This book is the definitive reference manual for mental ray® version 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1. It begins with a brief overview over the features of mental ray and continues with the specifications of the mental ray scene description language and the mental ray shader interface. All material is presented in reference form, organized by grammar elements and C function call, rather than by feature set. It is intended for translator writers and shader writers who are familiar with the C and C++ programming languages.
For a tutorial-style description of mental ray, refer to the book ``Rendering with mental ray'' [Driemeyer 01], which is intended for non-programmers who want to effectively use mental ray without concern for its internal structure and programming interfaces. The functionality of mental ray is presented in much greater detail there.
This book is organized in six chapters and an appendix:
The mental ray versions described in this book are 2.1.47. 3.0.4, and 3.1.1. Please refer to the mental ray release notes for updates.
Throughout this book, features only available in mental ray 2.1 but not mental ray 3.x are marked ``2.1'', features only available in mental ray 3.0 and later are marked ``3.x'', features available in mental ray 3.1 and later are marked ``3.1'', and features that require mental ray 3.2 or later are marked ``3.2''.