Believe it or not, the DirectX SDK documentation has a bunch of useful information in it. Make sure you check out the reference section. I'm sure there are more useful articles, but that would be a good start.

While I'm at it, I'll explain mip maps. Mips are just scaled down versions of a texture. Every scale it downsizes is one power of 2. Or you can say the size deminsions are halved. 256x256 to 128x128, etc, all the way down to 1x1. This way, the graphics card can choose which scale of the texture to use depending on how big that texture will be rendered on the screen. It's much faster to draw a 2x2 texture miles away than it is to render the 256x256 version you loaded. Since it shows up on screen in less than a 2x2 area. Makes sense? A full mip map chain will jack memory up to 130%. It's usually well worth it.

Hi there,

real cool effects are usually made with pixel- or vertex shaders. To dive into that complex theme I recommend you the following book: Microsoft DirectX 9 Programmable Graphics Pipeline (Microsoft Press).

Here's the amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735616531/qid=1118427438/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-2791328-9628066?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I also recommend this one: Learn Vertex & Pixel Shader Programming with DirectX 9
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1556222874/qid=1118427438/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i4_xgl14/002-2791328-9628066?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

Well, in fact shader programming is a realy complex theme BUT the results are worth it to dive into it.
For developing shaders I also recommend you ATI Rendermonkey. This programm has also a lot of cool shaders you can use by yourself. Try it ... it's free! ROFL

hope I could help you

greetz
codex

Depending on what you want, you can usually find more advanced topics in books. I might recommend the ShaderX series by Wolfgang Engel (Editor).