Hello there! I´ve been programming DirectDraw for a while and I would like to move to 3D soon. I´ve planned to read the "3D Game Engine Design: A practical approach..." by Eberly, but I think I need to learn an API like D3D or OpenGL first. I´ve decided to learn Direct3D so, Which book do you recommend me for learning it? I´ve seen that Prima published two books on the subject but both of them received a good score from the readers at Amazon, so I´m pretty confused. I´ve also think about buying the two books from Prima and the one from Eberly, but I think that would be rather redundant. Ah! One more thing. Is it loading 3DSMax models the only way to put characters in a 3D Game or can that task be accomplished in another way? Hope you can help me!

I personally needed someone to hold my hand through writing a windows program, so I used Zen of Direct3d. It sounds like this is a little too basic for you, so i would say cross it off the list (and you wont have to worry about the headache of poor editing and lack of code that is "on the cd! i swear! really!")

As for models, you COULD do them by hand plotting out the points, but what fun is that? Milkshape and a handful of other programs let you create decent 3d models, and are a hell of a lot cheaper than 3ds Max.

Ok, thanks! I´ll keep that advice in mind. Have you been programming 3D for a while? Is it that hard? I mean, my C is rather good, I think my math too, but is it such a difficult task to make a decent 3D demo?

Thanks for the advice RelisH! I went today to the bookstore and the book is going to arrive in 35/40 days, so I guess I´ll have to wait a little while. I couldn´t find its table of contents, so which topics does it explain. Which kind of game am I going to be able to program when finishing with the book?