I have playing games since the first day I remember. Heck, I didn’t even know how to write my own name but I was able to write the name of the site that I play browser games on with a keyboard. To be honest, even though I have potentially fun game ideas as much as everyone else, I never wanted to be a solo gamedev, as I know it is one of the most time-consuming and mind-boggling project that a one can ever dream of.
On the other hand, I’ve always been obsessed with the way light plays with everything around us. There’s something so cool about the fact that we still don’t fully understand it—and trying to recreate that magic through code is a whole different kind of challenge that I find just fascinating.
For the past couple of months or so I have been reading and researching about fields of computer graphics and its current state. I would like to document my journey as I discover how things work and useful resources for an interested reader to take a look at.
What I did so far
Books I read:
- LearnOpenGL: Amazing book that introduces concepts step by step. Explains every concept beautifully first by theory and code. By not fully giving the full source code over and over again at the end of each chapter, it provides the important/new parts of the code and keeps the text clean.
- The Book of Shaders: It really shows what can be achievable with a blank canvas and a couple of lines of fragment shader. Especially useful if one would like to get started doing something in shadertoy fast.
- Ray tracer in a weekend: Delves into the math behind a basic
Channels I watched:
- Inigo Quilez: don’t think he needs an introduction.
- Acerola: even though I respect his content, I just can’t focus on the quick changes in terms of imagery. He definitely puts a lot work on his editing but I just can’t keep up with it. However, he has great content.
- SimonDev: beautiful concepts and ideas illustrated.
- eisfrosch: GPU programming side of graphics.
- Sebastian Lague: not only graphics but “coding adventures” in general.
- Pezzza’s Work: again not only graphics but simulations as well.
- Cem Yuksel: prof from Utah, his intro to graphics course is nice.
Research I have read about:
- Mitsuba: differential rendering is a great subject. I have read a couple of papers about it but I need more.
What I would like to do
Books to read:
Projects:
- Write a simple 3D game only with OpenGL and C++. Its design should be clever so that I should be able to showcase what I learned reading OpenGL.
- Enhance the ray tracer in a weekend.
Additional resources
GICompendium: A quick cheat sheet about computer graphics and global illumination. Self Shadow: Notes and courses from SIGGRAPH.