Others say...

"mental ray- excelente guia avanzada "
el libro es netamente tecnico. abarca tantos conceptos importantes para comprender el manejo de la iluminacion indirecta, el uso de fotones, final gather,, sombreadores, teoria de iluminacion etc.
ES un completo manual que permite comprender con mayor exactitud el manejo de mental ray y saber realmente que es lo que sucede cuando modificamos un valor. con este libro uno comprende el porque delas cosas.
y lo mejor es que no se centra en un solo programa, abarca hasta 3.
con este libro mental ray es mucho mas facil de comprender.

"Must have for all serious mental ray users"
Every serious mental ray user needs to have this book and actually read it. this is not a quick guide, its an extensive reference. Plan to spend some time with this book and a highlighter pen, read and reread it. Considering it has information in mental ray stand alone, Maya, Max, and XSI its pretty amazing. This is not the kind of book you whip out on the job just to figure out which preset shader to use, its detailed information on how mental ray actually works. If you seriously study this book and really understand it, you will master mental ray. The fact that it might be slightly out of date with regards to the mia shader in Maya is rather irrelevant. if you really understand this book then you'll understand what every setting in the mia shader actually does which is much more important. I'm about half way through it. my only criticism is that it could have more hands on examples, however their are plenty of other sources for that.

"Use mental ray? This is the one book you need on your shelves"
Being a self-study mental ray enthusiast, I've turned to three things in my path to becoming a skilled mental ray user and now a professional in the field, working with it daily.

As such, I've turned to forums, to books and video dvd's. All three have very little information available about mental ray, a situation which has slowly improved in last three years, but during this time only one gem has really emerged: the item at hand, Livny's must-have mental ray guide.
The book takes various topics from the original and very difficult Driemeyer mental ray books - which are application independant - and puts them in a more readable form in this massive seven-hundred page book. Livny understands what's really important when using mental ray, the deep knowledge of how things work, which help the user get to the result they - and their client - needs, faster and better.

Differently from other mental ray books, Livny also handles the topic of third party and customization options of mental ray, covering various shaders and plugin options.

Since the book covers three different applications that have mental ray integrated seamlessly, the book is also very useful to rendering experts who have to jump working platform every now and then.

This is however not a book recommended for beginners, far from entry level, I personally recommend this book to average to advanced level students and enthusiasts.

Thumbs up, a pleasant surprise from a generally unknown author and publisher and a book I'll be recommending to mental ray users everywhere.

"Thick but worth it"
I've been searching for references to these programs that actually explained things rather than just take you through a tutorial for quite some time. As a user of both Maya and 3DsMax, this book intrigued me from the beginning. What I love about it is the author's willingness to actually explain they why behind the numbers. I also bought a few other books at the same time, but they were incredibly tutorial oriented. "Enter this number and see how it matches our picture?" Never giving the reason for that set of numbers. This one actually takes the time to explain the settings rather than just providing the right input.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the depth (and amount of information) included in this book. I'm not at the level of every chapter yet, but it is a great book to grow into. The writing style allows to learn what you are looking for, and teaches new things at the same time. It is incredibly in-depth, but the book isn't written with only the highly advanced in mind. A great book for someone with some knowledge and looking to learn more about the programs, why some things work better than others, and the things that mental ray can do.

"Great but needs updating"
I'm no pro at mental ray, which is why I bought this book. While it is an impressing resource, it quickly became clear that it needs to be updated for Maya 2008 users since they could go through this book and completely miss the mia_material shader, which is only described in a PDF on the included CD. Ditto for the mia_roundcorners shader, which appears nowhere in the index, only in the PDF. This is a great resource, I just wish that it hadn't taken forum posts from helpful individuals to point me to these significant shaders which replace a lot of longer workflow routines combining simpler shaders. Otherwise, this is a very helpful book and incredibly in-depth.