Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max

Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max

Publisher: Focal Press
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2007-03-20
Sales Rank: 24433
ISBN / ASIN: 0240808932
EAN: 9780240808932
Binding: Paperback
Manufacturer: Focal Press
Studio: Focal Press
Average Rating: 4

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 rays own specific area lights and its new daylight system. Finally, the book reviews mental rayspecific 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

Review:
Un buen libro para comenzar con mental ray

Escribo en castellano porque entiendo que hay mucha gente que se encontrara en la misma situacion que yo. La verdad que con saber muy poco de ingles, y conociendo el 3d studio en ingles, se entiende muy bien ¨¦ste libro. Aclaro, es para el 3d studio 9, y sirve, sobre todas las cosas para los que estan arrancando con el mental ray... muy buenos consejos para ahorrar tiempo en renderizados, todo tipo de shaders, por ahi falta realismo, pero eso se logra animandose un poco mas que lo que dice el libro. Otro consejito, si sos de argentina, NO DUDES EN COMPRARLO POR CURRIER!!!!!!!!! Yo lo encargue por el otro envio, el del medio, y quedo en correo argentino, y me cobraron impuestos!!!!! por mas que sean libros, te cobran igual, asique ni lo pienses, por unos dolares mas te llega mas rapido y mas barato...

Review:
Be careful not working for earlier revisions,,just for 3ds Max 9

I have just received the book and start to read and really liked it. And then the big disappointment came: the exercises do not start up. I have 3ds Max 7 and tried to figure out what the problem could be, why the dll's are not found. After some time I have started to search on the internet what the problem could be? And I have found the the review placed here by somebody unfortunatelly just on the 20th of May 2007.I have received the book already by that time:-(.I can not tell you how disappointed I was/am. The book seemed so good, at least the intro, but I felt cheated by the author not stating in the title that works just with 3dsmax revision 9 and not stated on the CD either ,so opening the CD I lost the chance to send back the whole stuff. I was so angry on the author. Did he do it deliberately just to sell more books? Why he couldn't do the excercises in an earlier revision? Also I was annoyed because he thanked for everybody for creating this book but forget to give an e-mail where he could be reached. I tried to go to the WEBpage stated in the book the masteringmentalray, but I have to be registered to send him a mail. And guess what? None of the free e-mail provider addresses (hotmail, freemail etc) are accepted. This is the first site that I found like this.
So the author is well hidden.
I give one start to this book just because I felt cheated by not stating the revision of the SW in the title and this mislead me. Yeah I can download the max9 trial and then feel stressed that I have just one month to go through everything. I might do it one day but now I am too angry to just open the book once again.
Also be careful the Relaistic Architectural Visualization with 3DS max and mental Ray has the same "childsickness" files work just with 3DS max 9 -I have found now the reviews on that book also. The author is not the same but the publisher is.

Review:
A great book for learning mental ray for 3ds max9

Well, when I first seen the advertisement for the this book. I was looking for something to better understand mental ray renderer and its materials and shaders. Joep The author does a good job of breaking things down to get a better understanding of mental ray rendering and its shaders and materials.

one thing I would caution is that this book and the files on the cd that come with it are for 3ds max 9 . I didn't see this anywhere in the book itself or on this page describing the book contents. but I was able to download the trial version of 3ds max 9 and use it (30 days). the book also talks about arch and design material which are great and render a lot faster than the mental ray material and shaders. and need little or no tweeking at all.
if you are looking for a book to help you write script for materials or shaders for mental ray this is not the book for you. with the new arch and design you do not need to.

If it wasn't for a file for a tutorial that was missing that I was able to get from the author himself through e-mail and a couple other areas that seen to be missing a step in a tutorial. I would probably give this a 5 star rating because I learn a great deal from this book and the author was very helpful in explaining somethings in the book that I didn't fully understand in certain section of the book (through e-mail). what the heck, I am going to give it 5 stars. HA!

though I do believe the second print will be even better.

Bryan

PW: giftfromfatherxmas. Credit goes to Sylver@koobe.net

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