http://www.igda.org/Forums/showthread.php?threadid=8353

If you wana reply here as well no biggie.

Well I don't know if you care (since you mentioned DirectX specifically), but OpenGL Game Programming was a good book for me.

nehe.gamedev.net is good for OpenGL and C++ tutorials. I believe there is also nexe.gamedev.net for DirectX tutorials.

Otherwise, I am a programmer, not an artist. I would suggest also going to Amazon.com and checking for books on Maya and 3DSMax. Then check the user ratings. Usually if there are 20 ratings, and the average is 5 stars, you can be sure it is a good book on the subject.

That is how I picked out the books on my wish list, which dealt with either programming, game development, Linux, Open Source development, or start-your-own-business information. There were a few books that I decided against just because so many people thought badly of it.

Also gamedev.net has a books section, and they have user ratings there too. Just don't forget to post your own ratings for the good of others. I know I found a few bad books in my time. B-)

First of all, if you haven’t already got a copy of Maya you should be looking at much cheaper tools. Things like www.Wings3d.com, http://www.blender.org/, or Milkshape3D (http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/) . All of these packages invariably have the same tools, once you've learned one it's pretty easy to pick up the others.

Learning a program like Maya or any of the other programs mentioned above is not a trivial task. In fact it could take 3 to 6 weeks to become proficient at modeling in one of these programs.

There are many books on direct3D, unfortunately understanding how to load a model, set a texture is not going to give you a game engine. You will need a good understanding of the rendering pipeline. You will want to be fairly proficient with linear algebra (especially linear transformations), and your vector math should be good as well. Once you have these tools you are now in a position to actually make directX do something. It isn't going to be as easy as just reading some books. A lot of direct3D won’t make any sense until you understand the graphics pipeline and how Direct3D abstracts various aspects of it.

Once you have a good understanding of all the core concepts you will then be ready to actually do something with Direct3D.

I would recommend "3D computer graphics" by Alan Watt as a good place to start.