Computer Animation: Algorithms and Techniques (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is not about how to accomplish animation using prepackaged software nor is it about art design for animation. Instead, it is aimed at computer science students who wish to write programs that perform animation and want to understand the algorithmic and mathematical issues behind that task.
Chapter one is a broad history of computer animation, and it would be misleading to think that this is a typical chapter in this book. Chapter 2 is a broad overview of computer graphics topics. It mentions quaternions, transformation matrices, the rendering pipeline, and I think it is meant to be a quick review more than an instructive chapter. If you are not already familiar with the material in chapter 2 this book will be over your head.
Chapters 3 through 6 are the meat of the book for those interested in computer animation algorithms. Chapter 3 presents low level details on interpolation and not only shows the math but also shows code fragments in C on how to accomplish some of the tasks mentioned. Chapter four presents more advanced algorithms such as camera control, kinematic modeling, rigid body simulation, flocking behavior, and collision detection. Again in this chapter mathematics of the algorithms is presented along side of C code to accomplish the tasks.
Chapter 5 changes topics from the discussion of object motion and the underlying physics to the topic of natural phenomena. The author does a good job of laying out clearly the basics of the mathematics behind these effects. However, he does seem to gloss over details more than he did in previous chapters. The same is true of Chapter 6 on the modeling and animation of articulated figures. The basics are all there, but there just wasn't enough detail to satisfy me.
As for the companion website, it is working at the time I am writing this review. However, the problem I have with books that have companion sites in place of an accompanying CD is that over time these websites are usually neglected and at worst, disconnected. However, an accompanying CD is always shipped with a new book.
Overall, this book is the best compromise I've found between accessible and comprehensive on this subject, and I would recommend it to anyone thinking about writing their own computer animation code.

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AI Techniques for Game Programming (Premier Press Game Development) Review

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(More customer reviews)Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so let me tell you what I was looking for: a non-academic AI book with practical examples for implementing genetic algorithms and neural nets. I don't have a math degree (though I understand basic algebra and remember a bit of trig), and I learn best by doing hand's on project, not by theorizing.
This book fits the bill perfectly. It is well written, humorous, clear and patient. The examples are interesting enough that you can see how they would be useful for solving other problems, not necessarily game related.
One caveat: if you don't have a decent intro to basic Win32 API programming, get Charles Petzold's Programming Win32 book and get busy. Yes, the first two chapters of AI Techniques are a Win32 refresher (which was good for me because I last wrote Win32 3 years ago...I now do Java only), but I'm pretty sure if you haven't seen it before you'll be lost.
BTW, just to give you an idea how clear the concepts were presented, I've recoded Chapters 3 and 5 as properly OOPed (MVC, etc) Java applications. Just MHO, but Java is a much better platform for this stuff. ...

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"AI Techniques for Game Programming" takes the difficult topics of genetic algorithms and neural networks and explains them in plain English. Gone are the tortuous mathematic equations and abstract examples to be found in other books. Each chapter takes readers through the theory a step at a time, explaining clearly how they can incorporate each technique into their own games. After a whirlwind tour of Windows programming, readers will learn how to use genetic algorithms for optimization, path-finding, and evolving control sequences for their game agents. Coverage of neural network basics quickly advances to evolving neural motion controllers for their game agents and applying neural networks to obstacle avoidance and map exploration. Backpropagation and pattern recognition is also explained. By the end of the book, readers will know how to train a network to recognize mouse gestures and how to use state-of-the-art techniques for creating neural networks with dynamic topologies.

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