Advanced Lighting and Materials with Shaders

This book explains the underlying principles of lighting more
deeply than most game development books. However, unlike
other theoretical books, this book takes a holistic approach
that couples theory with practical implementations that
address the features and limitations of modern hardware.

The first chapters of the book deal with theory. They lay
the conceptual foundations for the remaining chapters. The
bulk of the book is comprised of chapters that each focus on a
specific technique. Each chapter will explain the theory as
well as give a sample implementation. Some readers look for
books that give them a fully built out gaming engine. That is
not our intention here. In fact, we have tried to strip each
sample down to its bare essentials in order to highlight a
given technique. This should make it easier to put the technique
into any engine you need.

This book can be read nonlinearly. Advanced readers
might want to jump to specific chapters. Beginning readers might
want to start with the theory before they jump through
sets of theory/approach/implementation to see how everything
fits together. Regardless of how they are read, the
chapters provide a solid theoretical and practical foundation
on which additional techniques and further optimizations can
be based.