Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK IS THE COMBINED effort of 9 individual authors from around the world and several other individuals mentioned below. Each played an invaluable role in seeing this book through to completion and without their help, it simply wouldn’t exist.

Thanks to Dina Quan for once again, single-handedly taking on the role of compositor and laying out the design of this book.

Thanks to Mark Gerhard for once again tearing into our work as technical reviewer and making us all look so much smarter.

A special thanks again to my good friends Nadiya and Volodymyr of Visarty. They are two of the best in the business and for many years now they have provided unwavering 3D production support through many difficult projects. We’re still trying to find time to visit you both in your neck of the woods.

Thanks to Alexander Gorbunov for providing many of the models used in this book as well as writing an amazing tutorial on furniture creation. Alexander is arguably the best furniture modeler in the world and has become an invaluable asset to our business. You can see his work at www.interovisuals.com.

Thanks to Chris Bullen for taking on the challenge of writing four chapters on mental ray.

Thanks again to my mom for beating proper English into me and for serving as the final proofreader of this book. You would be hard-pressed to find many English errors in a book if she has anything to say about it.

Brian L. Smith