Game Design Books

I admit that at first I was thinking this book would focus more on the game engine part of the toolset development in its title. I knew it wasn't REALLY about developing a game engine but even so, make sure you understand what you're getting.

That said, I really liked this book. I'm halfway through it already (it's a very quick read given how discrete each chapter is and the clear and easy to read print and examples).

I've read a number of game development books and you rarely get everything done right. This book gets close. The author describes the particular problem the chapter seeks to solve (e.g. encryption, batch processing, etc.) and goes through the steps of solving it.

The book is similar to those programming gems types of books that aren't organized in some linear fashion but are discrete chapters on specific topics that can be picked and chosen as you see fit.

The author does a very good job of putting the examples together and many of the chapters have been useful to me (I plan on implementing a number of the tools/frameworks he mentions).

If you're working on a game engine, I really suggest trying this book out. This assumes you're not already an expert game programmer who already built a lot of these sorts of tools before.

If you're looking for something that will help you build a full-fledged game engine, look for another book...then come back to this and get it to help you flesh out your toolset.

I just received my copy of Game Engine Toolset Development and I have been unable to put the book down. The author gives a good introduction to .NET 2.0 and relates it to toolset development for games. The chapters are easy to read and follow and he gives good advice on how to build good tools. He could have looked at other toolsets to make the book more complete, but I see this book as a way to introduce students to game programming who have a basic programming background (Java, C++, C, Alice 2.0, etc.).

I bought this book thinking it would help me write a new tool for, say, building 3d models, or some other general tool. When it arrived I got excited just by the shear size of it, it's huge!

However, I started flipping through it browsing each and every chapter (didn't read them all in detail of course, but quite a few) and it doesn't teach you how to make a NEW tool for your game, it teaches you how to make an EXISTING tool better. While that knowledge is extremely valuable (and the reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 3), it's not what the description of the book stated: "Readers are not required to have any experience developing game engine tools." If you have no experience developing a tool, you're going to have a little trouble getting started. If you know enough math and have good enough coding skills to get a game engine going, you'll be able to write a tool for your game, but you don't need this book to do it.

Now, with that said, this book IS quite good and worth your money so long as you don't expect to read this book and then write a tool, you're going to need more info. Get the book anyway and use it as a guide, it's usefull in that aspect.

This book is so good at making a tool better, most of it's "gems" can and should be applied to ANY application, game tool or not. Also, it covers some good highlevel (or lowlevel, depending on how you view it) .Net functionality such as interfacing with COM and code documentation, as well as few other excellent techniques. These "gems" are quite valuable on their own.

So, in conclusion, if you know nothing about writing a tool, or you don't know C#, hold off on buying this book (make sure to put it in your wish list however). If you have a tool but find it's difficult to work with, or you want to broaden it's appeal, or just simply make it better, get this book, you won't regret it.

This is an excellent book, which covers a lot of important aspects of game/engine tool development, but it is more like a recipe book, as each chapter subject is almost stands on its own - just like game programming gems series. My favorite is how to integrate native code into a managed application. The book is well written (one of the best I've read recently), and the only thing i missed is a few chapters on how-to integrate into an existing pipeline - like importer/exporter for a common 3d package at least. A better title for this book would be "(game)tool programming gems"

Then, as a hobbyist, I'll just let you know that this book not only teaches, but flat you gives you some great modular code that you can work into many different types of tools.

There's also some great design principles covered that have improved my workflow, even though i'm currently working solo.

After several trips to car shows with my husband, I had lots of beautiful photos sitting in iPhoto ready to print. I thought a DVD would be more useful and enjoyable for him, and tried to make a DVD project - NOT! Having already used The Missing Manual books, I promptly went out and bought this one. Great choice, as it filled in the blanks and gave me lots of ideas also. I am a photographer, not a tech person, and am pretty clueless when it comes to creating projects on the computer.

This series suits me perfectly and the book is highly recommended - with the aid of the book I sat down and promptly made a beautiful DVD, with lots of lovely effects, great music, and best of all it was easy. My husband was very happy with his DVD and watches it often.

The manual is clear, concise, easy to read and enjoyable. Unlike so many texts, it is not dry or overly technical. Anyone can make a great DVD easily with this reference. Next project - a video. Ready.....

This is the book you really want if you use iMovie at all!

I had recently started using a Mac at work, and suddenly I was put in a position to work with video on the Mac. Mr. Pogue's other books had been very helpful to me as I began to learn my way around the Mac, so I thought I would pick up this one to help me with my video work. I was very glad that I did. You see, iMovie HD has tools that help your movie look professional, but the iMovie HD help files are very tedious to go through. There is a great deal of referencing, cross-referencing, and nothing is smoothly laid out. This book is another story, as it is very well laid out with clear instructions and illustrations. It is very long, but since these applications are powerful, it would be expected that any clear explanation of them is going to require some space.
What is particularly good about this book is that the author doesn't assume you are a professional video author, and he spends part one of the book helping you learn how to shoot videos and shares tricks that will make you good at it. Part 2 is dedicated to iMovie, and shares not just how to use the application, but the little extras that will make your video special - transitions, effects, titles, captions, and even how to work with sound in your movie. Part 3, on finding your audience, was another unexpected treat. There the author shows you how to move between iMovie and Quicktime, and how to post your movie to your phone and to the web. Part 4 of the book is on iDVD. I particularly liked the chapter on iDVD secrets, where the author shows how you can use AppleScript to customize iDVD itself.
It's hard to believe that a year ago I didn't even know how to use a Mac, and now I am quite the fan, especially when it comes to multimedia applications. I notice Amazon does not show the table of contents, so I do that here:
Part 1: CAPTURING DV FOOTAGE
1. The DV Camcorder
2. Turning Home Video into Pro Video
3. Special Event Filming
Part 2: EDITING IN IMOVIE
4. Camcorder Meets Mac
5. Building the Movie
6. Transitions and Effects
7. Titles, Captions, and Credits
8. Narration, Music, and Sound
9. Still Pictures and QuickTime Movies
10. Professional Editing Techniques
Part 3: FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE
11. Back to the Camcorder
12. From iMovie to QuickTime
13. Movies on the Web - And on the Phone
14. QuickTime Player
Part 4: iDVD5
15. From iMovie to iDVD
16. iDVD Projects by Hand
17. Designing iDVD Themes
18. iDVD Secrets
Part 5: Appendixes
A. iMovie HD: Menu by Menu
B. Troubleshooting
C. Master Keyboard Shortcut List

Very informative AND entertaining! If you feel you are even the least bit interested in breaking into digital film making this book is fantastic. I have been using iMovie for several years now and have a camcorder. However, I thought this book might help me kick things up a notch. It certainly will. I have only gotten through the first fifty pages, but I've already learned enough justify this purchase.

When I first received this rather intimidating 450+ page book I thought I would use it mainly for reference. Well, that was before I started reading it. Now I find it hard put down. It is very well written and arranged by areas of interest.

This book is great for everyone, from beginner to expert. It will undoubtedly prove to be a very valuable reference book in the future, but for now it's a great read.

If you're a heavy user of iMovieHD and iDVD, this book is a must. Most questions that users have about both software can be found in this manual (though he doesn't read like a boring manual). Pogue not only provides all the how-tos for learning the software, he also helps you troubleshoot problems that will crop in movie and DVD productions. There's hardly no aspect of either software that I didn't find covered in this book.

Though I've been mostly interested in writing for animation and comics, while playing video games I questioned who came up with it's stories. Many games have little to no stories and focus mostly on mindless entertainment...which isn't always a bad thing. But some video game stories really touch the viewer (Half Life 2, Final Fantasy, Bioshock, etc. come to mind.)

On a whim I bought this book and have enjoyed it immensely. Both the authors provided much more than I was hoping for. Both are seasoned game writers/designers who have worked on many games you know, and are still working on games. Stuff like UNCHARTED - DRAKE'S FORTUNE, CRIMSON SKIES, PROJECT ORIGIN, and FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY - THE GAME. These guys know what they are doing.

The book breaks down not only how to write for games, but what that entails, hardships you will find along the way (both with writing and people), they provide sheets you can fill out to create your own game bible to pitch. And as an added bonus they occasionally have writing exercises to help you hone your craft or understnad a point better.

Leave no stone unturned and that's what these two have done. It has my highest regards! Buy it and truly educate yourself.

I am a Multimedia student in Community College.

This book has given me a ton of good ideas on how to create a top-notch game!

I reccomend it to anybody (Like Me.) who wants to design a hit videogame!

this book is chock-full of incredibly useful information about writing and game design. many of the classic traps in this area of game development can be avoided by following flint and john's advice here. everything is outlined in a very clean and (not surprisingly) fun and witty read.

as a game developer for 10 years now, i found information in this book that i'll be using in the future and i can't recommend this book enough. these guys get it, and so should you.

As a member of the student team who needed to produce video game in rather short amount of time, I have found this book extremely helpful. I did like one-sheet summary that allowed us to summarize everything. The content was very helpful. Thank you.

This book, is a no nonsense guide to the video game industry and more specifically to game design. It gives relevant realistic experience written in an upbeat humorous and succinct style.

There aren't any cons to it that I can think of.

Duane Barnharts Cartooning Basics has just been so much fun for my kids ages 12, 10, and 7. Using the Books step-by-step guidelines to cartooning they have created some of the most fabulous characters and cartoon strips. Not only is it great from a drawing perspective, but it also has some fun and interesting facts about the history of cartooning. Love this book!!!

'Cartooning Basics' is a wonderful tool for young aspiring cartoonists. No. 2 illustrates how to create friendly, familiar characters from simple shapes, which every child can relate to (ie circles, ovals, squares, triangles, etc.). Art teachers can gain lesson ideas that are effective and easy to implement. This is a great buy and a must read for any aspiring cartoonist, art teacher and student alike. Duane and Angie have created a fun, creative, well-illustrated tool in 'Cartooning Basics'.

Great how-to book, lots of practice exercises. The most helpful, how-to book I've read so far, and I've got a ton of them. Wish I'd found this one sooner!

'Cartooning Basics' is a wonderful tool for young aspiring cartoonists. No. 2 illustrates how to create friendly, familiar characters from simple shapes, which every child can relate to (ie circles, ovals, squares, triangles, etc.). Art teachers can gain lesson ideas that are effective and easy to implement. This is a great buy and a must read for any aspiring cartoonist, art teacher and student alike. Duane and Angie have created a fun, creative, well-illustrated tool in 'Cartooning Basics'.

This book has helped me learn to cartoon, and now, I teach it to my 2nd grade class!

Great starter book for any wire wrap "nut". Nice photography, great projects, nice source sites.

This is the best wire wrapping book that I have seen. Great ideas for the beginner and advanced student. You will love this book.

A well written book showing precise details for step by step procedure for many new and different projects, along with the basic techniques.
An excellent book suitable for beginner or advanced wirewrappers.

Wire Wrapping, by Linda Chandler and Christine Ritchey, is a fantastic introduction to all things beautiful in the world of wire! These two friendly authors make what might appear to be daunting accessible to anyone who wishes to learn to wire wrap beautiful bracelets, earrings, necklaces and pendants. They even have a guest appearance by a wire artist, Russ Sperring, who teaches how to wrap a lovely ring with a stone at its center.

The book begins with a list of tools and materials needed to create the pieces you will admire and soon be making yourself. Then there is a suggested "first project" bracelet which will help anyone who is taking this seriously to understand all the ins and outs of what will be coming up later on. The authors strongly recommend making this design before proceeding further. I loved the design (I am betting that you will too!), so that seemed like a good idea to me anyway!
I had several favorites, including the first project. One was a stunning "Bow Tie" bracelet, and one was a "Celtic Knot". I loved the look of both of these.

Most of the wire wrapping is done with half hard wire, something I have never used in my work. Many of the tools are strangers to me, although I own a few of certain ones required (like step-nose pliers and a mandrel) and have not used them yet. However, now I am raring to go, thanks to Linda and Christine, who infuse their creations and writing style with joy, charm, humor and beauty!
Yes! I want to make this type of jewelry! All of these great looks are so beautiful! And when I am done following their clear instructions, I will have one or many brilliant creations. I know I will love it when people ask, "Where did you GET that?" and I can say, "I made it, MYSELF! With a little help from my friends, Linda and Chris!"

This book is excellent - I am an experienced wire artist and I was looking for some simple projects to teach others. This book has wonderful detail and pictures and all of the projects are great.

The only reason I gave this a four out of five stars is because the author wrote in all caps which is incredibly hard to read page after page. It also goes against the graphic design rule of not writing in all caps unless it's a short headline. Other than that, this book is great for all levels of designers. For beginners it tells all the principles and walks through how to go about projects. For intermediate and advanced it's good to have by your computer to refresh yourself every now and then on the principles of good design. Great book... would recommend to anyone in the design field.

This book is a great reference and reminder of the basic elements that make graphic design and visual communication effective! Every student in any graphic design program should buy this book!
Gregg Berryman knows what he is writing about!

You couldn't hope to get more useful information from a 460 page book than you do from this thin 46 page book. I learned 90% of what I was taught in 5 separate design classes within this single tiny book. It's a must-have for all beginning, and even expert, designers!

I got this book during my junior year in high school for an intro to graphic design class...and still refer to it every so often. I would recommend it for any graphic designer, especially students, as it has a wealth of knowledge-from basic design principles to the grid, typogrpahy, etc.- contained in it's small amount of pages.
A must have for any graphic designer!

Notes on Graphic Design and Visual Communication is the most essential graphic design book written. Despite being very thin in quantity of pages, this book holds an enormous amount of graphic knowledge. I am currently studying Industrial Design and was refered to this book by a professor to help me with my graphic design knowledge. It opened the world of graphics up to me in an easy to read, fun package. The only complaint I`ve heard of this book is the font used for text. This book has a hand written font which can sometimes be hard to read. I have had no problems with the font however.

This book was extremely informative and answers most of the questions you would have about the gaming industry. I'm hoping for a second edition! Definitely purchase this book if you are considering a career in this field.

I bought this for my bf because he was thinking of a video game career, he hasn't done anything with this field yet, but he said the book was good

Are you considering going into the video games industry, but you want to find out more about it before making the decision to make the jump? This book will give you an honest and insightful look at just about every facet of this competitive industry.

Whether your serious or curious about the games industry, you'll enjoy this entertaining read. I wholeheartedly recommend it!

This book gave me more insight about what the Gaming work world is like than all the other research I did my whole life.

This is an essential read for anyone who wants to design electronic games!

As a graduate advisor for gaming students at Westwood College Online, I can not stress enough how important and worthwhile this book is. I recommend this book to every student that I work with because it is full of numerous "wake-up calls" and good ideas for breaking into the industry. Check this book out, it will greatly help you in your career search.

This book covers everything you need to know to write a ray tracer with
advanced features like photon mapping, volume scattering, path tracing,
etc. The scope of the material it covers is stunning. It starts from the
basics of topics like 3D geometry and ray/object intersections and then
builds up to explain reflection models, advanced texturing techniques, and
then light transport algorithms.

It has excellent discussions of the theory and underlying math of physical
rendering blended (rather well) with very very useful practical
implementations of the theory. The leap from theory to implementation is
often difficult to do, and to do well or efficiently even more difficult.
(The ray acceleration code alone is worth it's weight in gold.) This is an
indispensable book for anyone who wants to write their own ray tracer or
learn more about the latest techniques used in photorealistic rendering.

This book mixes detailed algorithm descriptions with actual code in a book that never loses sight of the "big picture" of physically based ray tracing and image synthesis. Although it is very well written and is not a dry academic book at all, it would help if the reader is already familiar with basic computer graphic techniques, linear algebra, calculus, and optics in order to get the most out of this book. It was never meant to be a replacement for Foley & Van Dam's classic book on computer graphics, even though the first few chapters go over basic computer graphic material. The book includes a website where the source code of the authors' renderer can be downloaded. This code is very well organized and commented so that if you wish to lift individual pieces from the entire software package you can with just a little bit of work. I highly recommend this book to the programmer who wishes to implement physically based rendering in his/her own code or wants to know about the practical implementation of image synthesis techniques. Amazon does not show any details about the book here, so I shall explain the contents in the context of the table of contents:
CHAPTER 01. INTRODUCTION
This chapter talks briefly about all kinds of topics related to ray tracing. It also talks about how to understand the code in the book and the book website.
CHAPTER 02. GEOMETRY AND TRANSFORMATIONS
This chapter is pretty basic computer graphics stuff. It talks about coordinate systems, vectors, arithmetic, scaling, dot and cross products,etc. Applying transformations via matrices is also discussed as well as the representation of points, vectors, normals, rays, and bounding boxes.
CHAPTER 03. SHAPES
More basic computer graphics continues with discussions on spheres, differential geometry, cylinders, and disks, paraboloids, triangles and meshes, and the representation and bounding of all of these shapes.
CHAPTER 04. PRIMITIVES AND INTERSECTION ACCELERATION
This chapter is about accelerating the speed of your graphics through grid acceleration, tree construction and representation, and object instantiation.
CHAPTER 05. COLOR AND RADIOMETRY
XYZ color system is discussed along with radiometric integrals including integrals over projected solid angles, integrals over spherical coordinates, and integrals over area. Beginning in this chapter the math becomes more advanced.
CHAPTER 06. CAMERA MODELS
Projective camera models are discussed along with orthographic, perspective, and environment camera models. This information will already be familiar to students of computer vision.
CHAPTER 07. SAMPLING AND RECONSTRUCTION
Frequency domain techniques are discussed starting with the Fourier transform and ideal sampling and reconstruction. Also, antialiasing techniques are explained.
CHAPTER 08. FILM AND THE IMAGING PIPELINE
This chapter talks about topics such as luminance, photometry, bloom, and imaging pipeline stages.
CHAPTER 09. REFLECTION MODELS
The various reflection models are discussed including specular, Fresnel, Lambertian, Oren-Nayer disfuse reflection, and the Lafortune model.
CHAPTER 10. MATERIALS
Matte, plastic, bump mapping, and other material effects are explained very well.
CHAPTER 11. TEXTURE
We return to frequency models some in this chapter. The texture sampling rate, filtering functions, and mapping in spherical, cylindrical, and planar form are explained. Procedural textures are also discussed including the famous Perlin noise, marble, and windy waves.
CHAPTER 12. VOLUME SCATTERING
This chapter is considered more advanced material, and discusses volume scattering processes, absorption, emission, in and out scattering, phase functions, exponential density, and volume aggregates.
CHAPTER 13. LIGHT SOURCES
All kinds of light sources are described including point lights, spotlights, texture projection lights, distant lights, area lights, and infinite area lights.
CHAPTERS 14 and 15 both discuss Monte Carlo integration techniques including improving efficiency.
CHAPTERS 16 and 17 are about light transport. The first chapter is about surface reflection and the second is about volume rendering.
CHAPTER 18. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION includes a design retrospective, a discussion of abstraction versus reality, and design alternatives including triangles only and streaming computation.
APPENDIXES- These include sections on utilities, scene description interface, input file formats, an index of code fragments, an index of classes and their members, and finally an index of identifiers.

I do ray tracing and GI for a living. When I got started on my ray tracer I was struggling with several basic issues. Even though I tried to locate all the published material on those subject there was still significant gaps. Issues like 'how to shot photons', what about all these 'cosines'. How do you actually implement a kd-tree. I read Shirley's, Jansen's, Glassner's and Advanced Global Illumination and a lot of the older Siggraph papers. PBRT came out just in time to rescue me. It contains the only complete implementation of a photonmap.

It's strong point is a complete running GI engine. However the literate programming style used in the book meant a lot of time I cannot read a subject by itself. The use of abstract interfaces sort of force you to use the class browser to follow the logic. You pretty much have to read it from the beginning. The quality of the code contained goes beyond the usual standard of code published as examples. It contains a rather sophiscated random number generator. Its treatment of LDS plus sampling and recontruction in general is excellent. It is the only source that shows how to implement Li's algorithm to generate random rays to sample a sphere. Same goes for Malley's. Shirley and Chui's concentric sampling method is hidden in the appendix of a old Siggraph paper.

The book also has code to sample and model most of the common light sources. Which is surprisingly non-trivial.

I highly recommend this book but it does require a certain level of commitment to get the most out of this book. The chapters on sampling, ray differential, texture filtering, light transport I consider must reads for all graphics programmer even though you might not be working on ray tracing.

I cannot praise this book more than the others already have. The book is about producing high-quality images using raytracing. It basically walks you through the creation of a fully-functional raytracer, discussing all the different algorithms and techniques that are needed along the way.

It's written in the context of their particular implementation of a working raytracer, using the fweb programming/documentation system, where basically the program source and the documentation are written as one document. I've always thought this was academic nonsense as far as writing real code in a production environment, but it turns out to be an EXCELLENT way to write a book or code intended for a learning environment.

This strikes the perfect balance between explaining the theory thoroughly and showing how the ideas can be implemented in a real, functional raytracer. They avoid the trap of many other book that focus on a particular implemention, by not getting too bogged down into pecularities of their system.

The source code itself also stands out as a strong point. There are so many books out there with poorly written and unorganized code that you'd never want to read, much less try to work in. The code is well organized, and the coding style easy to read. It's one of the few books I own that contain source code where I actually read the source code and it added something to my experience. I wish everybody who wrote about programming was actually a decent programmer and not just a mathemiticion.

This book has academic rigor and but also well-written explanations. I'm still learning a lot from it. I expect to refer to it frequently over the next years as we (in the video game industry) take more concepts from raytracers and apply them to real-time graphics, as the processors get more and more powerful.

You probably should not be an absolute newbie when it comes to basic 3D math and things like vectors and basic graphics concepts before buying this book. The authors use some calculus, too, if that scares you off.

Although it is not possible here, I am fairly sure this book deserves such rating. This is truly remarkable work and is likely to become a classic text in the field of computer graphics.

It is not a survey-type book, instead of trying to describe every possible method out there, the authors have concentrated on a few selected techniques, that are not only good (modern, fast, easy to implement, etc.), but also have some pedagogical merits and can serve as a gentle introduction to the world of ray tracing and digital image synthesis. Despite focusing on selected areas, the authors managed to squeeze here in an amazing amount of material. Among other topics, this book covers: subdivision surfaces, ray-primitive intersection acceleration techniques (3D DDA and kd-tree), color and radiometry, anti-aliasing, tone mapping, physically based reflection models, texture mapping (including texture anti-aliasing using ray differentials), area lights and HDR Image Based Lighting, volume scattering and much more.

A large part of the book has been devoted to the light transport and Monte Carlo techniques. One can find there an introduction to the theory of Monte Carlo estimation (including selected methods for reducing variance and computation time, like Russian roulette, multiple importance sampling or stratified sampling) and explanation of important light transport equations (rendering and transfer equations).

Finally the authors have described (and implemented) several solutions for the rendering equation: Whitted-style recursive ray tracing, direct illumination estimation, path tracing, irradiance caching and photon mapping.

However, it is not only the vastness of the material covered in this book, that causes this volume should be praised so highly. Perhaps, the style, in which this book has been written, is even more impressive. For each of the topics, the authors start with what is usually known as "dry math and theory", and then show how it is supposed to work as an algorithm (including its dirty details) and finally they explain how to turn this algorithm into C++ code. Each of those transitions concentrates on a small portion of the problem, so it is still easy to understand. Anyone, who had to turn a SIGGRAPH paper into something that works, will immediately recognize what kind of gem this book is - it actually shows how to do it!

This brilliant blend of theory and practice is one of its brightest spots, for learning the theory and math formulas is one thing, but writing a working, robust implementation is completely another.

Those, who prefer studying sources, will get source code of a very good, physically based, extensible ray tracer (called pbrt) with the best documentation one could ever imagine. Documentation that gives the rationale for almost every line of code. It shows not only how they did it, but also why they did it that way.

It is not the only book, that one will ever need - computer graphics is a vast topic - too big to be covered in a single volume, even as huge as this one. However, it is certainly one of the books that everyone interested in photorealistic rendering should buy. The price of this book is really low, if you think about it as of an excellent, first-rate computer graphics course.

Aimed at students, researchers and people interested in computer graphics algorithms, it is an indispensable book for anyone willing to write his own photorealistic (not necessarily physically based!) ray tracer and learn more about computer image synthesis.

I have all RenderMan books on the market.
This one is impressed me!
The authors explain step by step and that make readers understand RenderMan more.

Same as other reviews, lacking of CD is the shame.
However, overall still be very good to me.
And if you consider the price is very worth for money.
That's why I think this book should be given 5 stars.
Hopefully, There will be more good RenderMan books available soon.

Tee

The RenderMan Shading Language Guide is an excellent resource. It contains numerous examples of shader code, to help get you started with writing your own shaders. I was happy to see the robust section on illumination models, with some sl code provided for most of them. I found the section that had common functions (like gamma() and remap()) very helpful, and appreciated the disscussion on more sophisticated components of the shading language (like subsurface scattering and global illumination). In addition, for the user who is new to the process of writing and compiling shaders, a number of pages are devoted to explaining how to achieve these goals. All in all, I would highly recommend this book to any user who wants to learn how to write his/her own RenderMan shaders.

I caught wind that this book was coming out well before it actually came out and could hardly contain my excitement. I had it ordered before it was even off the press.

Let's face it, trying to learn Renderman online is like trying to ride a bike with a flat tire. You can go, but not very fast or very far. I own several other renderman books but found them to be a bit out of date and lacking in areas. Since leaving school and entering into the industry I had actually been considering writing a Renderman book myself. I am glad to say that now I don't have to!

I have been enjoying my copy of the book since december of last year. I admit that I was thrown off by all the refrences to the accompanying cd, as well as a few typos throughout. I was overjoyed however to find the website today! This is the book that I have needed for a long time. It is well worth what you pay for it.

I have read many technical manuals relating to the 3D Animation and Visual Effects industries, and I can honestly say that this is easily one of the best available.

Given the limited library of Renderman books, I'd call this an absolute must have for any Lighting/Rendering/Shader TD, or any artist or technical director involved in the look development and shot finaling pipelines.

Even if you haven't yet worked within a Renderman pipeline, this is the perfect publication to introduce you to, and bring you up to speed in, the Renderman Shading Language (RSL).

I've found that the majority of technical manuals suffer from a number of common flaws:

1. The information is presented chaotically, and with minimal use of examples or descriptions, resulting in a publication that would readable only by those that already know everything it has to teach.

2. The information is presented so laboriously that what should take a paragraph instead takes up three chapters.

The Renderman Shading Language Guide is perfectly paced for beginners and intermediate users alike, and indeed when I showed the book to a couple of highly experienced Renderman TDs, they were surprised by the sheer volume of information and ordered copies for themselves.

Everything is presented in short blocks with an easily readable description, examples, shortcuts and conclusions. There is no unecessarily complicated geek speek, and neither is the reader treated like a 4 year old.

Even though I barely remember my high school math, and in the most flattering estimation I'd be considered a competent beginner when it comes to the math involved in RSL, I found the examples relatively easy to follow for the most part. And in those parts where the math went well over my head, I found the simple descriptions and concise, well explained instructions to be all I needed to quickly understand the topic.

From cover to cover this book is crammed full of useful information. There is no wastage of space in these pages. It seems that every conceivable question is answered - every possible topic covered from introduction to an advanced level of understanding and a practical and immmediately useful conclusion.

And at the price? This book is a steal.

One very minor complaint I would make is in regards to the occasional typographical error. An equation or two is printed with "?" in place of "*" or another symbol, and there are a few spelling and grammatical errors. But as I said, it is a minor complaint.

Also, I would have liked to have seen more complete shader examples demonstrated in a step-by-step process, as while this book is overflowing with informative mini-tutorials, it all seems a little incongruous. It would have been good to see a few more examples where the information was brought together in real-world ways to create some amazing completed shaders. Perhaps in a sequel? ;)

All in all, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, from an industry Lead Lighting TD.

9.5/10

I'm quite pleased with the depth of this book. So many of the CGI titles I've bought that claim to be intermediate or advanced aren't. While the RenderMan Shading Language Guide assumes that you have no starting knowledge of RSL, it immediately dives into technical details without overwhelming the novice. For someone wishing to learn RSL (or even just shader theory), this book is wonderfully paced, containing a great depth of information, very well explained.

At the same time, this isn't a book for dabblers. To get much out of the RenderMan Shading Language Guide, you need to be willing to put some effort and practice into it. This is a textbook and needs to be treated as a subject of study, rather than a casual enhancement for playing with CGI. If RenderMan intrigues you, but you don't want to get too deep into the technical (and programing/scripting) aspects, you'd be better off getting Pixar's RenderMan for Maya and a Digital Tutors or similar training DVD. You'll learn more of the simple, day-to-day things and get started making renderings faster.

As another poster mentioned, the text mentions an included disk which isn't. The website doesn't have downloads either. That omission would knock the book down to 4.5 stars, but since I can't rate with half-stars, 5 stars more accurately reflects the value of the book than 4.

I Thought I know how to work with Photoshop, but after I read this book I discovered that I didn't. This book was extermely helpful to me in building web site graphics, and has introudced me to many different techniques that I used in to build the effects that I need in short time; Everyone was amazed, and so was I. Most of the Books has very boring and useless Intrduction, this book doesn't. It was very useful to me ( I confess I was about to skip the first two chapters , but the writer urged the readers not to).

Although this book is useful, I was able to get all the techniques it offered in less that three days !

If you know your way well in Photoshop, don't buy this book. If you are a confused designer; you see these amazing designs and wonder How did they do it ?, then buy this book, and the best of luck.

I've been using Photoshop for years, but only recently for web graphics. This book totally opened my eyes to things I never knew it could do! I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get more out of Photoshop. It's written clearly, even though it has too many typos, and gets right to the point.

This book is simply great for an amateur photoshop 5 user. I know what I'm doing, but I wouldn't consider my a pro. However, with the aid of this book, I can create graphics for my web site just like a professional. This book is invaluable as a learning tool and as a reference.

I have only scratched the surface of Photoshop. The directions in this book are very clear, and easy to follow. Even for me who jumped right into the middle of the book. It's set up in a logical learning sequence and covers EVERYTHING for someone wanting to use Photoshop for their webpages. I admit, it was an impulse buy for me, but it has been worth every cent.

I Thought I know how to work with Photoshop, but after I read this book I discovered that I didn't. This book was extermely helpful to me in building web site graphics, and has introudced me to many different techniques that I used in to build the effects that I need in short time; Everyone was amazed, and so was I.

Most of the Books has very boring and useless Intrduction, this book doesn't. It was very useful to me ( I confess I was about to skip the first two chapters , but the writer urged the readers not to).

Although this book is useful, I was able to get all the techniques it offered in less that three days !

If you know your way well in Photoshop, don't buy this book. If you are a confused designer; you see these amazing designs and wonder How did they do it ?, then buy this book, and the best of luck.