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Rating: Summary: Good Introduction Review: I'm not complete reading this book yet - but from what I read so far - I found this to be a very informative book. It has a nice thorough introduction to most of the basic concepts dealing with curves and curved surfaces. The mathematical examples are easy to understand - it's a very good book for anyone who is starting to work with curved surfaces or needs a quick refresher. Oh yeah - is it me or does the author look kind of like Sean Connery?
Rating: Summary: Thr poorest book I have ever read!!! Review: This is the pooest book I have ever read. You don't know what the author is triing to clarify. All the equatios seem to have jumped out without any derivation. The author lacks stern mathematic fundamentals.
Rating: Summary: Wonderful book, should be a model for all textbooks Review: You don't have to be a graphics guru to appreciate this book. A good high school math student could grasp the exposition in this book. I highly recommend this to teenage prodigies, not only for the exposition, but to read about the accomplishments of the prodigies who made this science. This book really emphasizes understanding and generalization - it will serve you well when you head out on your own. It is not language or platform specific and will remain relevant to the future for this reason. This book will serve as the foundations of a CAD, animation, or gaming background. It won't make you an expert in any of the fields, but your feet will be well grounded. The book progresses from Bernstein Polynomials, parametric Curves through Bezier Curves and on into the more recent developments in Knots and NonUniform Rational B-Splines.The author is more than qualified to write an historical perspective: He's been a leading authority on the subject of computer graphics and CAD programming for more than a quarter of a century. He's been a personal acquaintance of many of the principal characters in the unfolding of this exciting and still young branch of mathematics. Characters such as Pierre Bezier, Steven Coons, and Carl de Boor. I should emphasize that the historic perspective doesn't interfere with the flow and development of the text from a purely mathematical point of view. You could read the text and skip the history, but that'd be a shame because the historical accounts and biographies are what set this text apart. In some sense you feel like you're experiencing the thrill of discovery in the same way that the theory developed - only in fast forward. For these reasons, this book will also be of interest to anyone who enjoyed James Gleick's Chaos. But unlike Gleick's Chaos, you'll really get to understand the mathematics behind the story - the story of the development of NURBS. It reads like a novel with twists, coincidences and subplots. The men behind NURBS have had a profound influence on the last part of the 20th century and their methods will literally shape the future as the graphic tools of tomorrow's designers. I wish all textbooks could be written in this style. That would also mean all textbooks would have to be written by the founders of their respective fields and that wouldn't be a bad thing. If you're a blue-collar Microsoft junkie looking for some sort of certification to let you pretend to be a programmer, perhaps your appetite will be better served by more specific texts. But for anyone who appreciates the art of programming, this book is for you - even if you don't ever touch graphics, it's just a fun book.
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