FoCG finished…

It is said ‘Fundamentals of Computer Graphics’ is widely adopted by many famous US universities as the first book for computer graphics courses. I can understand, that this book really covers a wide range of topics of CG from a newbie view and you can really get a perceptual recognition after reading it. But I don’t think this is a rigorous book.

1. Writing style

Amazon.com has a very sincere comment on this book:

I have an extensive background in CS, and decided to take an intro class in graphics to fulfill a graduate breadth requirement. This book was listed as a reference, so I borrowed it from a friend. I tried to use this throughout the class, only to be repeatedly confused and frustrated. There are two main flaws in this book:
1- In any chapter, the author insists on starting the narrative by immediately using terminology he has never defined or mentioned before. Peter Shirley must live on a different planet where you don't have to define your technical terminology before you use it. It is shocking that such drivel made it through the editing process.
2- The order of presentation in each chapter defies all stylistic guidelines for a technical publication. Instead of starting with a high level overview and slowly building up detail, Shirley jumps back and forth between technical and non-technical high level narrative. Sometimes the chapter begins with technical details (using undefined terminology) and ends with an overview. This is ridiculous.
I have no idea how this book could be getting positive reviews. It is terrible in every sense of the word.

I totally agree and this made me very painful when reading it.

2. Chapters arrangements

Can you believe that there are no elaborations on surfaces such a critical topic. Maybe it is not suitable for rookies, so let’s check other chapters. ‘Image-based Rendering’ has only about 6 pages.

Anyway, I got a perceptual understand from this book. But I guess I’ll never touch this book later.