Rendering for Beginners: Image synthesis using RenderMan [Paperback]

Saty Raghavachary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 27, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0240519353 | ISBN-13: 978-0240519357 | Edition: 1

'Rendering for Beginners is bound to become a must-read for anyone interested in Pixar's RenderMan. Saty's experience as both RenderMan practitioner and RenderMan teacher gives him a unique and valuable perspective. I can't wait to add a copy to my own graphics library.'

Dana Batali, Director of RenderMan Development, Pixar Animation Studios

Whether you are an animator, artist or 2D illustrator looking to move to 3D rendering you will be amazed by what can be achieved with RenderMan. Saty Raghavachary offers a complete, non-technical introduction to RenderMan and rendering in general - finally a guide you don't need a math degree to follow!

Full of clear explanations and plenty of samples on the associated website - www.smartcg.com/tech/cg/books/RfB - for you to play with, this color guide will quickly get you up to speed with this powerful, professional program so you too can harness the power of the program to create top quality imagery.

The book features:
* Clear explanations of rendering concepts to get you up and running fast
* Extensive color illustrations to inspire you to make the most of your skills
* An associated website with numerous self-contained examples which you can download, reproduce, modify and learn from
* Comprehensive coverage of RenderMan's functionality to show you how to get the most out of this powerful renderer
* Coverage relevant for all versions of the package, including a section on global illumination introduced in Release 11, as well as the key, general rendering concepts

Pixar's award-winning RenderMan is one of the best renderers available and has been used to create visual effects for dozens of movies since 1985. It is also the renderer used to make blockbuster animated movies such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo. As the beautiful images in this book show, in addition to photoreal imagery you can also use it to create illustrations, visualizations, simulations of natural media and even abstract art!

Contents:
Rendering; RenderMan; RIB syntax; Geometric primitives; Transformations; Camera, output; Controls; Shading; What's next; Resources

Saty Raghavachary is a senior graphics software developer at DreamWorks Feature Animation. He has written software used in The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Shark Tale. He is also a part-time instructor at Gnomon School of Visual Effects, USA where he teaches RenderMan and MEL (Maya) programming.

* Harness the power of Pixar's RenderMan with this introductory guide for the artist - you don't need a maths degree!
* Coverage is relevant for all versions of the package, including v11 and also explains general, key rendering concepts too
* Fully illustrated in color with numerous examples to inspire you to make the most of your skills

Editorial Reviews

Review

"RenderMan for Beginners is bound to become a must-read for anyone interested in Pixar's RenderMan. Saty's experience as both RenderMan practitioner and RenderMan teacher gives him a unique and valuable perspective. I can't wait to add a copy to my own graphics library."

Dana Batali, Director of RenderMan Development, Pixar Animation Studios

Book Description

Finally, a non-technical introduction to Pixar's RenderMan written for artists!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (December 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240519353
• ISBN-13: 978-0240519357
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,194,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > Computers & Technology > Graphic Design > Rendering & Ray Tracing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Things Come in Small Packages, January 25, 2006

By 

John C. Finnegan "SIGGRAPH 2006 Conference Ch... (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rendering for Beginners: Image synthesis using RenderMan (Paperback)

The topic of the Renderman Rendering language is a huge and unweildly topic. This book by Saty Raghavachary makes it a very manageable subject of study for the student or professional interested in using this technology.

As a college professor teaching Digital Lighting and Rendering, I am going to add an entire module to the class based on this book. It makes it very easy to explain and it is easy for students to read thus allowing everyone to use one of the more powerful rendering technologies available today.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very nice book, January 1, 2005

By 

RenderMan Geek (L.A, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rendering for Beginners: Image synthesis using RenderMan (Paperback)

Been reading my copy for the past few days, it is terrific. The book is wonderful for a novice such as myself. I have played around with rendering in Max, LightWave etc. but have always wanted to learn RenderMan.

The content is beautifully laid out, LOVE the all-color images and illustrations. It is for beginners but sure includes a lot of material! The text is peppered with all sorts of references that point to even more goodies. The author seems to have a direct, sometimes humorous style that is very appealing to me. Can't wait to start downloading the examples and playing with them.

I highly recommend this book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK, May 21, 2006

By 

Gavin Hogben "universalarts" (providence, RI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rendering for Beginners: Image synthesis using RenderMan (Paperback)

This is a terrific book - and not just for beginners. The author gives a very clear grounding in the concepts that underpin 3D rendering applications, and shows his own deep experience with Pixar's Renderman specification and the implementations built on it by Pixar and others. He also conveys very strongly his own enthusiasm for Renderman and the underlying REYES algorithm, and this is infectious. After a few pages, you will certainly want to access one of the free or trial implementations, and give them a go for yourself.

The book is informed by extremely attractive and colorful images that very clearly illustrate the specific tools and techniques available to Renderman users, and these are fully supported by code snippets (within the text and on the companion website) that make the Renderman structure fully transparent for beginners - just as the title promises!

This is no small accomplishment as the power of Renderman - as exampled in the Pixar and many other movies made with it - arises from the extremely fine degree of control over visual phenomena that it makes accessible to users. First time exposure to the range and precision of these controls can be daunting even for experienced 3d users, but the author's explanations of the RIB and SLIM shader language scripts that drive Renderman are all you need to begin experiments of your own, and to take advantage of more specialized/advanced titles like Advanced Renderman by Apodaca and Gritz.

Renderman is great for photorealistic rendering, but it also excels for non-photorealistic techniques like 'tooning and beyond, and one exceptionally interesting part of the book (again well-supported by the website) provides plenty of illustrations and code for exotic techniques that emulate all sorts of effects from impressionist paintings to woodblock illustrations, and more.

For anyone into 3d, Renderman for Beginners makes clear that rendering packages are not just the back end of a modeling process, but are absolutely central to the practical and artistic effects that define the amazing potential of today's 3d/CG work. To understand the conceptual framework of a high-quality renderer is also to understand, and to be thrilled and amazed by the remarkable workings of our own visual engagement with the world. And, after many years of working in this field, Saty Raghavachary, the author, is obviously still very much under the spell of this excitement. Whether you read Renderman for Beginners as a practical introduction to a prospective career, say as a Technical Director in CG, or whether you read it just for a general understanding of how our contemporary visual culture is evolving, this book will satisfy you fully. Thanks, Saty.