NVIDIA’s Material Definition Language (MDL) is used by rendering systems to define surface and volume appearance. To help artists, designers, programmers and managers understand and use MDL, the MDL Handbook is a work-in-progress that provides background, theory and practical examples of the language.

This website provides interim versions of the MDL Handbook; as a chapter nears completion, it will be available here. Some chapters may be missing explanatory text or the text may not yet be in its final form, but the material examples, diagrams and renderings may already be useful.