Customer Reviews
I wouldn't use this as my primary book - By: Fame K, 27 May 2008 
I felt the first few chapters were really geared towards newcomers to 2D/3D Maths & so every topicin the earlier chapters were covered very slowly &in detail. However, as I progressed through the chapters I noticed the authors had started accelerating through the topics at a quicker pace & I was left somewhat confused & so I had to research many of the topics from other resources.
One thing I really didn't like about the book was that the exercises were left to be done at the end of each chapter. The problem with this approach was that some chapters expanded across many pages packed with information you needed to know & thus, like a traditional maths book I would have liked to practice a few questions after each topic & not after a whole chapter.
Not sure who would find this useful - By: Mr. S. T. Foster, 21 Apr 2008 
Sure the book starts off with really really simple maths, using 1d & 2d maths for a springboard. It slowly eases into vector & matrix maths, all described fairly run of the mill. So far so good.
Reading further on into geometric principles & intersections it becomes apparent that the author seems to have forgotten all about the first half of the book & is quickly rambling on using terms & symbols not previously referred to & thus will more than likely lose anyone without a mathematics degree.
Most of the articles here are locatable on the internet if you know how to use a search engine, & describedin a much more user friendly way.
3D Maths for mathematicians - By: David A. Watson, 21 Aug 2007 I bought this book thinking it would explain 3D maths to me, a programmer, but instead found it better suited to mathematicians who want to understand vectors & matrices.
There is virtually no pseudocodein the book, & only around 50 pages out of 400 cover 3D graphicsin practice, & thenin little depth.
The only people who will get anything from this book are people with a degreein Computer Science (and they will probably know 3D maths already).
Highly recommended - By: Mads Andreas Elvheim, 28 Apr 2005 
I love this book, & it has payed off very well for me.
The author has a remarkable skill to explain even the most difficult subjectsin a way that everyone understands. For example, The Cartesian coordinate system is abstracted to a system of roads.
However, this simplification is not an issue for intermediate/advanced programmers or math students. All topics are provided with formulas & concise material; making this book good for everyone.
Topics covered (but not limited to) vectors, coordination systems, dot-product, cross-product, quaternions, matrices, Auler-angles, bsp-trees, screen projection, culling, bounding-boxes (and a load of other intersection tests).
Still I missed something. The author(s) also covers gourad shading, texture mapping & several other techniques, but they don't go into depth. Different lighting models were given a formula at best, which fortunately is good enough for me. Just don't expect the book to be API-specific or contain information about rendering methods.
The source code which came with the book compiled, but looks awful & very messy. The source code works very well as a reference, but it you are buying the book mainly for the code; don't. I hope they'll update their source code from the webpage soon.
Conclusion: This is a very good book to start with. It contains all the linear algebra math you'll need to start with 3D-programming, & is explained remarkably well. Yet the simplification is nevertheless no con for non-beginners, which will probably use this book as a reference laying on their desktop at all times :-)
Exceptionally good book - By: Rasputin, 25 Feb 2004 The authors of this book is a game programmer & a professor of Computer Science. This team is excellent!
The game programmer has alot of focus on making the material understandable, & the professor has focus on the mathematically correct semantics. Unlike other books, that teaches game programming (of which many have an author with his strength on either field), this book has the right blend of understandable text parred with the right mathematical semantics.
Furthermore the text is supported by code, so if you are shaky on some of the math, you can see the implementationin C++ code.
As a total math newbie, this book helped me alot, & today I understand totally &in detail what is going onin my 3D programming.
An ABSOLUTE MUST, if you want to learn 3D on top level.
