Computer Graphics Resources

From WolfWikis

This wiki contains links to online information and resources for computer graphics & games. Please update or add any useful links you find. As a starting point, consider the Real Time Rendering book's resources page.

1 OpenGL
2 3D Models
3 Programming Tools
4 Utilities
5 Volumes
6 Books
7 Tutorials & Demos
8 Other Cool Stuff

OpenGL

Documentation

The Red Book is a good introductory text.

There's another online version here.

The Blue Book is the standard OpenGL reference.

The Red and Blue Books are somewhat outdated now. For the latest, see the online man pages.

3D Models

Websites

Web3D.org is a community that does 3D stuff on the web.

Ultimate 3D Links is a clearing house for all things 3D.

ACM TOG's 3D Objects list, which includes free models and format info.

Free Models

The ply model format is often used in academe.

3D Cafe has a bunch of 3D models.

Stanford has scanned several 3D models and made them available.

Web3D.org's model index has a good selection.

So does 3D Links.

3D Studio is another collection.

Turbosquid has an excellent collection (sort by price to find free models).

The LOD Book has a list of sites containing free models.

See also the book's list of 3D terrain models.

Model Formats

Martin Reddy has compiled lots of useful 3D model format specs.

See also this more descriptive version of the site, which discusses video, too.

ACM TOG has great info on model formats.

On obj files:

Detail on the obj format's material (mtl) file can be found here, here and here.

Here's a good example of an mtl file, and while we're at it, the corresponding obj file.

Programming Tools

ACM TOG has an excellent list of software & tools

User interface toolkits

GLUT is a basic UI toolkit for GL

GLVU is another option that sits on top of GLUT

MUI also sits on GLUT and may not be around anymore

GTK is a well known UI toolkit

GLUI is another toolkit on top of GLUT by Paul Rademacher

PUI is yet another

QT is another

Image toolkits

PNG is an academic image format

ImageMagick is an entire image processing suite

Martin Reddy has a list of image formats and tools

ACM TOG's list of image tools and formats

Software components

Graphics Gems has routines for many common graphics needs

Numerical Recipes offers numerical code, but doesn't seem to be free

Nate Miller has all sort of software pieces, including obj and tga readers. See the glm components

O'Rourke's Computational Geometry codes can be useful

Martin Reddy's utilities and source code page

The LOD book's site for source code

The Real Time Rendering book's object intersection index

Utilities

3D Model Transformations

Ply format utilities: from Greg Turk & UNC

Martin Reddy lists many utilities

The LOD Book lists 3D products and tools

3D Model Translation

Crossroads 3D translates many formats

Avalon lists many tools and converters

3D Win is another converter

This text convertor moves between Mac/DOS/unix formats

Acccutrans works fairly well

3D Links has a converter list

3D Modelers & Viewers

Cyberware has some sort of ply viewer

3D Links has a viewing and modeling software list

The Cosmo Viewer is still around, this link may be out of date

GL View is yet another

3D Exploration is pretty good

Quick 3D is also good

ACM TOG's has a great list of modelers & viewers

Volumes

Resources

Stanford's Volume Rendering page has links to papers, examples, and test volume data.

The Marching Cubes site provides a good overview of the marching cubes surface extraction algorithm.

Volume Renderers

Java3D Volume Renderer renders using Java3D and comes with a few example volumes.

Books

Introductory

Alan Watt's 3D Computer Graphics

Foley, van Dam, Feiner & Hughes wrote Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice many years ago.

It's a bit outdated, and I understand they have been busily working on an update for years now, but it was the encyclopedic standard for many years

Advanced Topics

Tomas Akenine-Moeller and Eric Haines wrote Real-Time Rendering, much more up to date than the above books. They also have lots of useful links, in particular:

a list of recommended books, and

a list of recent books

My colleagues and I wrote a book on Level of Detail, which has many useful resources online

Three useful edited series are:

Graphics Gems,

Gaming Gems, and

GPU Gems.