It certainly made my life easier...book is layed out in an orderly fashion
and takes you through the difficult steps of mental ray in a step by step approach..I highly recommend this book....and kindly ask the author to write another one that will go in more depth and more examples.....

This is an excellent book for anyone who has the basic knowledge on 3ds Max and wants to fully understand how the rendering process works using the mental ray renderer. Coherent and rational structure, short and precise text (no waste of time), clearly-aimed example files; all you ask of an instructional book.
* Those interested in Architectural Visualization will be satisfied.
* It is based on 3ds Max 9, but I recommend it for later versions too.

es un libro con algunos conceptos tecnicos sobre mental ray, iluminacion global, final gather, caustica y ambient occlusion..basicamente trabaja con los shaders qeu el programa trae consigo..y los que trae mental ray... algunos buenos trucos visuales...no abunda en detalles tecnicos pero si presenta ejemplos paso a paso y se entiende rapido. recomiendo el libro para los fanaticos del mental ray!!

Whenever you need to learn a new program, it tends to present itself as a huge mountain to climb. Mental Ray is no different. The lack of documentation comming with this Autodesk program makes climbing this mountain a sheer impossible task. Not with this book. Joep van der Steen takes you by the hand and showes you the paths. He does this by starting of with standard scene's and presets. Then with every tutorial he goes more and more into the details. Step by step you feel more and more at home with the program. Allready half way the book you have a good idea how to work with Mental Ray. But it goes on with more and more easy explanation of complicated stuff. The mountain turns out to be a joy to climb

This book was extremely helpful to me as it relates to MR renders and what the various parameter do in the render dialog box. That part is worth more than 5 stars. The place it might be lacking by a small amount is the clarity in how the shaders and materials are explained. Very detailed in some places, but I found myself going back and forth from the book to the material editor to try to follow along and understand what was being explained. In the end, I learned a good deal but there were times too when I was confused by what seemed like contradictory facts, or at least I found them to be so. Like how the arch materials diffuse,reflection and transparency channels could not exceed a value of 1 when added together, yet I saw many materials constructed where those three channels added up to 3. The materials still worked as described, but I am the type that needs to understand the nitty-gritty before I feel comfortable with something. Oh well.

But all-in-all this book is WELL worth it. It will take a lot of the guess work and trail-and-error out of your MR renders. All I can say is, Good job, Mr. Van der Steen.

Yes, very good job.