What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Direct3D, reviews the components of Direct3D and the graphics pipeline, explores the latest features in DirectX 11.1 and 11.2, and looks at how to build and debug Direct3D applications with C# and SharpDX.

Chapter 2, Rendering with Direct3D, introduces a simple rendering framework, teaches how to render primitive shapes, and compiles HLSL shaders and use textures.

Chapter 3, Rendering Meshes, explores rendering more complex objects and demonstrates how to use the Visual Studio graphics content pipeline to compile and render 3D assets.

Chapter 4, Animating Meshes with Vertex Skinning, teaches how to implement vertex skinning for the animation of 3D models.

Chapter 5, Applying Hardware Tessellation, covers tessellating primitive shapes, parametric surfaces, mesh subdivision/refinement, and techniques for optimizing tessellation performance.

Chapter 6, Adding Surface Detail with Normal and Displacement Mapping, teaches how to combine tessellation with normal and displacement mapping to increase surface detail. Displacement decals are explored and then optimized for performance with displacement adaptive tessellation.

Chapter 7, Performing Image Processing Techniques, describes how to use compute shaders to implement a number of image-processing techniques often used within postprocessing.

Chapter 8, Incorporating Physics and Simulations, explores implementing physics, simulating ocean waves, and rendering particles.

Chapter 9, Rendering on Multiple Threads and Deferred Contexts, benchmarks multithreaded rendering and explores the impact of multithreading on two common environment-mapping techniques.

Chapter 10, Implementing Deferred Rendering, provides insight into the techniques necessary to implement deferred rendering solutions.

Chapter 11, Integrating Direct3D with XAML and Windows 8.1, covers how to implement Direct3D Windows Store apps and optionally integrate with XAML based UIs and effects. Loading and compiling resources within Windows 8.1 is also explored.

Appendix, Further Reading, includes all the references and papers that can be referred for gathering more details and information related to the topics covered in the book.