book for renderman shader writing

#1

Hi guys

I am learning renderman shader writing . please any one suggest me good books for learning
shader writing and also books or online reference for study mathematics and physics related to renderman shading language .

Thanks
Neal

#2

hi neal,

i think everyone learning RSL should have “The RenderMan Shading Language Guide” by Cortes. it covers the basics but is unfortunately already a little outdated. the fudamentals still are the same but things do have changed a bit:
http://www.amazon.com/RenderMan-Shading-Language-Guide/dp/1598632868/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295536164&sr=8-1

what i like aswell is the book by musgrave “Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach”. Instead of talking about the structure of RSL it has a lot of principles of how to approach some patterns and also talks about volumes, raymarching, etc:
http://www.amazon.com/Texturing-Modeling-Third-Procedural-Approach/dp/1558608486/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295536258&sr=1-1

not beeing a pure RSL book i still would suggest to buy the “Advanced RenderMan: Creating CGI for Motion Pictures” written by the great guy with the much greater name Apodaca and of course larry gritz. it covers a lot of what you should know about renderman and the reyes engine. also it does cover some good RSL stuff:
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-RenderMan-Creating-Pictures-Kaufmann/dp/1558606181/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295536372&sr=1-1

for online ressources have a look at the RI_Spec, all the siggraph renderman papers (eg “RI_INFINITY and beyond”)

With all the new versions of PRman there have been more or less severe changes to RSL. the development team has spent some time to make the structure more user friendly and to make code more reusable. most of those changes are now called to be RSL2 features. with the next release of ProServer there again will be some new things to keep in mind while writing shaders with RSL and you won’t find a book covering this topics. i try to have all the relevant stuff of the documentation in my mind. you don’t need to know it by heart but you must know where to look things up etc

grs
Patrik

#3

Hi Patrik

Thank you very much for suggesting me books and information about RSL .These books are really useful for me .

Thanks
Neal

#4

For online resources, I know Escape Studio has a Certified Courseware
http://www.escapestudios.co.uk/find-a-renderman-tutorial/
Hope it will be helpful :slight_smile:

#5

the courseware is more a general renderman ressource. it does talk a bit about RSL but usually only a few specific aspects. still the courseware is a great place to learn for beginners, especially for students because they “only” pay 100$

grs
Patrik

#6

Escape’s Courseware is great because there is a huge library of various renderman related topics.What about shading,there is a whole section devoted to the production examples from Pixar’s,DreamWork’s and other films with a detailed shader’s code and general techniques discussions.

#7

i wouldn’t say detailed, but yes they give some information. a lot of it can be found online

i too think that the courseware is a great place for beginners but i would think twice when i’d need to pay 1000 bucks

grs
Patrik

#8

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