Are there official Mental Ray books?
Yes. Mental Images has written two books on Mental Ray. They are called ‘Rendering with Mental Ray’ and ‘Programming Mental Ray’. The latter book requires programming knowledge (ie C++), but the first book is just a good handbook. Something you really need to know is that there are first and second editions of each of those books! Make sure you get the second editions if you can because you don’t really want to buy an outdated book. Unfortunately the second editions are named the same as the first ones, and look nearly identical too (I think!). You can buy the books by clicking here ! Update: A 3rd edition of ‘Rendering with Mental Ray’ will be out in October this year. Not only is it updated for Mental Ray 3.3, it also contains the entire second edition of ‘Programming Mental Ray’ on the CD that comes with it! You can already pre-order it by clicking here .
