Cgi

Advanced RenderMan: Creating CGI for Motion Pictures (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)

Format: Paperback
Author: Anthony A. Apodaca
ReleaseDate: 08 December, 1999
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Rating:

Great overview of the Renderman specs
Overall, excellent overview for the intermediate graphics prefessional. The book covers everything from the basics of setting up a scene with lighting to writing your own shaders with detailed descriptions of the Renderman API.

Intended for shader programmers
This is really geared towards shader programmers and Renderman theorists. Don't buy this book expecting to learn the intricacies of Renderman. 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.

Delivers more than the title suggests
"Advanced Renderman" is a completely different sort of book. The world of computer graphics books is filled with fat, pricy tomes that are frankly little better than rehashes of the manual.

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.