Product Description

Bring new realism to your visualizations with a command of the 3ds Max toolset. Three step-by-step tutorials demonstrate exterior and interior, day and night lighting scenes. You learn the nuts and bolts of importing models from CAD programs, lighting, applying mr shaders and materials, and optimizing your renders. Mental ray is made simple with an accessible description of its tools.

* Color reproductions illustrate a wide array of subtle techniques.
* mental ray is made easy with accesible demonstations.
* Companion CD contains all of the project files.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172264 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Paperback
• 344 pages

About the Author
is a consultant and educator in the architectural community. He has been a professor at Vanier College and a training manager at Autodesk. He was led author on two Autodesk VIZ books, and a contributor to "3ds Max 8" and "3ds Max 9 Essentials."

has produced graphic design and 3d visualizations for professional organizations and companies since 1994. After a recent four year stint as a senior 3d artist/special effects designer for Carillion plc, he is currently working for GMJ Design Ltd., UK.

Customer Reviews

Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds Max and Mental Ray
You'll need V9 and this is not for the beginner, but if you're an intermediate user and need a fast track into producing better final renderings, this is ideal. He does repeat himself sometimes and a few of the images are not the best quality, but the screenshots of the Max UI are very clear (which is the important bit). The appendices could have been chapters instead (they take up a third of the book), but who cares, the information in them is very useful.

Very disappointing book
If you are thinking about buying this, do yourself a favor and don't bother. If you're hoping to learn some insider tips and tricks to creating beautiful rendered images, you will be hugely disappointed. You will learn nothing more than if you had studied the help that accompanies Max 9, this is essentially because this is a cut and paste of the help that the author has made their own. The resulting images are of such poor quality that a novice would be forgiven for wondering what the big deal is with Mental Ray. As a seasoned user of 3ds Max with over 10 years experience, I am well aware of the amazing results that can be archived with Mental Ray, unfortunately you won't learn how to do it by reading this book. All you do is work through repetitive, dull exercises culminating in a truly craptacular rendered image. The illustrations are so poor, that it is impossible to see the point of printing them (one is a screen grab of a blank screen - I kid you not!) Having studied many of these books over the years, this is by far the worst I have come across.

surprisingly good
After having read some mixed reviews about this book, I was not sure if this purchase would be another let down book about mental ray.
To my surprise it wasn't. The Authors do explore areas of mental ray renderer that no another books did; for instance the flash light effect,common mental ray errors, render passes,day and night scenes.
Also, for the first time there is an author(jamie cardoso) who actually has a reputation for being good at what he does; as oppose to authors publishing other artist's work. The way in which the tutorials are put together one can sense that there's a lot of experience behind what's been written.
Moreover,for the first time, as one renders the final scenes,the renders look as good as the front cover images without the need of further Photoshop tweaks.
Finally, it was good value for money in the sense that the 3d scenes are worth twice the book price. For these reasons I give this book 5 stars.