by John Swanson

Product Name: http://www.mastering-mentalray.com/
ISBN: 978-0-470-56385-4
Published: April, 2010
Author: Jennifer O'Connor
Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Current Pricing: US $59.99
Site: mastering-mentalray.com

This following is from the book:

“This book provides to-the-point practical information on using mental ray within 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design. Like me, busy architects, industrial designers, and other 3ds Max/Design users need to cut through the chaff and get to the essential tools and settings they need to get their work done, and this book is a practical and useful guide for that purpose. I also delve into the details of many aspects of mental ray for advanced users, and focus on the tools and techniques to optimize render time and to diagnose and troubleshoot problematic scenes. Bonus material that didn't make it into the book is included on the book's DVD and also at www. mastering-mental ray. com. The DVD also includes all the project files mentioned in the book for your own experimentation. The focus of this book is on producing realistic images using a modern workflow, including photometric lighting tools and energy-correct materials. Other techniques that might have been used in the past for an efficient workflow were usually developed to compensate for the limitations.”

If you are looking for a book on 3ds Max/Design 2011 and mental ray that covers that topic in a clear, understandable way then look no further. This is by far one of the best books dealing specifically with that subject. Throughout the book the emphasis is on how to get good fast results from mental ray. This is something we should all be looking for. Jennifer O’Connor goes into most of the settings in the renderer and shows you how to get the most from them. As the title of the book implies the book is directed more towards architectural visualization community but I believe other mental ray users will find as much value here as the architecturally inclined.

Jennifer O'Connor knows mental ray and she knows how to get you to understand the ins and outs of the renderer. The book 'Mastering mental ray: Rendering Techniques for 3D and CAD Professionals' is written in such a way that the concepts that are necessary to understand rendering in general, and rendering using mental ray are easily understood. It covers most of the features, and certainly the most important ones in mr in a very comprehensive way. The structure of the book - the logical sequence of topics - make learning and understanding mental ray an almost guaranteed conclusion. I've read a number of books on this great renderer, and have seen a number of video tutorials on this topic, but I learned things, or at least understood things better having read this book.

I believe this book may be best suited to a 3ds Max user who knows his or her way around Max fairly well. However, even a person starting out in Max would be able to get something out of this text. At the beginning of the book we are we are led through mental ray essentials. I could tell right from the start that we were in good hands.

It is probably Jennifer's experience as an adjunct college professor at the College of Lake County teaching 3ds Max Design that gives her this ability to make learning the concepts of what is really a very sophisticated technology that is mental ray easy to come to grips with.

Visually the layout of the book is impressive. All the illustrations are in full color. Any illustrations not shown in the book are provided on the DVD. The book's text is easy to follow with the accompanying illustration figures close by so you don’t have to dig backwards or forwards to find them. At the beginning of each chapter we are made aware of the topics covered. I even liked the repeated “Next I cover….’ within each chapter. The phrase is repeated enough to notice and I believe it reinforces the connections between different aspects of the renderer.

I liked the way each chapter ends with a ‘Bottom Line’ paragraph. Basically summarizing the chapter in a few sentences. Each summary is followed by a ‘Master It’ challenge. The solutions to the tasks can be found in appendix A. If you try these little tests you find they go a long way in your mental ray education by reinforcing the concepts just learned. Speaking of learning, I liked her suggestion about a good way to tackle any new topic in any book. (I was familiar with the technique having read it on her website and used it on a few of the books I read for review purposes and personal education, and found it does help) Essentially you are urged to skim the book before reading it to get an idea of the topics covered. This gives you a kind of ‘road map’ of what to expect in the text. I feel it helped me to zero on the relevant explanations as I read. Cool.

At the end of this review I provide a reprint of the book’s ‘Content at a Glance’ It gives a good idea of the topics. I thought the chapters on materials and maps not only covers those topics well but we have a really good primer on using the new ‘Slate material editor’ that is found in 3ds Max/Design 2011. This is one of the examples where the books goes beyond the specific topic of the renderer. Project folders is another topic discussed throughout this chapter. I found the topic of bitmaps and how to manage them so as to speed up performance covered well here. The 3ds Max materials that work well with mental ray are the new Autodesk Material and the more feature rich Arch & Design Material. Jennifer covers both. Even Pro Materials are included in the book because they still are used in older version of 3ds Max. Using the HDR format and real world scale finish off this chapter on ‘Working with Materials, Maps and Colors.

Chapter 3’s ‘Light, Shadow, and Exposure Control’ is filled with solid information that illuminates this sometimes confusing topic. I particularly like the explanation of Exposure Control and how it can be used effectively. I was delighted to see ‘The Eight Simple Rules for Lighting Your Scene’ included here. I had always found lumens, candela and lux and their relation to CG lighting difficult units to put to use when working with lights. I now have a better understanding on how they help with arriving at quicker useful settings in the lighting command panel. The Sky Portal is the next and final topic in this chapter.

Network rendering is the first topic in Chapter 4’s ‘Rendering’ – this is a very good handling of this subject. I found very few books go into the advanced settings as we do here. After reading about Batch Rendering here I started to use it at work. Before going home I’d line up a batch of renderings and get the results the next morning. Before going into the main part of this chapter, that is the render settings we are shown the use of mental ray proxy objects. These are something you would want to use if you are working with a very large scene. Indirect Illumination and Final Gather have their own chapter (chap. 5), as does the specific indirect illuminations aspects of Global Illumination and Caustics (chap. 6) The Common, Renderer, and Processing tabs are gone into in depth here. I thought it’s one of the best tours of the Render Setup: mental ray Renderer dialogue box out there. The chapter ends with a section on ‘Accelerating Test Renders’ that contains good advice.

As mentioned before ‘Indirect Illumination and Final Gather’ is the subject in Chapter 5. Utilizing the ‘Cornel Box’ and the ‘Sponza Scene’ we are taken through the settings in the dialogue box. We are given a good explanation of what indirect illumination is and specifically how it works in mental ray. Under the umbrella of ‘Indirect Illumination’ we are give a brief glimpse of two relatively new mental ray technologies - Importons and Irradiance Particles in this chapter. They are showcased in their own chapter later on in the book. Most of the text in this chapter is devoted to understanding and using ‘Indirect Illumination and Final Gather’ and by the end of the chapter you will in the know. Since one of the ‘themes’ in this book is getting the best rendering results in the fastest we have a section that is devoted to how to reuse Final Gather and Indirect Illumination data once it’s been produced. The Sponza scene is used to illustrate the use of Daylight and Final Gather. Animation and Final Gather tops off this topic.

Chapter 6 is all about ‘Global Illumination and Caustics’ and we are given a formal introduction to the Photon. We are also given an understanding of Global Illumination as well as a good idea of how to use the settings in the Indirect Illumination tab’s GI section. We are led through a few exercises here. I found these instructions clear and easy to understand. In addition to many tips here we are shown a way to control color bleed problems through the manipulation of materials. The Sponza model as well as a large outdoor scene is used to give us more experience with Global Illumination. Caustics finish up this chapter with some very interesting exercises.

Chapter 7 - is my favorite section of the book. Importons and Irradiance Particles - I've heard of them before but had little knowledge about this relatively new indirect illumination technology. The way they work together is described in this chapter. Apparently importons and irradiance particles are available in 3ds Max 2009 and later through use of a plug-in available on the book's DVD as well as www.mastering-mentalray.com. After installing the plug-in you are led through a number of exercises to learn how access and use this cutting edge rendering technology. Jennifer O'Connor admits that the use of importons and irradiance particles is a 'moving target' and that this chapter should get you started 'understanding these tools and learning some techniques.' I love learning new techniques in Max - especially ones that gives such good results.

Although I feel the whole book is filled with well structured information, sequenced in an intelligent way, I really liked the info in Chapter 8. I haven't found information concerning effects and mental ray quite like the information I found here. Lens shaders like the DOF/Brokeh Shader is available in 3ds MAx but first it has to be unhidden and we are shown how to do this. Distortion Shader, Physical Sky Shader, Night shader, Gamma and Gain Parameter Shader, Glare Shader, and the mouthful Render Subset Of Scene/Masking Parameter Shader are a few of the shaders covered. The fact that these are covered all in one place I find to be very helpful.

Throughout the book we are aware that this book is geared towards the CAD community. Chapter 9, as well as Chapter 10, underscores this - 'mental ray for Architecture' and 'mental ray for Design' respectively. SAT - the 3D solid model format and the DWG, and FBX file formats are introduced here. I found the advantages ad disadvantages of the FBX format listed here to be helpful. I don't use Revit - I am an Autocad user but I found the info on Revit in this chapter interesting. I am also interested lighting analysis being involved in interior retail design. The Lighting Analysis Assistant is available in 3ds Max Design and it is quite tool. The Light Meter object found in the same software is also a useful tool and covered in this section. Different rendering techniques useful for architectural visualization finishes off this topic

Chapter 10's 'mental ray for Design' is full of ideas on how to present your designs. Let me just say that the subject of lighting, composition, environments and all the elements that make up a good presentation are covered here. At last we look into the Render Elements tab in depth. And we are shown some of Max Composite, and finishing up on the import options using 3ds Max Design and SAT and Inventor files. Good stuff.

The included DVD has all the files necessary to complete the exercises laid out in the book. Also included are plug-ins, scripts, and other useful 2D and 3D goodies provided by third party vendors. I liked the inclusion of introduction and overviews videos of selected topics, as well as videos examples of topics covered in the book.

I recommend this book without hesitation. It is by far one of the most complete, informative book on the subject of mental ray in 3ds Max written by someone, who is without a doubt, very knowledgeable when it comes to mental ray. Jennifer O'Connor knows how to get the sometimes 'difficult to understand' concepts surrounding this complex renderer across to the reader. Yes it is complex - with many settings to learn, and many concepts to grasp, but this is the book that will get you up to speed.

Contents at a Glance

Introduction Chapter 1 • mental ray Essentials
Chapter 2 • Materials and Maps
Chapter 3 • Light, Shadow, and Exposure Control
Chapter 4 • Rendering
Chapter 5 • Indirect Illumination and Final Gather
Chapter 6 • Global Illumination and Caustics
Chapter 7 • Importons and Irradiance Particles
Chapter 8 • Effects
Chapter 9 • mental ray for Architecture
Chapter 10 • mental ray for Design
Appendix A • The Bottom Line
Appendix B • About the Companion DVD
Index