Rating: 
Summary: Intended for shader programmers
Review: Don't buy this book expecting to learn the intricacies of Renderman. This is really geared towards shader programmers and Renderman theorists. Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, it just wasn't what I was looking for.If you don't care about the above, but would still like to see how Toy Story and the Iron Giant were created, then buy this.
Rating: 
Summary: Delivers more than the title suggests
Review: The world of computer graphics books is filled with fat, pricy tomes that are frankly little better than rehashes of the manual. "Advanced Renderman" is a completely different sort of book. While Renderman is the ostensible subject, the authors actually cover the entire graphics workflow-- and explain the "why" of it all. Their section on anti-aliasing, for example, is concise, complete, and makes clear the implications of all those little doo-hickeys in 3DS -- you remember the AR explanation better, because its based around how rendering works, rather than how a particular application works (which may change in the next rev, anyway) Smart guys, smart book-- highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Delivers more than the title suggests
Review: The world of computer graphics books is filled with fat, pricy tomes that are frankly little better than rehashes of the manual. "Advanced Renderman" is a completely different sort of book. While Renderman is the ostensible subject, the authors actually cover the entire graphics workflow-- and explain the "why" of it all. Their section on anti-aliasing, for example, is concise, complete, and makes clear the implications of all those little doo-hickeys in 3DS -- you remember the AR explanation better, because its based around how rendering works, rather than how a particular application works (which may change in the next rev, anyway) Smart guys, smart book-- highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent compilation!
Review: This book far exceeds both The Renderman Companiona and Texturing and Modeling: A procedural approach(Two very good books) in the presentation of massive amounts of information, as well as simplicity of presentation. While this book does sort of deal more with BMRT and PRMan(look at the authors, sheesh...) than the Interface, per se, it does a very nice job of presenting information specifically geared towards them. The inclusion of a section on mathmatics and physics is especially appealing for me, because I'm not yet out of high school. Anyway, if you aren't too much of a miser, buy this book. Oh, and since these reviews are not supposed to reveal cruical plot elements: There IS a self shading cloud shader!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent compilation!
Review: This book far exceeds both The Renderman Companiona and Texturing and Modeling: A procedural approach(Two very good books) in the presentation of massive amounts of information, as well as simplicity of presentation. While this book does sort of deal more with BMRT and PRMan(look at the authors, sheesh...) than the Interface, per se, it does a very nice job of presenting information specifically geared towards them. The inclusion of a section on mathmatics and physics is especially appealing for me, because I'm not yet out of high school. Anyway, if you aren't too much of a miser, buy this book. Oh, and since these reviews are not supposed to reveal cruical plot elements: There IS a self shading cloud shader!
Rating:
Summary: Art of Photosurrealism
Review: This book is written by six renowned professionals in digital lighting field. Even you are not a shader programmer, chaper 1 and 13 show the aesthic architecture of lighting composition and tell us the beauty of 'Photosurrealism'. The depth of each paper is just amazing and you can find more beautiful tecnical information from other papers written by the same authors.
Rating:
Summary: Art of Photosurrealism
Review: This book is written by six renowned professionals in digital lighting field. Even you are not a shader programmer, chaper 1 and 13 show the aesthic architecture of lighting composition and tell us the beauty of 'Photosurrealism'. The depth of each paper is just amazing and you can find more beautiful tecnical information from other papers written by the same authors.
Rating: 
Summary: Indispensible for anybody using RenderMan in any form.
Review: This book primarily serves three purposes: (1) collecting the RenderMan information that was spread over many disparate sources (and often simply an unrecorded part of the industry lore) into one easily accessible work; (2) updating that information to be useful in the RenderMan universe of 1999+; and (3) providing advanced material that has never been available before, at a sufficiently advanced level that it will be useful to working professionals. A common theme in our book is that of "idioms." Just like with a spoken language, the syntax and semantics alone (as could be gleaned from a dictionary) do not paint the entire picture. To be truly fluent, one must understand the informal conventions of speech. In the context of RenderMan, we are referring to an understanding of when to use which features and why, and what the most expedient and powerful approaches are for solving specific problems. Just like in our previous SIGGRAPH courses, we intend the material in this book to be useful for everybody from the beginner who has just finished reading the RenderMan Companion, up to the advanced professional technical director currently using a RenderMan renderer in production. The book particularly emphasizes how common problems can and should be solved. We've tried to distill years of RenderMan production experience into a compact package, and with large amounts of source code that can be immediately useful for RenderMan users. We believe that this book will quickly become indispensable to anybody interested in, or using the RenderMan standard or any of its implementations. More information about the book, as well as code listings and other online sources, can be found at: http://www.mkp.com/renderman -- Larry Gritz and Tony Apodaca
Rating:
Summary: Great all-around RenderMan reference
Review: This is a great book, written in clear and understandable English. It proivded me (a novice) great information about the RenderMan interface. Not only did it provide a reference to the various API calls, but it also includes an introduction to the basic maths behind it, as well as chapters that discuss CG in general. A thoroughly well written, useful and informative book. It is indespensible for any RenderMan user and in fact, for any CG artist.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Wonderful!
Review: Wow. That's all I can say. This is a collection of several inches of the kind of information you spend endless nights digging around the 'net searching for. It's not all just renderman related stuff, it also works with BMRT (which is free) and there's a great deal about how movies are made, as well as good art direction tips. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to read it, but there's still a lot of good stuff, especially about writing shaders, which was my main interest. To the authors: Great work! More! More! :-)
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