Physically Based Rendering
by Matt Pharr, Greg Humphreys, Wenzel Jakob · first published 2004
84% recommend15% neutral1% critical
Why HN recommends it
In-depth guide to building a photorealistic path tracer, covering sampling, shading models and Monte Carlo integration. Written as literate code with an open source renderer; suits readers past the basics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…graphics: Principles and Practice https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... This is more of college textbook if you'd prefer that but the WebGL one is more accessible and less dry. # Physically Based Rendering & Real-Time Rendering These discuss some state of the art techniques in computer graphics. I'm not going to claim to have really read them but from what I've seen they are very solid. https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice...…
on “A trip down the League of Legends graphics pipeline” ↗…conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av0PQDVTP4A You can write a literate program in any language, for instance, in HTML: http://axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/litprog.html There are some "gold standard" literate programs: "Physically Based Rendering" by Pharr and Humphreys won an academy award. "Lisp in Small Pieces" contains a complete lisp implementation including the interpreter and compiler. The book "Implementing Elliptic Curve Cryptography"…
on “Ask HN: Why did literate programming not catch on?” ↗Computer Graphics: [1a, 1b, 1c] Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice Series [2] Physically Based Rendering [3] Real Time Rendering --- [1a] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-James-Fo... [1b] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... [1c] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... [2]…
on “Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?” ↗Depends how far you want to take it... There's plenty of links on the web, but if you're really serious (it can be quite addictive writing one), get hold of the "Raytracing/Rendering bible" : Physically Based Rendering by Matt Pharr and Greg Humphreys. There's also a plethora of research freely available with cutting edge techniques to read.
on “Recursive raytracer in 35 lines of JavaScript” ↗…is much more effort than reading a self-help book: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesley... http://www.amazon.com/TCP-IP-Illustrated-Implementation-Vol/... http://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Second-Edit...
on “Best development book I've read, has no code in it” ↗…Marschner or "Computer Graphics: Principles & Practices" by Foley and Van Dam. Once you understand the basics of computer graphics and especially of shading and ray tracing, I'd recommend picking up "Physically Based Rendering: From theory to implementation" by Pharr and Humphreys which is an excellent book that explains the State of the Art of photorealistic rendering. Once you understand how physically based rendering, path…
on “Intro to RenderMan for Blender” ↗…of the exercises involves building a simple ray tracer. A slightly more advanced source on ray tracing is http://www.scratchapixel.com/. Of course the best way to learn about ray tracing is by reading Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation by Pharr and Humphreys. Pixar has ditched RSL in favor of BSDFs written in C++, so there is no real reason for learning RSL anymore. Open Shading Language (OSL) is a new…
on “Pixar in a Box – Khan Academy” ↗…of view of opportunity costs. For learning computer graphics programming through ray tracing something like Peter Shirleys "Raytracing in one weekend" and then onwards to Pharr, Jakob and Humphreys "Physically based rendering" would be a much better learning path. OpenGL and real time graphics are another beast entirely and to learn those well you must preferably work in the industry for a while (mainly because it's a fairly…
on “Blender for Hackers – 3D modeling is just like using VIM” ↗"Physically Based Rendering" walks you through the theory behind, and the implementation of, a photo-realistic rendering system (not real-time). An extremely thorough guide to ray tracing. https://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Third-Impl...
on “Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?” ↗…rendering and raytracing, there has been considerable work on doing physically accurate rendering. Of course a lot of approximations are still made due to memory/CPU constraints, but it is a different world. "Physically Based Rendering" by Pharr and Humphreys is a good intro to this way of doing things.
on “Ask HN: What are the best books on modern computer graphics?” ↗…Ray tracing the next week, and Ray Tracing, the Rest of Your Life: https://www.amazon.com/Ray-Tracing-Weekend-Minibooks-Book-eb... If you get interested on rendering Matt Pharr & Co's Oscar winning "Physically based rendering" is a didactic masterpiece. https://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Third-Impl... The book is one of the best examples of how to combine high quality code and academic exposition together.
on “Ask HN: Best way to learn modern C++?” ↗I can really recommend Matt Pharr’s “Physically based rendering” if you like to get lost in this kind of thing for a few hours.
on “Show HN: A raytracer to shade topographic maps in R” ↗…and say something like "obviously this is not production code but error handling would clutter up the examples too much". That to me is indicative of the problem. I like the project based book idea. Physically Based Rendering is a rather nice example of this but I don't know of too many other similar books in other domains.
on “Programming Books You Wish You Read Earlier” ↗For 3D, the book “Physically Based Rendering” by Humphreys & Pharr is excellent. I think the entire text is free online nowadays.
on “Raymarching Distance Fields (2008-2020 compilation)” ↗On the flip-side, if you're interested in rendering realistic scenes that appear physically accurate but aren't suitable for real-time rendering (useful for movies, ads, etc.), Physically Based Rendering (aka PBRT) by Pharr and Humphreys should be your go to book.
on “Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting” ↗