Further Reading

The RenderMan® API is described in a number of books (Upstill 1989; Apodaca and Gritz 2000) and in its specification document, which is available online (Pixar Animation Studios 2000). A different approach to rendering APIs is taken by the mental ray rendering system, which exposes much more internal information about the system’s implementation to users, allowing it to be extensible in more ways than is possible in other systems. See Driemeyer and Herken (2002) for further information about it.


  1. Apodaca, A. A., and L. Gritz. 2000. Advanced RenderMan: Creating CGI for Motion Pictures. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
  2. Driemeyer, T., and R. Herken. 2002. Programming mental ray. Wien: Springer-Verlag.
  3. Pixar Animation Studios. 2000. The RenderMan Interface. Version 3.2.
  4. Upstill, S. 1989. The RenderMan Companion. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.