You do not need a lot of programming experience to use this book. All of the code shown throughout the book is written in C++, so a basic understanding of C/C++ is a must. The demos on the CD are written using C++, with OpenGL as the graphics API. I tried to keep all of the code and demos as simple as possible to make porting to other lan­guages and graphics APIs possible. Because of this, the demos may not be optimized as much as they could be, so feel free to look for ways to optimize and speed them up.

If you need to brush up on either C++ or OpenGL, I recommend you visit http://www. gametutorials. com and http://nehe. gamedev. net for help. Other good references include books from the Premier Game Pro­gramming series. OpenGL Game Programming and Game Programming All

~ГГ^Э-

In One will put you in an excellent position for the rest of the book.

Once you have a decent grasp of C++ and OpenGL, you are almost ready to begin your journey into the wide world of 3D.

This book assumes you can create a rudimentary 3D engine, either by leveraging an API or manually with software that, at minimum, can render polygons and perform clipping, projection, and rasterization.

You will also need to have a good understanding of algebra and trigo­nometry. Understanding vectors, matrices, and quaternions is also important. If you feel uncomfortable with any of those (except maybe the quaternion part; no one really ever feels comfortable with them), I would suggest a quick visit to http://www. math. com for algebra and trigonometry, and a review Chapters 1 and 2 for a review of vector, matrix, and quaternion math.

Now you are ready to conquer 3D models. Have fun!