Turn 3D models into film-worthy digital animations by mastering mental ray rendering once and for all. This must-have guide is the only book on the market to focus exclusively on mental ray in Maya, 3ds Max, and XSI, and it’s packed with techniques and insights you can’t get anywhere else. Best of all, the book’s advanced rendering concepts apply to other rendering software as well, including V-Ray, Brazil, Maxwell and RenderMan. You’ll get a high-level look at techniques that usually take professionals years to figure out.

Render them speechless with this one-stop reference on mental ray, the industry standard for rendering 3D models and effects into realistic-looking images for any purpose, be it for film, commercial, design, or architectural. Author Boaz Livny provides the real-world know-how to create stunning, highly realistic images with mental ray and helps you make informed decisions on advanced lighting and workflow issues that will transform your creations into studio quality photo-realistic characters, objects and landscapes. Includes a full-color insert showcasing professional-level renderings plus a valuable CD filled with HDR images, custom shaders, textures, and other bonus content to get you started using mental ray today.

Very Useful Book for 3D Artists

I had been using mental ray for rendering for a long time but I still wasn’t very clear on some of the principles of use. After reading this book I understood mental ray far better. The concepts are explained very clearly and it goes through the algorithms in great depth. Its too difficult for a beginner but somebody who is already experienced in mental ray and has a strong background in computing will find this book extremely helpful. The book showed me many more possibilities of use and improved my rendering quality. I love this book and highly recommend it.

The first useful mental ray book I’ve found.

This is the first mental ray book I’ve found that clearly explains the options available in mental ray and how to tune those options. My only suggestion is that the author should put a concise list of real world materials and their corresponding lighting model(e.g. refractions that go through severel different materials(glass and water) with different IOR - dielectric shading model). I know these examples are supplied in the text but they are not in a central location.

An excellent Mental Ray Bible

This really is a fantastic book on Mental Ray. You learn many various aspects to a degree unmatched in any other book that I’ve seen; and the fact that it covers multiple 3D platforms, is icing on the cake. Truly a "must have" for anyone working in 3D animation and Digital Arts.

My only wish for this book, would be a more in-depth tutorial set, perhaps a companion book. But it is "nearly" a perfect book. :-)

Mental ray Maya,3ds, XSI---Excellent!!

This book is the book that goes under the hood of the mechanics of mental ray. I learned so much by reading it. The MR features in all three apps are equally explained. The author describes the topics in detail:

Shaders,Shaders and more... (Architectural shaders little explanation)
Final Gathering and Ambient Occlusion
Subsurface Scattering
Indirect Illumination
Textures and projection, and more....
A Bonus chapter on Surface Approximation on CD

I recommend it to all CG artist.

For Intermediate Users

This book is for Intermediate users. If you are just starting out with Mental Ray I wouldn’t suggest that you purchase this book. So far from what I can tell this book is a great learning tool.

mental ray- excelente guia avanzada

el libro es netamente tecnico. abarca tantos conceptos importantes para comprender el manejo de la iluminacion indirecta, el uso de fotones, final gather,, sombreadores, teoria de iluminacion etc.
ES un completo manual que permite comprender con mayor exactitud el manejo de mental ray y saber realmente que es lo que sucede cuando modificamos un valor. con este libro uno comprende el porque delas cosas.
y lo mejor es que no se centra en un solo programa, abarca hasta 3.
con este libro mental ray es mucho mas facil de comprender.

Must have for all serious mental ray users

Every serious mental ray user needs to have this book and actually read it. this is not a quick guide, its an extensive reference. Plan to spend some time with this book and a highlighter pen, read and reread it. Considering it has information in mental ray stand alone, Maya, Max, and XSI its pretty amazing. This is not the kind of book you whip out on the job just to figure out which preset shader to use, its detailed information on how mental ray actually works. If you seriously study this book and really understand it, you will master mental ray. The fact that it might be slightly out of date with regards to the mia shader in Maya is rather irrelevant. if you really understand this book then you’ll understand what every setting in the mia shader actually does which is much more important. I’m about half way through it. my only criticism is that it could have more hands on examples, however their are plenty of other sources for that.

Use mental ray? This is the one book you need on your shelves

Being a self-study mental ray enthusiast, I’ve turned to three things in my path to becoming a skilled mental ray user and now a professional in the field, working with it daily.

As such, I’ve turned to forums, to books and video dvd’s. All three have very little information available about mental ray, a situation which has slowly improved in last three years, but during this time only one gem has really emerged: the item at hand, Livny’s must-have mental ray guide.
The book takes various topics from the original and very difficult Driemeyer mental ray books - which are application independant - and puts them in a more readable form in this massive seven-hundred page book. Livny understands what’s really important when using mental ray, the deep knowledge of how things work, which help the user get to the result they - and their client - needs, faster and better.

Differently from other mental ray books, Livny also handles the topic of third party and customization options of mental ray, covering various shaders and plugin options.

Since the book covers three different applications that have mental ray integrated seamlessly, the book is also very useful to rendering experts who have to jump working platform every now and then.

This is however not a book recommended for beginners, far from entry level, I personally recommend this book to average to advanced level students and enthusiasts.

Thumbs up, a pleasant surprise from a generally unknown author and publisher and a book I’ll be recommending to mental ray users everywhere.

Thick but worth it

I’ve been searching for references to these programs that actually explained things rather than just take you through a tutorial for quite some time. As a user of both Maya and 3DsMax, this book intrigued me from the beginning. What I love about it is the author’s willingness to actually explain they why behind the numbers. I also bought a few other books at the same time, but they were incredibly tutorial oriented. "Enter this number and see how it matches our picture?" Never giving the reason for that set of numbers. This one actually takes the time to explain the settings rather than just providing the right input.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the depth (and amount of information) included in this book. I’m not at the level of every chapter yet, but it is a great book to grow into. The writing style allows to learn what you are looking for, and teaches new things at the same time. It is incredibly in-depth, but the book isn’t written with only the highly advanced in mind. A great book for someone with some knowledge and looking to learn more about the programs, why some things work better than others, and the things that mental ray can do.

Great but needs updating

I’m no pro at mental ray, which is why I bought this book. While it is an impressing resource, it quickly became clear that it needs to be updated for Maya 2008 users since they could go through this book and completely miss the mia_material shader, which is only described in a PDF on the included CD. Ditto for the mia_roundcorners shader, which appears nowhere in the index, only in the PDF. This is a great resource, I just wish that it hadn’t taken forum posts from helpful individuals to point me to these significant shaders which replace a lot of longer workflow routines combining simpler shaders. Otherwise, this is a very helpful book and incredibly in-depth.

So far, the best mental ray reference book.

Personally, I was looking for a mental ray book using 3ds Max as the host application. This book covers Maya, max & XSI. When the chapters explain something they explain the different approaches for each application. For example, you will have 3 different sections on supersampling: in XSI, in maya & in max. You can just skip whatever section does not apply to your program. Also, great info on HDRI methods. I have the mental ray manual which is for the standalone version and it’s pretty useless for those of us who use mental ray in a host app. This is the most practical mental ray book out there so far and I think it might be required reading for a mental ray user using any of the aforementioned host apps.

Knoledge is not everything

I waited some time for the book.
This is the first book for Maya users about mental ray.
The author is well educated about everything there is to know about mental ray and Maya.
My problem is that the book is too technical and not project oriented.
It can teach me lots of things I want to know, but skips the things I need to know to get the work done right.
Not enough materials info that can be applied, not enough presets or concepts that can be applied to the projects specifics.and not enough scene files that are relevant to mental ray’s rendering use.
It is a good enough book to sit on the shelf as a reference but not good enough to be a real guide to the mental ray and the Maya process.

Perfect for my situation

I am an intermediate Maya user and I work as a generalist in a small effects studio in Los Angeles that does mostly TV and commercials. I’ve been looking to specialize in lighting and rendering, and this book was the perfect resource for my situation (and I’ve spent a lot of time/money looking for Mental Ray resources). It lays down all the basic to intermediate concepts of Mental Ray, paving the way for the reader to then move on to the more advanced techniques of programming shaders and lighting. I recommend this book to anyone looking to built a solid foundation of Mental Ray knowledge.

One of the Tech Editors for this book

I was one of the tech-editors on this book. Boaz is the most knowledgeable author I’ve ever tech-edited. He truly knows mental ray. I learned so much just tech-editing this thing. I thought I knew/understood mental ray until I read this. mental ray is one of the major render engines. Once you understand the concepts you can take that to many render engines.

This is gonna save Time,Money and a lot of Stress-Happy Rendering

After reading a couple of books on mental ray and 3D rendering, I can say that this is a thorough and unique book that just provides an abundance of useful information. I can list some of the things that stand out when reading this book:


1. It helped me understand the complete working and optimization of subsurface scattering, global illumination, caustics, occlusion, and high dynamic range images (even though I thought I knew it all).

2. Shaders.. shaders and more shaders.. I can definitely say this is the only book which dissects all the commercially available mental ray shaders on a very extensive level.

3. Since the book explains the concepts and techniques on a broader scope it can be applied to any 3D package or renderer. It may sound surprising but I have applied a lot of concepts explained here on other packages like Houdini and Cinema 4D with great success.

The author has done a great job in striking a relationship between digital implementation to the natural phenomena of cameras, lights, shadows, materials etc. It definitely caters to users of all levels of experience. I should also mention that the book is insanely up to date; the architectural shader sections are a typical example.

Hats Off!!!

The "Go To" Guide

This book gives a definitive methodology for using Mental Ray shaders, lighting effects and phenomena AND a clear explanation of how and why things work the way they do. Understanding the basic structure of the software is key to being able to make it work in different applications, and it is this understanding that Boaz provides in this book.

As a Maya instructor at the undergraduate and graduate university level, I am going to make this required reading for my classes, and recommend its inclusion in the department library.

mental ray! democracy! at last!

As an XSI user I normally approach all Sybex publications with a fair amount of trepidation. Sure it says XSI on the cover, but I’m about to have to sift through another maya-centric publication. My hat is off to you sir, I think this is one of the best manuals to come out in a long time (and I’ve bought my share). It’s really great to see "the big three" programs all receiving equal attention, and for anybody who might be proficient in one package it’s invaluable to have each aspect of Mental ray explained in triplicate, just in case you have to dive into somebody else’s project in an unfamiliar app to tune up a render. Again, terrific job, this book is invaluable to any artist hoping to expand their render chops. I hope Sybex see’s this as well (sales-wise and otherwise) and continues creating books of this caliber for maya, 3ds max AND XSI.

Cheers
Aaron Kent

mental ray bible!

This book is perfect for 3d artists, students and teachers to know and understand what mental ray is all about and how to use it. Not like any other books that only explain which buttons to push, this book explains everything behind the scene. So you actually know why and what to do when using mental ray.

This book definitely helps you create stunning images! This is a must have!

Excellent resource for any 3D artist or technical director

Having gone through numerous books and resources on mental ray, lighting, and rendering in general, I found this book to strike the perfect balance between lighting techniques, and rendering under the hood. Not only does it cover mental ray more in depth than any other book or pack of tutorials I’ve come across (especially in terms of shading, a topic that is better covered here than most places), it is written for both artists who make practical use of its features, through popular apps such as Maya and XSI, as well as technical people who want a comprehensive overview of 3D fundamentals relating to the real world.

For me this book was the definitive resource that jump-started my career as a technical director in the film industry. The techniques I gleaned from these pages really helped me further develop as both an artist and a problem solver. From sampling and ray tracing algorithms, the frame buffer, to to real world lighting fundamentals, shadows, and camera principles, it contains essential knowledge for anyone in the industry who wants to distinguish their know-how and really understand how these things work!

In depth mental ray

This is a really excellent book, that really gets under the hood of mental ray and how lighting works in 3D. If you have aspirations of becoming a lighting TD. If you want to have professional looking renders I highly recommend this book.