Mastering mental ray

The first draft of Chapter 6, “Global Illumination and Caustics” is done.   As usual I’ll probably find a few things I missed in the draft, but that is why it is called a ‘draft’, right?  And that is why I have great Technical and Development Editors.

GI Photon Path

Books, it seems, have a number of things that affect their content.  The author, certainly, and their ideas for what should and should not be there, but also the real limitations of what can fit into the space you have allocated.  The list of things I’d like to cover certainly far exceeds both my time to write and the pages I have allocated to the book.   Six chapters down, at least for first run-troughs, and four to go.  The way things are tracking I’ll have considerably more pages that I will be able to use, and some things may get put onto the DVD as bonus material for each chapter, or even the last couple chapters that were more about using other applications with Max and mental ray, may get turned into bonus content, which will work well.  That may let me add more back into the earlier chapters without having to be concerned about hitting the top-end early.

Sponza Visual Diagnostics Image

The Wiley’s Acquisitions Editor once said to me that authors tend to over-write, and they have certainly pushed for me to keep it to-the-point and “tight”.  I think about that a lot as I am working, and will often revisit paragraphs and reword them, sometimes reducing things considerably.  Often times the feedback from the editors has been to add additional explanations and examples, and that has certainly helped improve the content.  Overworking paragraphs and having too much time to write can have a negative effect, too, as I used to jump into a paragraph and rework it to later find that I had done the same thing and added similar thoughts elsewhere.  Being conscience of those issues, and printing out the entire chapter and putting it up on your wall or spread out on the floor to get the ‘big picture’ certainly helps with the process.  And having good editors.  :)

Caustics Demo