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Physically Based Rendering, Second Edition: From Theory To Implementation
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Product Details
| Binding: | Hardcover |
|---|---|
| EAN: | 9780123750792 |
| Label: | Morgan Kaufmann |
| Feature: | |
| Publisher: | Morgan Kaufmann |
| Studio: | Morgan Kaufmann |
Editorial Reviews
Physically Based Rendering, 2nd Edition describes both the mathematical theory behind a modern photorealistic rendering system as well as its practical implementation. A method - known as 'literate programming'- combines human-readable documentation and source code into a single reference that is specifically designed to aid comprehension. The result is a stunning achievement in graphics education. Through the ideas and software in this book, you will learn to design and employ a full-featured rendering system for creating stunning imagery.
- New sections on subsurface scattering, Metropolis light transport, precomputed light transport, multispectral rendering, and much more.
- Includes a companion site complete with source code for the rendering system described in the book, with support for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Please visit, www.pbrt.org.
- Code and text are tightly woven together through a unique indexing feature that lists each function, variable, and method on the page that they are first described.
Customer Reviews
Doug Epps @ 2004-11-03 A Graphics Must Have
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.
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.
Manchor Ko @ 2007-05-12 indispensible
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.
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.
Fletcher Dunn @ 2006-08-08 Excellent resource - thorough and well-written
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.
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.
Liming Mei "james me @ 2009-04-15 excellent book for rendering techniques
This is a great book. It gives solid foundation of photo-realistic rendering techniques as well as example code. As a mid-level software developer I found it's quite useful to strengthen my power in rendering technologies. Some of the algorithms can be further improved.. but this is a book not collection of journal papers so I won't complain about it. Fast delivery is also something I like. So if you are a researcher or engineer at mid-level this book is definitely worth it's price.
Indrikov Vadim @ 2010-08-28 new level of the great book
ok, I should not repeat what people already said about the first edition - this book is definitely great, outstanding, and it covers both theory and implementation indeed
I also will not repeat what you can find in th preface - thanks to editor you can preview the book and find what it is about and how it differs from the first edition. The preview also contains three chapters, it is more than enough to give you an understanding what kind of book is it. So, please, no this "I whant to render nice pictures, and this book is full of formulas and program code" comments.
No CDs included, because the renderer source code is available on the book web site (mentioned in the introductory chapter)
I just whant to add something to "About the Authors" because things about them changed more than a little bit, and because you could not find this information here.
(from the back-cover)
Matt Pharr co-founded both Exluna (acquired by NVIDIA) and Neoptica (acquired by Intel), and has also worked in Pixar's Rendering R&D group.
Greg Humphreys is the software lead for the OptiX ray tracing engine at NVIDIA [OptiX is GPU-accelerated rt toolkit, you can find it on NVIDIA developer site - V.I.]
So, as you can see, the authors are trustworthy, at least in this area :).
I also will not repeat what you can find in th preface - thanks to editor you can preview the book and find what it is about and how it differs from the first edition. The preview also contains three chapters, it is more than enough to give you an understanding what kind of book is it. So, please, no this "I whant to render nice pictures, and this book is full of formulas and program code" comments.
No CDs included, because the renderer source code is available on the book web site (mentioned in the introductory chapter)
I just whant to add something to "About the Authors" because things about them changed more than a little bit, and because you could not find this information here.
(from the back-cover)
Matt Pharr co-founded both Exluna (acquired by NVIDIA) and Neoptica (acquired by Intel), and has also worked in Pixar's Rendering R&D group.
Greg Humphreys is the software lead for the OptiX ray tracing engine at NVIDIA [OptiX is GPU-accelerated rt toolkit, you can find it on NVIDIA developer site - V.I.]
So, as you can see, the authors are trustworthy, at least in this area :).
John Matlock "Gunny" @ 2004-09-27 3 Books In One
The key to realistic looking computer graphics is rendering. And if you really want to spend some money, go look at the cost of rendering software. This book is really three things in one.
First, there is a very good basic overview of the theory of rendering. Second is on the implementation of rendering in the real world. And Finally there is a complete rendering system suitable for use with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
The authors are Matt Pharr, a member of the technical staff at NVIDIA, the manufacturer of the state of the art in high end graphics processing chips; and Greg Humphreys an assistant professor of computer sciende at the University of Virginia.
The book is well written and provides what is probably the most complete and comprehensive book available for understanding, designing, and building physically realistic rendering systems.
First, there is a very good basic overview of the theory of rendering. Second is on the implementation of rendering in the real world. And Finally there is a complete rendering system suitable for use with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
The authors are Matt Pharr, a member of the technical staff at NVIDIA, the manufacturer of the state of the art in high end graphics processing chips; and Greg Humphreys an assistant professor of computer sciende at the University of Virginia.
The book is well written and provides what is probably the most complete and comprehensive book available for understanding, designing, and building physically realistic rendering systems.
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