Best resources to learn shaders for real-time rending

Question

I am looking for a good introduction and reference for learning shaders for Maya and other 3D applications. I've search around the internet, but seem to have run into problems finding good communities or good resources.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you're using OpenGL shaders then the Orange Book is your first point of call. It's remarkably readable.

Somewhat more advanced, GPU Gems is also excellent, highly readable, and treats most of the more common problems in some depth.

EDIT: As per comment about normals then it sounds like you need to get you head around some maths in the area first too. It's a little old now and some of the early scene-setting chapters are somewhat out of date, but Mathematical Elements for Computer Graphics is still an excellent text on the concepts and the meat of the book will set you up with a solid mathematical foundation. Make no mistake, this isn't a light treatise but it was the bible for the subject for a good many years. You might profitably use a text on Linear Algebra too.