Apodaca A.A., Gritz L. Advanced RenderMan. Creating CGI for Motion Pictures

Morgan Kaufmann, 2000. — 442 p.The RenderMan Companion first appeared, 10 years ago, with several purposes behind it. First, we hoped to promote the RenderMan Interface as a standard for high-quality three-dimensional computer graphics, similar to the role PostScript plays in two dimensions. Second, and more importantly, we hoped to encourage and support the development of the field as a whole in both deed and word. Not only would the book's content enable people to do cool work with RenderMan, but its very existence would encourage subsequent publications that would continue to raise the platform of knowledge and technique.
On most of these counts, the effort must be considered a success. Today, RenderMan is the de facto standard for photorealistic 3D rendering in the digital effects industry. In fact, the revolution in digital effects began (with the "water weenie" of The Abyss) soon after Pixar's PRMan first entered the scene. Coincidence? We think not. And the interface has proven the equal of problems and dataset sizes that were laughable 10 years ago ("Ten million polygons? Don't be ridiculous."), supporting a revolution that continues to blow the minds of audiences the world over.
But still. For 10 years, The RenderMan Companion has been the only book available on the subject, complete with its thin spots, omissions, and obsolete view of the interface. Worse, although the art and practice of RenderMan continued to develop, somehow that progress never saw the ink that would allow the platform to rise and the field to move forward for the world at large. (The only time that people came together to deal with the real nitty-gritty of geometry and shaders was at the Advanced RenderMan courses of SIGGRAPH, organized and presented by many of the authors here.) This is a vacuum that has sorely needed filling, and now I'm delighted to see it being filled, and filled so well.
I have several reasons to be so delighted. First, it takes a longstanding monkey off my back-the need for a followup to the Companion. Second, it finally diverts attention and credit for the interface away from me and toward those who actually deserve it. We live in a world in which the messenger is easily mistaken for the message, and for 10 long years I have been far more closely identified with RenderMan than decency should allow. With this book the real wizards step out from behind the curtain so we can see what they're made of, and it's not a lot of smoke, mirrors, and subwoofers, either.
But the real reason this book is such a tonic is that I get to have it. I am sure that I am not alone in sometimes feeling a little lost and small in dealing with something as powerful as RenderMan. While I do believe that the Companion functions nicely as a field guide to the resources available, here at last are the maps to the territory, the signposts in the dark woods that can make the foreigner feel at home and enable her to make real progress. Here we have an august circle of expert guides to take you by the hand and show you what goes on inside the head of someone who knows their way around. With this book in hand, you may not be a wizard yourself, but you can play one on TV.Introduction
Photosurrealism
Review of Mathematics and Computer Graphics Concepts
Scene Description
Describing Models and Scenes in RenderMan
Geometric Primitives
Handling Complexity in Photorealistic Scenes
How PhotoRealistic RenderMan Works
Shading
Introduction to Shading Language
Texture Mapping and Displacement
Illumination Models and Lights
Pattern Generation
Shader Antialiasing
A Gallery of Procedural Shaders
Tricks of the Trade
Storytelling through Lighting, a Computer Graphics Perspective
Lighting Controls for Computer Cinematography
Volumetric Shaders for Visual Effects
Nonphotorealistic Rendering with RenderMan
Ray Tracing in PRMan