mental ray Series of Handbooks
Edited by R.Herken

Volume 1:
Rendering with mental ray
Thomas Driemeyer
Second, revised edition (with cd-rom)
Springer Verlag Wien New York

mental ray® is the leading rendering engine for generating photorealistic images, built into many 3D graphics applications. This book, written by the mental ray software project leader, gives a general introduction into rendering with mental ray, as well as step-by-step recipes for creating advanced effects, and tips and tricks for professional users. A comprehensive definition of mental ray's scene description language and the standard shader libraries is included and used as the basis for all examples.1

This second, revised edition was extended to cover the new generation of mental ray, version 3.0, throughout the book.

Refer to the Errata page for corrections and updates.

The .mi files contained in this book can be downloaded in UNIX (tgz) and NT readable format (zip) at:
ftp://ftp.mentalimages.com/pub/books/book1_data.tgz
ftp://ftp.mentalimages.com/pub/books/book1_data.zip

This book can be ordered at the Springer-Verlag.

Volume 2:
Programming mental ray
Th. Driemeyer, R. Herken (eds.)
Second, revised edition (with cd-rom)
Springer Verlag Wien New York

This book is the definitive reference manual for mental ray® version 2.1 and 3.1. It starts with a brief overview over the features of mental ray and continues with the specifications of the mental ray scene description language, the mental ray shader interface, and the integration interface for third-party applications. All material is presented in reference form, organized by grammar elements and C function call, rather than by feature set.

The book is intended for translator writers, shader writers, and integrators who are familiar with the C and C++ programming languages

This second, revised edition was extended to cover the new generation of mental ray, version 3.1, throughout the book, and also includes the new mental ray integration manual

The enclosed CD contains a full featured demo version of stand-alone mental ray and the mental ray library, as well as example shaders with source code and demo scenes, for a variety of computer platforms1.

Refer to the Errata page for corrections and updates.

The .mi files contained in this book can be downloaded in UNIX (tgz) and NT readable format (zip) at:
ftp://ftp.mentalimages.com/pub/books/book2_data.tgz
ftp://ftp.mentalimages.com/pub/books/book2_data.zip

This book can be ordered at the Springer-Verlag.

Additional volumes are in preparation and will be announced here in due course.