As a student of the Open Inventor toolkit, I am deeply indebted to the original Inventor mentors, who contributed so much to the development and content of this book: Rikk Carey, Gavin Bell, Alain Dumesny, Dave Immel, Paul Isaacs, Howard Look, David Mott, Paul Strauss, and Helga Thorvaldsdóttir. Even under the pressures of tight deadlines and numerous competing responsibilities, the members of the Inventor team consistently met my demands: they answered all questions, reviewed numerous drafts, and created the code examples that are the core of this book. Rikk Carey provided dynamic leadership for the Open Inventor project, rigorously questioning and challenging each decision. Paul Strauss, one of the chief architects of Inventor, probably read the most drafts and definitely added the most red (and green) ink to those drafts. His insightful and literate reviews were invaluable to me. Additional eagle-eyed reviewers included Ronen Barzel, Sam Chen, Beth Fryer, and Kevin Goldsmith.

The whole Open Inventor User's Guide documentation is also the result of the hard work and the support of the entire Open Inventor FEI development team: Rodolphe Albou, Thibaut Andrieu, Thomas Arcila, Fabien Arnaud, Patrick Barthélemy, David Beilloin, Martial Bonaventure, Roberto Calabrese, Nicolas Daguisé, Damien Dalla Rosa, Thierry Dufour, Pascal Doux, Pascal Estrade, Frédéric Fratani, Federico Gamba, Jean-Luc Garnier, Jean-Michel Godinaud, Benjamin Grange, Mike Heck, Jérôme Hummel, François Jautard, Jérome Lagüe, Eric Larquey, Philippe Laval, Daniel Lichau, Tristan Mehamli, Christophe Ognier, Ludovic Peine, Céline Rougier, Julien Sallanne, Gwenolé Tallec and Kathy Tinoco.

Putting all the pieces of the puzzle together—screen shots, line art, color plates, text, code examples—also required a large cast of people. Rikk Carey created the cover image. Catherine Madonia used Rikk's scene to create the black-and-white images for the part- and chapter-title pages. Paul Isaacs showed his creative genius—not to mention his ability to work under brutal deadlines—in creating the many models and scenes for the images shown in Figure B.1, “ Plate 1 ” through Figure B.21, “ Plate 21 ”. I'm also grateful to Maria Mortati, who designed the color plate section and persuaded me to make massive edits to the figure captions. Catherine Madonia helped by creating conceptual images and by taking snapshots of the example programs. The many details of dealing with vendors, coordinating printer tests and schedules, and producing the book were ably handled by Laura Cooper and Lorrie Williams. Line art was drawn by Kay Maitz, Cheri Brown, Dan Young, Howard Look, and Lorrie Williams. Helga Thorvaldsdóttir paid special attention to the code examples: writing many of them, and revising and polishing to the bitter end.

Many thanks to Kirk Alexander, of the Interactive Computer Graphics Laboratory at Princeton University, who supplied numerous images and revisions to satisfy our requests precisely. The Out-of-Box Experience, an application originally designed for the Silicon Graphics Indy workstation, shown in Figure B.37, “ Plate 37 ” through Figure B.40, “ Plate 40 ”, was created by Leo Blume, Mark Daly, Kevin Goldsmith, Howard Look, and Chee Yu of Silicon Graphics, and Brad de Graf, Shari Glusker, Jill Huchital, Karen Hughes, Peter Oppenheimer, Mark Swain, Drew Takahashi, and Phil Zucco of (Colossal) Pictures. The art gallery tour shown in Figure B.30, “ Plate 30 ” is the work of Gavin Bell, Mark Daly, Kevin Goldsmith, and Linda Roy, all of Silicon Graphics. Many of the models used in the cover scene were created by Acuris, Inc.

I'd also like to thank Jackie Neider, manager of Developer Publications in the Visual Magic Division of Silicon Graphics, and the other members of my department—Patricia Creek, Arthur Evans, Liz Deeth, Beth Fryer, Jed Hartman, Ken Jones, John Stearns, Eleanor Bassler, and Carol Geary—for their consistent support and encouragement during the course of this project (and for sharing the high-speed printer).

And, most important, thanks to my husband, Steve, and my sons, Jeff and Evan, for a warm dinner and cheerful conversation at the end of some very long days.