The RenderMan Companion: A Programmer's Guide to Realistic Computer Graphics [Paperback]

Steve Upstill (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201508680 | ISBN-13: 978-0201508680 | Publication Date: January 11, 1990 | Edition: 1

This important book is designed as a tutorial for graphics programmers and provides a strong introduction to using RenderManTM, software developed by Pixar, the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, Ltd. It provides the reader with the information necessary to start generating impressive images that convincingly compete with photography. 0201508680B04062001

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This important book is designed as a tutorial for graphics programmers and provides a strong introduction to using RenderMan^TM, software developed by Pixar, the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, Ltd. It provides the reader with the information necessary to start generating impressive images that convincingly compete with photography.

0201508680B04062001

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (January 11, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201508680
• ISBN-13: 978-0201508680
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Computers & Technology > Graphic Design > Rendering & Ray Tracing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must reference for all Renderman users, October 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The RenderMan Companion: A Programmer's Guide to Realistic Computer Graphics (Paperback)

Altough dated, "The Renderman companion" is a mandatory reference for all Renderman users. This book describes and explain all the aspects of the Renderman interface (in a no specific implementation way) and teach the art of shader programming, illustrating it with high quality color plates. Renderman is a very complex system, but this book make it affordable. The big missed item: no reference about the RIB file format.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A must for every renderman user but dated., June 8, 2001

By 

J. R. Willette (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The RenderMan Companion: A Programmer's Guide to Realistic Computer Graphics (Paperback)

For a long time this was the one and only reference book available to users and without it I would still be trying to decipher the Renderman documentation from Pixar.

Much of the content in the book describes the C programming API used to write programs to create computer graphics and animation. It's been my experience in this day and age, that most users skip over all the C stuff and dive right into the Shading Language. After all, we have animation programs to take care of setting up a scene and moving objects around, we just want to make them look pretty.

Reading through the entire book will undoubtedly give you a better understanding of how renderman and computer graphics works. And is definitely a must for anyone that wants to program applications to work with renderman, but for most people wanting to use renderman to color and light it's all a bit much to take in. We must remind ourselves and look at the cover to see who the book was written for 'A "Programmer's" Guide to Realistic Computer Graphics'.

Overall an excellent and informative companion that I refer to almost every time I write a shader. If it were brought up to date (and included the RIB specification) it would be deserving of another star or two.

If you are trying to choose between this book and "Advanced Renderman" don't bother... get both of them. "The RenderMan Companion" is more of a reference book where "Advanced RenderMan" explores advaced topics with some tutorial components and limited reference, picking up where the Companion left off. Even the authors of "Advanced Renderman" recommend that you keep this book handy.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The standard RenderMan reference, May 15, 1999

By 

Noah Gibbs (San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The RenderMan Companion: A Programmer's Guide to Realistic Computer Graphics (Paperback)

If you want to work with RenderMan (Pixar's, BMRT, RenderDotC's or whatever) and RIB (RenderMan Interface Binary) while using C, this is the book. It's not only good, it's the one that everyone who already uses RenderMan recommends. Buy it. It's what all the cool kids are doing =)