ShaderX Shader Programming Tips & Tricks With DirectX 9

About the Authors
River Media, 2002) and Direct3D ShaderX: Vertex and Pixel Shader Tips and Tricks
(Wordware, 2002). Christopher is a graduate of Boston University.
David Pangerl
David’s addiction to computers and games started early in his life, and the vision
to create virtual worlds continues to be a strong force in his life. He has been
involved in the production of several games, including Crash, Casanova, Hitchcock,
Hannibal, and most recently Mistmare. His main interests are computer
graphics, artificial intelligence, and compilers.
Kurt Pelzer
As a senior programmer at Codecult, Kurt developed several real-time simulations
and technology demos built on CC’s high-end 3D engine Codecreatures
(e.g., a launch demo for nVidia’s GeForce4 Ti generation and the well-known
Codecreatures-Benchmark-Pro). He designed the innovative fx systems of
Codecreatures and was involved in creating a simulation of the Shanghai
TRANSRAPID track for SIEMENS AG. Kurt also worked on Piranha Bytes’ PC
game Gothic and the top-selling Gothic II—which were named RPG of the Year in
Germany in 2001 and 2002. In prehistoric times Kurt started programming on
C64 and Atari’s ST; later on he studied mathematics, always focusing on computer
graphics. When he’s not scribbling down equations or reading the book of
seven seals, Kurt works at Piranha Bytes to guarantee a high level of visual quality
for the company’s future products.
Emil Persson
Emil recently graduated from Luleå University of Technology in Northern Sweden
after studying computer science and engineering. Over the years Emil has
gathered experience from early software rendering attempts to advanced techniques
in the Glide, OpenGL, and Direct3D APIs. His web site at http://esprit.
campus.luth.se/~humus/ focuses on real-time 3D graphics. In the future you’ll
probably find Emil working as a game developer working on the next generation
of game engines.
Tim Preston
Tim is a software engineer working on the Direct3D sections of the Gamebryo
game engine at NDL. He graduated from Princeton University in 1997 with a
degree in chemistry and a desire to do pretty much anything but chemistry. He
went to the University of North Carolina for a master’s in computer science,
where he did a lot of molecular modeling work that led to an interest in 3D graphics.
When he graduated in 1999, the game industry was a good match for his experience
and his goal of not doing anything too important.
Maurice Ribble
Maurice graduated in 2001 from the Milwaukee School of Engineering with a
bachelor’s degree in computer engineering. During his junior year he had the
opportunity to take part in a summer internship at Los Alamos National Labs. He
was somewhat disappointed that other people worked on million-dollar workstations
while he worked on consumer-level hardware, but after writing an application
that performed lighting calculations for volume textures on first-generation
consumer fragment shader hardware, he realized that consumer-level hardware
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