Press.

From the back cover

This engaging book presents the essential mathematics needed to describe, simulate, and render a 3D world. Reflecting both academic and in-the-trenches practical experience, the authors teach you how to describe objects and their positions, orientations, and trajectories in 3D using mathematics. The text provides an introduction to mathematics for game designers and graphics programmers, including the fundamentals of coordinate spaces, vectors, and matrices. It also covers orientation in three dimensions, calculus and dynamics, graphics, and parametric curves.

What’s inside

Download the table of contents, index, and sample chapter to see for yourself!

Graceful introductions to the fundamentals

• Trigonometry review
• Vectors and matrices
• Basis vectors and coordinate space transformations
• Methods of describing orientation in 3D
• Properties of important geometric primitives
• Introduction to differential and integral calculus
• Parametric curves

Overviews of two key application areas

• Real-time graphics
• Rigid body dynamics and physics simulators

Intended audience

The book is much more about math than programming, so it serves a wide audience.

• Game programmers are the primary audience.
• Game designers, scripters
• Technical 3D artists, modelers, animators, riggers
• Anyone who needs to create or simulate a 3D world. (Even if that world does not feature space marines, shotguns, elves, zombies, or gibs.)

Why you should read it

Because our careers as male models have stalled out, and we need the money. So buy our book, or next time you’re in the underwear aisle in Wal Mart, you may see something you don’t want to see. Plus, you might find the book useful.

• Accessible introductions. We focuse on thorough and graceful coverage of the fundamentals, topics that are glossed over in a few quick pages or relegated to an appendix in other books. We put explanation and intuition as our priotities, above mathematical rigor or coverage of advanced topics.
• Hundreds of worked exercises. Some of the exercises provide more examples and practice. Others explore interesting side quests.
• EntertainingLess boring to read. We’ve tried to write a funny math book, and we hope our readers enjoy reading it just like any other work of literature. Sure, we aren’t as clever as Tina Fey, and this book isn’t destined to become a classic like The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. But measured according to the low standard set by most math books, this one is hilarious.

Where to buy

On amazon.com.