The Awesome Power of Direct3D/DirectX - The DirectX 7 Version

It may be true that this book is not easy to read, there are BIG advantages of this book: 1: animation: by reading this book, reader can easily import 3D animation sequence. This is usually a tedious work without high-level animation implementation.2: collision detection: basic idea of collision detection and code examples are included. Collision detection is usually hard for a beginner to implement but this book present a working example of collision detection.Beginner 3d programmer will find these features very useful, because none of other popular APIs such as Direct3D immediate mode nor OpenGL does not give any examples of animation import and collision detection.Moreover, the book does not hide any thing to make win32 3d-program, while elegant C++ codes often hide implementation purposely. Hiding implementation prevent readers to extend or modify the codes even when they need to do so.Game industry persons may hate this book because readers will able to program 3d graphic easily, which may not be welcome to current professionals.

Peter Kovachs book is the current best book for Direct 3D that is or has been published Period. I know, I have them all. If you can program in C at all and any familiarity with the Windows interface, this book can take you from beginner to highly capable Direct3D retained mode programmer. In addition, it covers sufficient advanced concepts and I/O to enable you to construct your own initial 3D game programs.It also has an intro to Direct3D retained mode, but it is not sufficient by itself to qualfy you as a retained or combined mode programmer. It is also out of date now as DirectX 6 and 7 include several enhancements.Sometimes it is necessary to re-read several times and to experiment in order to fully grasp what Peter is teaching you, but Direct3D is a monstrous and powerful beast (why do you think books with impressive titles like "DirectX Complete" skip talking about Direct3D completely) Main reason, D3D has more to it than the entire rest of DirectX put together, and they dont know how to use it either.I'm sure his new book Inside Direct3D will be even better, I have it on preorder.You want to program Direct3D. This book will get you started and give you some good tools to work with.

I'm actually programming a Role-Playing Game and thanks to this great book, I found the answers to many of the questions, that nobody was able to answer before. That book covers almost everything you'll need in order to make a commercial-like game and although i found some difficulties following some parts, I still think it deserves a total 5-star rating. PS. Ignore the Texan-Boy reviews. I think, he didn't even read that book.

I think that this book is fantastic in only 5 day I have learned how to build a simple D3D application. You have to know that before buying this book I have bought another one but it was not good(even if it cost more than this and have less pages but is the only one I have found in Italy) because it do not explained the D3D but how to use the authors library and I have lost my moneys. This book instead teach you step by stem how to program D3D in a very clear way so in the end you became able to use d3d has you wont. It cover in detail the Direct3D Retained Mode and also the immediate mode. Another very important thing is that there is a reference very helpful when you are coding and a CD with more then 270 MB including examples, object, utilities and DirectX 5. The code of the examples is for MVC++ and work correctly. If you wont to understand this book you have to know how to program in C++ and know something of the win95 programming (although the author explain you many thing). Remember this book is only the beginning if you want to program with d3d you have to work hard.