Mastering mental ray

Finally – the first draft of Chapter 10 is done, the last chapter.  It was great to be able to write, “In this last section of the book I cover…”.  Now it is a matter of getting back to the numerous edits and corrections for the previous chapters.  I get chapters back from various editors at random times.  Each editor has their specialty, and the things they are looking for and correct.   Mariann is my Acquisitions Editor (AE) and is the one that pitched the book internally at Wiley and is overseeing things.  Mark is my Technical Editor (TE) and makes sure everything works and is correct.  Jen is my Development Editor (DE) and is responsible for overall content, structure, and deadlines.  Now there are Copy Editors (CE) involved as chapters get finalized.  The CE is the last stage before actual typesetting, I believe.  I’ll then have a PDF to sign off on, although I can still make minor edits as long as the length of a page isn’t increased.

For the final round of edits from the Copy Editor I find that many things are changed that completely change the meaning of what I wrote.  They will misinterpret what the technical term represents and rearrange the sentence to match what they think it means, and it then makes no sense at all.  So I have to spend a lot of time picking through every edit they made to see if what they changed still makes sense.    Reading through their edits, though, will help with my writing as I am training myself to get it right the first time instead of needing them to fix it and send it back for me to then pick through and validate.    I can be trained!  I’m going through Chapter 5, “Indirect Illumination and Final Gather” right now.  Chapter 3′s doc file got corrupted by a script the Wiley provides, we think, and I have to rebuild a big chunk.  The backups have the same fatal flaw, so the last rewrite that I did was mostly lost.  As I tell my students, it is always easier the second time!

Because of the color format of the book I am limited in the number of pages I can write, and although 400 sounds like a lot, I have been more limited by this number than anything else.  When you look at a feature, like Render Elements in Chapter 10, you have to make a decision about what will be included and what will not.  You just kinda skip stuff.  My instinct is to be thorough and explain every bell and whistle.  This book isn’t a “mr Bible”, though, and there isn’t room for all of that, every detail, so I have had to learn to let that go.

Another thing that I didn’t expect to be as challenging was the examples.  One thing that Mark, my TE, stressed to me is to make examples that can be done by people and  at schools and universities that may have moderate computer resources.   Throughout the examples I try to keep things lean and point out ways that you can speed up the rendering of an image.  I also provide pre-computed Final Gather, GI and Irradiance Particle files, along with the final result images so that you don’t even have to wait for the image to render.  As an instructor, though, I don’t necessarily want the students to have everything handed to them.  As Mark says, though, at a seminar you don’t have the luxury of waiting 30, 60, 90 minutes for a rendering.

So, do you scale down the examples to fit the least common denominator of computer or available seminar time?  I’m being a bit facetious, but the book is “Mastering mental ray” not “Sorta Mastering mental ray”.  I had heard a comment from a Max user talking about a different mr book with the comment “I never look at these books and thing ‘Wow’ and see great examples.”  I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea.  So I weigh these things as I look at the examples I’m creating.  There will definitely be extra projects on the DVD, whether it is content taken out of the book or large projects that were not reasonable to render.

I got a draft copy of the cover concept, and rather than their typical “Mastering” cover they have been using it shows a Sponza Palace Atrium image from the book, which is great.  The name has also been shortened to just “Mastering mental ray”,  and on their end it always said “Mastering mental ray”, but I think showing the application will certainly help users.  Everything, with few exceptions, is geared towards 3ds Max 2010.  I even have a few Max 2009 files, but not many.  I’ll try and make some FBX files for anything that can’t be opened in 2009.  It go to be too much to try and get it all working as Max 2009.

Cover Concept for Mastering mental ray

Jenni

The first drafts of Chapter 7, “Importons and Irradiance Particles”, Chapter 8, “Effects”, and Chapter 9, “mr for Architecture” were completed over the last few weeks.  The final chapter, “mr for Design”, is due on the 7th, and then I start getting back into revisions and corrections to the remaining chapters.

The mental ray “web brain” is being updated regularly:  http://webbrain.com/u/10FG It is still very-much in development, but new content appears regularly, and this will accelerate as I get into the final stages of the book.  The downloadable brain will not be available until after the book ships.  It is my hope that this becomes a companion to users of the book, and mental ray/3ds Max users in general.  I appreciate your feedback.

We (4DA) got exceptionally busy with a couple rush projects, so that set me a bit behind where I need to be for the book.  We completed an architectural animation and a huge solar power plant animation in the course of two weeks.  The solar power project, in particular, was exceptionally challenging.  We did a project for this group last spring and had a lot of the 3d models cleaned-up and ready, however we enlisted the help of my friend George Matos, Melissa Marcy of Virtuality, and Tom Munz of Pulse Studios.  We’ll get some images up in the gallery, once the gallery is in-place.   I’m thinking about switching from the PHPBB to the CPG-Nuke CMS to combine PHBB with the Coppermine photo gallery, as I’ve done with other sites.

Our 3December celebration is on December 3rd 2009 at Flashpoint Academy in Chicago, and it looks like it will be wall-to-wall-people and a great event!

More soon!

Jenni

Back to the book..k