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iv
Contents at a Glance
■About the Authors ............................................................................................ x
■About the Technical Reviewer ........................................................................ xi
■Acknowledgments ......................................................................................... xii
■Introduction .................................................................................................. xiii
■Chapter 1: Computer Graphics: From Then to Now .......................................... 1
■Chapter 2: All That Math Jazz ........................................................................ 25
■Chapter 3: From 2D to 3D: Adding One Extra Dimension ............................... 43
■Chapter 4: Turning on the Lights ................................................................... 77
■Chapter 5: Textures ...................................................................................... 115
■Chapter 6: Will It Blend? .............................................................................. 149
■Chapter 7: Well-Rendered Miscellany .......................................................... 177
■Chapter 8: Putting It All Together ................................................................ 213
■Chapter 9: Performance ’n’ Stuff ................................................................. 247
■Chapter 10: OpenGL ES 2, Shaders, and… ................................................... 259
■Index ............................................................................................................ 287
xiii
Introduction
In 1985 I brought home a new shiny Commodore Amiga 1000, about one week after
they were released. Coming with a whopping 512K of memory, programmable
colormaps, a Motorola 68K CPU, and a modern multitasking operating system, it had
“awesome” writ all over it. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I thought it might
make a good platform for an astronomy program, as I could now control the colors of
those star-things instead of having to settle for a lame fixed color palette forced upon
me from the likes of Hercules or the C64. So I coded up a 24-line basic routine to
draw a random star field, turned out the lights, and thought, “Wow! I bet I could write
a cool astronomy program for that thing!” Twenty-six years later I am still working on
it and hope to get it right one of these days. Back then my dream device was
something I could slip into my pocket, pull out when needed, and aim it at the sky to
tell me what stars or constellations I was looking at.
It’s called a smartphone.
I thought of it first.
As good as these things are for playing music, making calls, or slinging birdies at
piggies, it really shines when you get to the 3D stuff. After all, 3D is all around us—
unless you are a pirate and have taken to wearing an eye patch, in which case you’ll
have very limited depth perception. Arrrggghhh.
Plus 3D apps are fun to show off to people. They’ll “get it.” In fact, they’ll get it much
more than, say, that mulch buyer’s guide app all the kids are talking about. (Unless
they show off their mulch in 3D, but that would be a waste of a perfectly good
dimension.)
So, 3D apps are fun to see, fun to interact with, and fun to program. Which brings me
to this book. I am by no means a guru in this field. The real gurus are the ones who
can knock out a couple of NVIDIA drivers before breakfast, 4-dimensional hypercube
simulators by lunch, and port Halo to a TokyoFlash watch before the evening’s Firefly
marathon on SyFy. I can’t do that. But I am a decent writer, have enough of a working
knowledge of the subject to make me harmless, and know how to spell “3D.” So here
we are.
■ Introduction
xiv
First and foremost this book is for experienced Android programmers who want to at
least learn a little of the language of 3D. At least enough to where at the next game
programmer’s cocktail party you too can laugh at the quaternion jokes with the best
of them.
This book covers the basics in both theory of 3D and implementations using the
industry standard OpenGL ES toolkit for small devices. While Android can support
both flavors—version 1.x for the easy way, and version 2.x for those who like to get
where the nitty-is-gritty—I mainly cover the former, except in the final chapter which
serves as an intro to the latter and the use of programmable shaders.
Chapter 1 serves as an intro to OpenGL ES alongside the long and tortuous path of the
history of computer graphics. Chapter 2 is the math behind basic 3D rendering,
whereas Chapters 3 through 8 lead you gently through the various issues all graphics
programmers eventually come across, such as how to cast shadows, render multiple
OpenGL screens, add lens flare, and so on. Eventually this works its way into a simple
(S-I-M-P-L-E!) solar-system model consisting of the sun, earth, and some stars—a
traditional 3D exercise. Chapter 9 looks at best practices and development tools, and
Chapter 10 serves as a brief overview of OpenGL ES 2 and the use of shaders.
So, have fun, send me some M&Ms, and while you’re at it feel free to check out my
own app currently just in the Apple App Store: Distant Suns 3. Yup, that’s the same
application that started out on a Commodore Amiga 1000 in 1985 as a 24-line basic
program that drew a couple hundred random stars on the screen.
It’s bigger now.
–Mike Smithwick
