Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max [Paperback]

Joep van der Steen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0240808932 | ISBN-13: 978-0240808932 | Edition: 1

Realize your vision with stunning renders of your 3ds Max projects that can only be achieved with a powerful engine like mental ray. Beginning with a concise review of the essential concepts, you proceed to step-by-step tutorials that teach you how to render scenes with indirect light or with specific effects, such as depth of field and motion blur. Contour line shading and various other mental ray features are presented in detail, then you learn how to use the different light types of 3ds Max inside mental ray and how to use mental ray's own specific area lights and its new daylight system. Finally, the book reviews mental ray-specific materials and what effects can be obtained by using most of the specific mental ray shaders.

Key Features:
* Color reproductions illustrate a wide array of subtle techniques.
* Contains never-before-published information about how shaders work
* Companion CD-ROM includes tutorial project files

Editorial Reviews

Review

Put yourself on a path to productivity with Joep's deliberate approach to a logical workflow. Enjoy the exercises and the satisfaction you get from producing cost effective renderings and a foundation of knowledge that you can apply to your work.
Ted Boardman,
Author and Instructor

'A solid foundation. with thorough explanations, practical examples, and lots of pictures. Each chapter provides a clear set of objectives and insightful production tips.'
Steven D. Papke,President, Vizdepot.com

From the Back Cover

Realize your vision with stunning renders of your 3ds Max projects that can only be achieved with a powerful engine like mental ray. Beginning with a concise review of the essential concepts, you proceed to step-by-step tutorials that teach you how to render scenes with

. Indirect illumination options including Final Gather, Caustics, and Global Illumination
. Render options such as Contour Line rendering, Camera Effects, Displacement, Depth of Field, and Motion Blur effects
. Lighting options including those provided within 3ds Max, as well as the four mr lights-Area Omni and Area Spot inside the Standard Light group, and mr Sky and mr Sun inside the Photometric Light group
. Material options available inside 3ds Max including Arch and Design and Car Paint, DGS and Glass materials, and Sub Surface Scattering materials
. Shader options including mr material-related shaders, the tiny shaders that control small specific effects, and shaders that are used to create water, with all its effects

The companion CD includes tutorial files and sample files that demonstrate the possibilities.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240808932
• ISBN-13: 978-0240808932
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,017,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 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:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Reference mr Book, April 13, 2007

By 

Juan Ponce Casasola (Guatemala) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max (Paperback)

This book that can help you understand how mental ray works. The tutorials are easy to follow, some take sometime to render specially when rendering the final images, but that's obvious since mental ray it's very computer intensive. The author covers pretty much every shader of mr; there's an explanation of each one, a simple tutorial to follow and understand what the parameters alters the render, also covers indirect illumination using GI and FG, used alone and together.

The only part that I didn't like is the tutoria of caustics by reflection, after completing the render they didn't look realistic as i was hoping... but as in almost book out there, there are things to do by yourself and do trial and error renderings until you get the result that you like.

So if are new to mental ray, this book can help you out on understanding this powerful render engine, how it works, what it can do, what things need to be considered before applying shaders; the author made a book that's easy to read, lots of pictures of reference in full color so there's no way you can get lost while playing with the parameters within max.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book I Should Have Bought First Up, October 29, 2007

By 

Nicholas T. Fox (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max (Paperback)

I've purchased several books on using mental ray and 3ds and this is the one I should have bought at the start. The author guides you through the process of using mental ray with 3ds Max, explaining and illustrating in the book what you'll see on your own computer. While setting up a rendering using mental ray is not difficult, its settings can appear daunting to both the beginner and the more experienced user. Joep goes through all of mental rays major settings in order to set up a rendering. Further, he explains how to use Final Gather alone or together with Global Illumination to achieve optimal results. This is something that not many authors do in the same depth, if at all. He also explains what each important mental ray setting means and how small changes to them affect your scenes.
A variety of interesting and different models are used throught the book and come on the accompanying CD, which is a very nice touch and so much better than the normal practise of doing everything with one or two boring models - this book is aimed at stimulating your senses through its presentation.
The author goes much further than simply setting up mental ray by covering the shaders that are included with 3ds Max and there is something in this book for just about any 3ds Max user, no matter what their level of experience. Using it as a reference will enable you to produce the renderings you've always dreamed about; and it will do so by increasing your understanding of mental ray. In the end it's the authors knowledge and explanations of how mental ray does things that makes this such a worthwhile and valuable reference.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars how to climb a mountain, February 22, 2008

By 

M. heesterbeek (netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max (Paperback)

Whenever you need to learn a new program, it tends to present itself as a huge mountain to climb. Mental Ray is no different. The lack of documentation comming with this Autodesk program makes climbing this mountain a sheer impossible task. Not with this book. Joep van der Steen takes you by the hand and showes you the paths. He does this by starting of with standard scene's and presets. Then with every tutorial he goes more and more into the details. Step by step you feel more and more at home with the program. Allready half way the book you have a good idea how to work with Mental Ray. But it goes on with more and more easy explanation of complicated stuff. The mountain turns out to be a joy to climb