Books about RTVFX

General Discussion
#1

I am currently colleting Information for my Bachelor Thesis and was looking for books about RTVFX since my Prof really wants to have a book as one of the sources, but I couldn’t really find any books.
Does anyone here know any books about RTVFX?

#2

I do have a few books on VFX but not actually any on RTVFX I could be wrong but this is the only book on my list specific to UE4 and Houdini for RTVFX but I’ve never purchased it because I don’t read Japanese - Amazon.co.uk

Not sure if its helpful or what you’re looking for.

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#3

Classics for film vfx would be voulme 1 and 2 of Elemental Magic. It’s like the Animator’s Survival Kit, but for VFX Artists :smiley:

Elemental Magic: The Art of Special Effects Animation
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elemental-Magic-Special-Animation-Classical/dp/0240811631

Elemental Magic , Volume 2: The Technique of Special Effects Animation
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elemental-Magic-II-Technique-Animation/dp/0240814797/ref=pd_bxgy_sccl_1/261-4649199-1673338?pd_rd_w=3cyKv&content-id=amzn1.sym.40f919ed-e530-4b1a-8d7e-39de6587208d&pf_rd_p=40f919ed-e530-4b1a-8d7e-39de6587208d&pf_rd_r=9BVZDZNW45756A31BXKE&pd_rd_wg=d8iCd&pd_rd_r=a516311b-8ec1-43a1-a643-f8b70ee6f7c7&pd_rd_i=0240814797&psc=1

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#4

Alright thanks a lot, sadly I can’t read japanese either x)

#5

Thank you! I think those will do real good :smiley:

#6

As VFX is a fusion of art and tech, so it depends on more what the thesis is about :smiley:

For Art, I +1 the Elemental Magic books as well.
But I do also recommend "Artists’ Master Series: Color and Light" for strengthening color and shape theory. It is quite new and has a good collection of information of examples.
There is also “The VES Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard VFX Practices and Procedures”, which is mainly focused on movies but has a big chapter about games (and the difference between them and movies) + a Chapter about VR/AR. It is mostly written text but is mainly targeted as an overview of the whole pipeline and condense it in a good manner. You can “borrow” the first edition digitally in the internet archive (I only have read the first edition but the newest one is from 2020 so the knowledge should be quite applicable)

For the tech side it gets harder, besides them being quite expensive, there is none specially on the topic of RTVFX (at least not that I know of).
But: on a budget, I recommend “The Unity Shader Bible” as it has some fun visual examples that help grasp the concept.
If you have access to a good library, you could also see if you find “Real-Time Rendering (Fourth Edition)”. It is all about rendering and shaders but has all the info on that that one would need.

That aside: For my thesis it helped to understand the core of what my thesis is about and search on books or scientific papers on that topic. This made the process not as overwhelming and helped me to not want to add “all information” that I found from other resources :slight_smile:

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