I never thought I was going to be able to do graphics programming because I believed I was bad at math. The only class I failed in college was a math course. And yet here I am, actually doing decently well at handling math subjects!!
Visualizing math has made all the difference. Abstract math means nothing to me, and I don’t expect it to mean anything to you either. But that doesn’t mean you’re not good at math- it might just mean you have untapped potential at geometry and visual-based math!
The best way to use this tutorial is probably to either a) reference it when you’re confused about or forget the meaning of a term used in another tutorial (for example, a tutorial says “get the surface normal” or “transform into X space” without explaining what that means) or b) reading it as a primer for more complex discussions of the subjects presented.
To really harness the math involved in this tutorial, you’ll need to do a combination of experimentation and research: start writing code to experiment with the terms you learn, and read books that go more in-depth explaining the math involved.
Or, you could do what I did, and use it as a brush-up on your graphics-related linear algebra skills before having a technical interview.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This tutorial is going to cover how the following math topics apply to representing 3D geometry:
- What vectors and matrices represent
- Vector addition & subtraction
- Vector cross products & surface normals
- Vector normalization
- Vector dot products
- Matrix * vector multiplication
Linden Reid 