Digital Lighting & Rendering

Digital

by Jeremy Birn

Provides information on lighting and rendering techniques to create realistic illumination, shadows, and textures.

Genres: Art, Design, Reference, Nonfiction, Photography, Technical, Film

416 pages, Paperback

First published July 17, 2000

Reviews

[Howie]

As a relatively new hobbyist I'm finding that there is a lot of ground to cover in this field. This book not only covered digital lighting in depth but also touched on many other aspects of digital art such as color theory, texturing, and compositing. A must read for anyone interested in 3D rendering.

Books on specific software are important, but I wish there were more books like this one that covered the concepts of 3D rendering without focusing on the mechanics of a specific software package. This book does not contain any "tutorials" but each chapter provides a few exercises to inspire further thought.

[Brian]

If you know this title, you already know it's the Digital Lighter's Bible. Every page is wonderfully informative, and sports spectacularly full-color image examples to accomany the concepts (a big help when discussing color!!).

Some people are put off by it's lack of platform-specific information, but he's really illustrating concepts, not executions. I think this books gives you enough of a starting point that you can easily (or with a few Google searches) find your own methods.

If you're thinking of becoming a CG Lighter or Shader Writer - BUY THIS BOOK.

[Jose]

Good overview of lighting technique in computer graphics. It is good to skim for the professional lighter and very good perusing for the beginner. I usually find books that are too technical impossible to read . This one was not difficult at all while managing to be comprehensive. I fear some of the issues will become a bit dated with time and future editions will have to provide a timeline for certain developments. I wish some more space would have been devoted to certain aspects like developments in rendering beyond Reyes and brute force raytracing. Also, the compositing of life elements into CG scenes which is touched on on the chapter about set data collecting and layers. I imagine future editions will expand on the lighting of grooms, more on subsurface scattering and the many troubles with color- the chapter on linear vs gamma corrected displays will be an eye-opener to many - Overall, a must for those starting on the path of computer lighting and its many challenges.

[Alexander Leo Swenson]

This is no longer the required reading for digital artists it once was; even though this book was written to be software agnostic and "timeless", technology has progressed over the past 20 years further than this book could hope to anticipate. That said, this book is so accessibly written and covers so many fundamentals that I walked away with much more confidence in compositing and lighting than I expected to. CGI has changed, but if you want to understand some of its foundations, this is one of the more accessible guides out there.

[David]

I bought it used, and it has great general ideas for setting scenes up in 3d software packages, it's platform neutral and more high level. At the moment I'll give it 4 stars, but I'm awfully close to saying 5 stars.

[Sarah O'Halloran]

Great to get started

This is a great book for beginners getting into lighting and rendering. A thorough read with a practical application of theory.

[Torgeir Vikane Stemsverk]

Great book about coloring and visualization! If you are doing product visualization there are many chapters that comes in handy.

[Brian]

If you know this title, you already know it's the Digital Lighter's Bible. Every page is wonderfully informative, and sports spectacularly full-color image examples to accomany the concepts (a big help when discussing color!!).

Some people are put off by it's lack of platform-specific information, but he's really illustrating concepts, not executions. I think this books gives you enough of a starting point that you can easily (or with a few Google searches) find your own methods.

If you're thinking of becoming a CG Lighter or Shader Writer - BUY THIS BOOK. Or better yet, buy the second edition!

[Carly]

Although this book is not specific to any one program, it is still a great resource for lighting and rendering questions and provides a good foundation into the digital lighting and rendering arena.

[Sudesh]

This is awesome!

[Unigami]

Practical advice for 3D digital rendering.

[Frank]

Most useful book if you have anything to do with CG. Written in a very accessible style and full of great info.

[Chhavi Rajvanshi]

Its nice to learn for beginners.

[GAURAV SINGH]

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