ShaderX Shader Programming Tips & Tricks With DirectX 9

About the Authors
where he develops tools and demos for real-time 3D graphics. Prior to this, he
worked for a small game company and as a research assistant in a high-energy
physics laboratory. He is very glad to have avoided graduate school, and even happier
to be working in computer graphics, which he picked up as a hobby after his
father brought home a strange beige Amiga 1000.
Jeffrey Kiel
Jeff started his work in graphics as an undergrad at the University of North
Carolina doing volume rendering research. After a stint in the corporate world, he
moved on to work at Interactive Magic as a lead programmer on Destiny (one of
the first 3D strategy games), iF18, and WarBirds. Then he joined Sinister Games
to work on Shadow Company (3D squad-based strategy game) and the Dukes of
Hazzard I and II on PS1. Jeff returned to his passion for graphics by joining nVidia,
where he has worked on a couple of 3D engines, incorporating shader technology
into real-world applications. His shader experience covers standard transform/
lighting/shading, special effects, mesh animation, and particle systems.
Shaun Kime
Shaun is a software engineer at NDL where he is the lead developer on the 3ds
max tools pipeline. Prior to working at NDL, he worked on the Mimesis project at
North Carolina State University doing research on integrating narrative planning
into virtual worlds. When he isn’t at work, he can be found reviewing local pubs at
http://www.drinktheworld.com.
Jakub Klarowicz
Jakub is an engine programmer at Techland where he works on all low-level
aspects of game engine development. His biggest interest is, of course, real-time
3D graphics. He received an MS in computer science from Wroclaw University of
Technology in 2001, and has been programming computers since he was 10. Jakub
always wanted to push hardware to its limits so he started learning assembler
while his friends were still playing games. In his work with 3D graphics, Jakub has
gone all the way from software rendering to shader programming. He has been
playing with hardware-accelerated rendering for five years, using Glide, OpenGL,
and Direct3D. For the last three years he has worked with 3D graphics
professionally.
Jesse Laeuchli
Jesse is a self-taught programmer who now makes his home in Budapest, Hungary.
As the child of a Foreign Service officer, he has lived in such places as China,
Taiwan, Africa, and Saudi Arabia. He has written for several computer magazines,
books, and web sites, and is also an avid epee fencer. His web site is
www.laeuchli.com/jesse/.
Sylvain Lefebvre
Sylvain is a Ph.D. student in the iMAGIS team at the French National Institute
for Research in Computer Science, working on the rendering of natural scenes.
He is also interested in many aspects of game programming and real-time graphics.
He is currently focusing on developing new approaches with vertex and pixel
shaders to handle the complexity of natural scenes. His home page is at
http://www.aracknea.net.
xiii