Randima Fernando wrote:This book is about Cg, the premier language for programmable graphics hardware. NVIDIA developed Cg in close collaboration with Microsoft. Cg is the most portable and productive way for you to unleash the power within programmable graphics hardware. This book is a tutorial to teach you how to write Cg programs.

Our Intended Audience

We tried to write this book in a way that makes it valuable to both novices and advanced readers. If you're new to the world of programmable graphics, this book should give you a firm foundation on which to build. If you encounter a word or concept that is foreign to you and not sufficiently explained, consult the "Further Reading" section at the end of each chapter.

The main audience for this book is 3D game and application programmers, managers of such projects, real-time 3D artists, and computer graphics students—or anyone else interested in learning about the state of the art in real-time rendering. You do not have to be an experienced programmer to learn Cg from this book, though you should be relatively familiar with programming language concepts. If you are familiar with C or one of its derivatives, such as C++ or Java, Cg will be very approachable. Cg programs are relatively short, often less than a page, so even an artist or novice programmer can get the gist of Cg from this tutorial and learn to write interesting Cg programs.

Computer graphics programming involves math. Understanding basic algebra and trigonometry will help you appreciate several sections. You should also be familiar with the math behind basic computer graphics vertex transformation and lighting models. You do not need to know OpenGL or Direct3D, but familiarity with either programming interface is very helpful. All of the Cg examples described work with either OpenGL or Direct3D unless otherwise noted. Some examples that require advanced Cg functionality may not work on older graphics processors.