Posts Tagged ‘books’

Mental Ray

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Here’s is my reading for this evening.

my reading tonight

It’s a serious tome of knowledge.  I’ve been using mental ray since my first days with XSI 3.0.  I knew this book would help me transition to Maya, and further master my skills in mental ray for photo-realism.  Out of curiosity, and to save me time on my footnotes, I searched on amazon.com to see if there is a second edition.  There isn’t.  I did discover that people are selling this book for near 300$! I knew this book was a good source of information, but I understand now how coveted it must be at that price.  I’m glad I bought in 2009, for 37$, before the price hike.  I tend to buy books that interest me, even when I can’t read it immediately.  It’s a brilliant book.  It takes a lot of footnote taking, underlining, slow reading, and re-reading to understand and absorb the book.  I’ll take the author’s advice, and read through it first to gain an understanding of the topics, then use it a reference book.  Thus far, I’m happy to see the author and I have the same point of view,  “you must master the art of photography so you can bridge the gap between real-world photography and 3D.”  pg. xvii