Timeline for the 4th edition of the Physically Based Rendering book

[Matt Pharr]

An update: we are now in the thick of the production process with MIT Press (copyediting, fixing up the figures, etc.) and have reached the point where we have a solid timeline for the fourth edition. It is:

• Fall 2022: we will release a few chapters as PDFs (likely those on volume rendering, which are almost entirely rewritten to reflect the current state of the art—null scattering and all that) as well as two new scenes for pbrt—both high-quality, complex, and professionally-modeled.
• February 14 2023: printed books will be available
• August 2023: the entire book contents will be made available online for free, like the third edition is now.

Evidently, we were fairly “optimistic” in earlier predictions of when the printed book would be released! However, we’ve so far been quite happy working with with MIT Press (especially compared to the previous publisher), especially in terms of their focus on the quality of the final result as well as their willingness to allow us to make the book’s contents freely available. I hope that the wait will be worth it!

Thanks,

Matt