- Explores how mixed, virtual and augmented reality technologies can enable designers to create immersive experiences and expand the aesthetic potential of the medium - Curated selection of projects and essays by leading international architects and designers, including those from Zaha Hadid Architects and MVRDV- Illustrated with over 150 images

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. Gambling is both a multi-billion-dollar international industry and a ubiquitous social and cultural phenomenon. It is also undergoing significant change, with new products and technologies, regulatory models, changing public attitudes and the sheer scale of the gambling enterprise necessitating innovative and mixed methodologies that are flexible, responsive and 'agile'. This book seeks to demonstrate that researchers should look beyond the existing disciplinary territory and the dominant paradigm of 'problem gambling' in order to follow those changes across territorial, political, technical, regulatory and conceptual boundaries. The book draws on cutting-edge qualitative work in disciplines including geography, organisational studies, sociology, East Asian studies and anthropology to explore the production and consumption of risk, risky places, risk technologies, the gambling industry and connections between gambling and other kinds of speculation such as financial derivatives. In doing so it addresses some of the most important issues in contemporary social science, including: the challenges of studying deterritorialised social phenomena; globalising technologies and local markets; regulation as it operates across local, regional and international scales; and the rise of games, virtual worlds and social media.

Within the field of game design, game balance can best be described as a black art. It is the process by which game designers make a game simultaneously fair for players while providing them just the right amount of difficulty to be both exciting and challenging without making the game entirely predictable. This involves a combination of mathematics, psychology, and occasionally other fields such as economics and game theory. Game Balance offers readers a dynamic look into game design and player theory. Throughout the book, relevant topics on the use of spreadsheet programs will be included in each chapter. This book therefore doubles as a useful reference on Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets, and other spreadsheet programs and their uses for game designers. FEATURES The first and only book to explore game balance as a topic in depth Topics range from intermediate to advanced, while written in an accessible style that demystifies even the most challenging mathematical concepts to the point where a novice student of game design can understand and apply them Contains powerful spreadsheet techniques which have been tested with all major spreadsheet programs and battle-tested with real-world game design tasks Provides short-form exercises at the end of each chapter to allow for practice of the techniques discussed therein along with three long-term projects divided into parts throughout the book that involve their creation Written by award-winning designers with decades of experience in the field Ian Schreiber has been in the industry since 2000, first as a programmer and then as a game designer. He has worked on eight published game titles, training/simulation games for three Fortune 500 companies, and has advised countless student projects. He is the co-founder of Global Game Jam, the largest in-person game jam event in the world. Ian has taught game design and development courses at a variety of colleges and universities since 2006. Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game director, entrepreneur, artist, and Fulbright award recipient and is presently game director and creator of the Empire of Sin franchise. As a game director, she has worked on 50 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon, Dungeons & Dragons, and Def Jam franchises.

The unique, dynamic learning system that has helped thousands of artists enhance their figure drawing abilities Dozens of updated illustrations and all-new content, exclusive to the 3rd edition Select pages can be scanned by your smartphone or other device to pull up bonus video content, enhancing the learning process

Written by a pioneer of game development in academia, Introduction to Game Physics with Box2D covers the theory and practice of 2D game physics in a relaxed and entertaining yet instructional style. It offers a cohesive treatment of the topics and code involved in programming the physics for 2D video games. Focusing on writing elementary game physics code, the first half of the book helps you grasp the challenges of programming game physics from scratch, without libraries or outside help. It examines the mathematical foundation of game physics and illustrates how it is applied in practice through coding examples. The second half of the book shows you how to use Box2D, a popular open source 2D game physics engine. A companion website provides supplementary material, including source code and videos. This book helps you become a capable 2D game physics programmer through its presentation of both the theory and applications of 2D game physics. After reading the book and experimenting with the code samples, you will understand the basics of 2D game physics and know how to use Box2D to make a 2D physics-based game.

Now in its fourth edition, this book is one of the leading texts on the evolution of electronic mass communication in the last century, giving students a clear understanding of how the media of yesterday shaped the media world of today. Now Media, Fourth Edition (formerly Electronic Media: Then, Now, Later) provides a comprehensive view of the beginnings of electronic media in broadcasting and the subsequent advancements into 'now' digital media. Each chapter is organized chronologically, starting with the electronic media of the past, then moving to the media of today, and finally, exploring the possibilities for the media of the future. Topics include the rise of social media, uses of personal communication devices, the film industry, and digital advertising, focusing along the way on innovations that laid the groundwork for 'now' television and radio and the Internet and social media. New to the fourth edition is a chapter on the amazing world of virtual reality technology, which has spawned a 'now' way of communicating with the world and becoming a part of video content, as well as a discussion of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on media consumption habits. This book remains a key text and trusted resource for students and scholars of digital mass communication and communication history alike. The new 'now' edition also features updated online instructor materials, including PowerPoint slides and test banks. Please visit www.routledge.com/cw/medoff to access these support materials.

Fully illustrated, with rich, four-color graphics, this book takes a unique illustrated approach to communication technologies, detailing graphically how each invention works Offers readers a comprehensive history of mass communication technologies, from the printing press to the Internet Covers key historical innovations, giving readers insight into the driving figures behind technologies and broader society impact

A uniquely cross-disciplinary and cross-experience book written as an accessible guide for people new to storytelling in games, new to games as a practice, and those eager to develop their existing practices & knowledge around storytelling in games. Offers careful, clear, and practical advice for understanding creative writing, in the context of games, and in discovering and developing your own games writing practice. Focuses on writing, not narrative design, as an area underdeveloped in the context of games storytelling.

OpenGL ES is the standard graphics API used for mobile and embedded systems. Despite its widespread use, there is a lack of material that addresses the balance of both theory and practice in OpenGL ES. JungHyun Han's Introduction to Computer Graphics with OpenGL ES achieves this perfect balance. Han's depiction of theory and practice illustrates how 3D graphics fundamentals are implemented. Theoretical or mathematical details around real-time graphics are also presented in a way that allows readers to quickly move on to practical programming. Additionally, this book presents OpenGL ES and shader code on many topics. Industry professionals, as well as, students in Computer Graphics and Game Programming courses will find this book of importance. Key Features: Presents key graphics algorithms that are commonly employed by state-of-the-art game engines and 3D user interfaces Provides a hands-on look at real-time graphics by illustrating OpenGL ES and shader code on various topics Depicts troublesome concepts using elaborate 3D illustrations so that they can be easily absorbed Includes problem sets, solutions manual, and lecture notes for those wishing to use this book as a course text.

As a textbook for learning the fundamentals of modeling, rigging and animating 3D-modeled characters for use in video games, this step-by-step lesson book builds on the reader's modeling skills acquired from reading Volume I. The reader will model characters for the Castle Environment created in Volume I, which will be rigged using the Character Animation Toolkit (CAT) in 3ds Max and animated with game moves. The Skin Modifier is used for associating the meshes to the rigs and the characters are then exported to the Unity game engine and integrated into the Castle Scene with a Third Person Character camera. As the text introduces new modeling skills, it additionally calls on the reader to perform repetitive tasks, reinforcing skills learned in the process. The content is presented as if the reader is in a working video game studio, being responsible for researching asset design and providing the team with placeholder assets and final model assets that are unwrapped and custom textured using both box mapping and the 3ds Max Quick Peel tool. Although the text uses Autodesk 3ds Max for the modeling program, the principles are transferable to other major modeling programs. Key Features: The goal of this book is to teach the fundamentals of 3D modeling video game characters in a simplified, logical progression optimized for learning at a beginner level. Rigging principles (Linking, Inverse Kinematics [IK], Forward Kinematics [FK], Skin Deformation, Weighting Vertices and more) are introduced in a gradual progression to allow maximum comprehension and retention. This series of modeling exercises is the result of having successfully taught over 1000 video game students the fundamentals of 3D modeling. This complete, clearly written and concise text is written for self-paced learning, helping those instructors who might not be fully trained in 3D modeling and those interested in self-teaching. Includes instructions and project files for exporting the finished project environment into the 3D game engine, Unity. A companion site (www.3dsMaxBasics.com) includes working 3ds Max project files for chapters, notes and corrections, a 3ds Max user interface, 3ds Max shortcut keys and more.

Timing for Animation has been one of the pillars of animation since it was first published in 1981. Now this 40th anniversary edition captures the focus of the original and enhances this new edition with fresh images, techniques, and advice from world-renowned animators. Not only does the text explore timing in traditional animation, but also timing in digital works. Vibrant illustrations and clear directions line the pages to help depict the various methods and procedures to bring your animation to life. Examples include timing for digital production, digital storyboarding in 2D, digital storyboarding in 3D, and the use of After Effects, as well as interactive games, television, animals, and more. Learn how animated scenes should be arranged in relation to each other, how much space should be used, and how long each drawing should be shown for maximum dramatic effect. All you need to breathe life into your animation is at your fingertips with Timing for Animation. Key Features: Fully revised and updated with modern examples and techniques Explores the fundamentals of timing, physics, and animation Perfect for the animation novice and the expert Get straight to the good stuff with simple, no-nonsense instruction on the key techniques like stretch and squash, animated cycles, overlapping, and anticipation. Trying to time weight, mood, and power can make or break an animation-get it right the first time with these tried and tested techniques. Authors Harold Whitaker was a BAFTA-nominated professional animator and educator for 40 years; many of his students number among today's most outstanding animation artists. John Halas, known as "The father of British animation" and formerly of Halas & Batchelor Animation Studio, produced more than 2,000 animation films, including the legendary Animal Farm (1954) and the award-winning Dilemma (1981). He was also the founder and president of the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) and former Chairman of the British Federation of Film Societies. Tom Sito is Professor of Animation at the University of Southern California and has written numerous books and articles on animation. Tom's screen credits include Shrek (2001) and the Disney classics Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). In 1998, Tom was named by Animation Magazine as one of the 100 Most Important People in Animation.

This tutorial-based book allows readers to create a first-person game from start to finish using industry-standard (and free to student) tools of Unity, Substance Painter, and Maya. The first half of the book lays out the basics of using Maya and Substance Painter to create game-ready assets. This includes polygonal modeling, UV layout, and custom texture painting. The book then covers rigging and animation solutions to create assets to be placed in the game, including animated first-person assets and motion-captured NPC animations. Finally, readers can put it all together and build interactivity that allows the player to create a finished game using the assets built and animated earlier in the book. * Written by industry professionals with real-world experience in building assets and games * Build a complete game from start to finish * Learn what the pros use: construct all assets using the tools used at game studios across the world * All software used are free to students * When complete, students will have a playable version of an FPS game Jingtian Li is a graduate of China's Central Academy of Fine Arts and New York's School of Visual Arts, where he earned an MFA in Computer Art. He currently is an Assistant Professor of 3D Animation & Game Design at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. Adam Watkins is a 20-year veteran of 3D education. He holds an MFA in 3D Animation and a BFA in Theatre Arts from Utah State University. He currently is the Coordinator and Professor of the 3D Animation & Game Department at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. Kassandra Arevalo is an instructor of 3D Animation & Game Design at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. She previously worked as an animator at Immersed Games. Matt Tovar is an industry veteran animator. He has worked at Naughty Dog, Infinity Ward, and Sony Interactive on such games as The Last of Us, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and most recently Marvel's Avengers with Crystal Dynamics. He is an Assistant Professor of 3D Animation at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas.

Locating Imagination in Popular Culture offers a multi-disciplinary account of the ways in which popular culture, tourism and notions of place intertwine in an environment characterized by ongoing processes of globalization, digitization and an increasingly ubiquitous nature of multi-media. Centred around the concept of imagination, the authors demonstrate how popular culture and media are becoming increasingly important in the ways in which places and localities are imagined, and how they also subsequently stimulate a desire to visit the actual places in which people's favourite stories are set. With examples drawn from around the globe, the book offers a unique study of the role of narratives conveyed through media in stimulating and reflecting desire in tourism. This book will have appeal in a wide variety of academic disciplines, ranging from media and cultural studies to fan- and tourism studies, cultural geography, literary studies and cultural sociology.

This book takes a hemispheric approach to contemporary urban intervention, examining urban ecologies, communication technologies, and cultural practices in the twenty-first century. It argues that governmental and social regimes of control and forms of political resistance converge in speculation on disaster and that this convergence has formed a vision of urban environments in the Americas in which forms of play and imaginations of catastrophe intersect in the vertical field. Schifani explores a diverse range of resistant urban interventions, imagining the city as on the verge of or enmeshed in catastrophe. She also presents a model of ecocriticism that addresses aesthetic practices and forms of play in the urban environment. Tracing the historical roots of such tactics as well as mapping their hopes for the future will help the reader to locate the impacts of climate change not only on the physical space of the city, but also on the epistemological and aesthetic strategies that cities can help to engender. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Urban Studies, Media Studies, American Studies, Global Studies, and the broad and interdisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities.

The author takes readers on an in-depth walkthrough of the Torque Game Engine---one of the most popular, powerful, and easy to use game engines available today. With clear explanations of how to use Torque to create your own games and detailed discussions of the engine's inner workings, this book is a must read for any programmer interested in making games for fun or profit. It offers step-by-step examples, detailed system descriptions, in-depth references, practical tips, tricks, and more that provide readers all they need to understand the Torque Game Engine. See the Support page on the author's website for a revision of Chapter 15 (Torque Lighting). Downloadable resources are included with the book.

Blender Foundations is the definitive resource for getting started with 3D art in Blender, one of the most popular 3D/Animation tools on the market . With the expert insight and experience of Roland Hess, noted Blender expert and author, animators and artists will learn the basics starting with the revised 2.6 interface, modeling tools, sculpting, lighting and materials through rendering, compositing and video editing. Some of the new features covered include the completely re-thought interface, the character animation and keying system, and the smoke simulator. More than just a tutorial guide, "Blender Foundations" covers the philosophy behind this ingenious software that so many 3D artists are turning to today. Start working today with Blender with the accompanying web site which includes all of the projects and support files alongside videos, step-by-step screenshots of the trickier tutorials, as well as a direct links to official resources like the Blender download site and artist forums.

This book explains how to use the symbolic differentiation system D* for applications in computer games and engineering simulation. The authors describe how to create procedural 3D geometric models, link them together to form multibody physical systems, and simulate and display their physical behavior in real time. The symbolic differentiation capabilities of D* can be used in a wide variety of technical applications, including computer graphics, engineering, and mechanical simulation. Two Lagrangian physics simulation and procedural 3D geometric modeling are developed in great detail.

This book provides a deep understanding of state-of-art methods for simulation of heterogeneous crowds in computer graphics. It will cover different aspects that are necessary to achieve plausible crowd behaviors. The book will be a review of the most recent literature in this field that can help professionals and graduate students interested in this field to get up to date with the latest contributions, and open problems for their possible future research. The chapter contributors are well known researchers and practitioners in the field and they include their latest contributions in the different topics required to achieve believable heterogeneous crowd simulation. Provides crowd simulation methodology to populate virtual environments, for video games or any kind of applications that requires believable multi-agent behavior Presents the latest contributions on crowd simulation, animation, planning, rendering and evaluation with detailed algorithms for implementation purposes Includes perspectives of both academic researchers and industrial practitioners with reference to open source solutions and commercial applications, where appropriate

An In-Depth, Practical Guide to GPGPU Programming Using Direct3D 11 GPGPU Programming for Games and Science demonstrates how to achieve the following requirements to tackle practical problems in computer science and software engineering: Robustness Accuracy Speed Quality source code that is easily maintained, reusable, and readable The book primarily addresses programming on a graphics processing unit (GPU) while covering some material also relevant to programming on a central processing unit (CPU). It discusses many concepts of general purpose GPU (GPGPU) programming and presents practical examples in game programming and scientific programming. The author first describes numerical issues that arise when computing with floating-point arithmetic, including making trade-offs among robustness, accuracy, and speed. He then shows how single instruction multiple data (SIMD) extensions work on CPUs since GPUs also use SIMD. The core of the book focuses on the GPU from the perspective of Direct3D 11 (D3D11) and the High Level Shading Language (HLSL). This chapter covers drawing 3D objects; vertex, geometry, pixel, and compute shaders; input and output resources for shaders; copying data between CPU and GPU; configuring two or more GPUs to act as one; and IEEE floating-point support on a GPU. The book goes on to explore practical matters of programming a GPU, including code sharing among applications and performing basic tasks on the GPU. Focusing on mathematics, it next discusses vector and matrix algebra, rotations and quaternions, and coordinate systems. The final chapter gives several sample GPGPU applications on relatively advanced topics. Web ResourceAvailable on a supporting website, the author's fully featured Geometric Tools Engine for computing and graphics saves you from having to write a large amount of infrastructure code necessary for even the simplest of applications involving shader programming. The engine provides robust and accurate source code with SIMD when appropriate and GPU versions of algorithms when possible.

Important elements of games, movies, and other computer-generated content, shadows are crucial for enhancing realism and providing important visual cues. In recent years, there have been notable improvements in visual quality and speed, making high-quality realistic real-time shadows a reachable goal. Real-Time Shadows is a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of real-time shadow techniques. It covers a large variety of different effects, including hard, soft, volumetric, and semi-transparent shadows. The book explains the basics as well as many advanced aspects related to the domain of shadow computation. It presents interactive solutions and practical details on shadow computation. The authors compare various algorithms for creating real-time shadows and illustrate how they are used in different situations. They explore the limitations and failure cases, advantages and disadvantages, and suitability of the algorithms in several applications. Source code, videos, tutorials, and more are available on the book's website www.realtimeshadows.com.

Based on course notes of SIGGRAPH course teaching techniques for real-time rendering of volumetric data and effects; covers both applications in scientific visualization and real-time rendering. Starts with the basics (texture-based ray casting) and then improves and expands the algorithms incrementally. Book includes source code, algorithms, diagrams, and rendered graphics.

Driven by consumer-market applications that enjoy steadily increasing economic importance, graphics hardware and rendering algorithms are a central focus of computer graphics research. Video-based rendering is an approach that aims to overcome the current bottleneck in the time-consuming modeling process and has applications in areas such as computer games, special effects, and interactive TV. This book offers an in-depth introduction to video-based rendering, a rapidly developing new interdisciplinary topic employing techniques from computer graphics, computer vision, and telecommunication engineering. Providing an overview of the state-of-the-art of video-based rendering and details of the fundamental VBR algorithms, the author discusses the advantages, the potential, as well as the limitations of the approach in the context of different application scenarios.

Architecture for the Commons dives into an analysis of how the tectonics of a building is fundamentally linked to the economic organizations that allow them to exist. By tracing the origins and promises of current technological practices in design, the book provides an alternative path, one that reconsiders the means of achieving complexity through combinatorial strategies. This move requires reconsidering serial production with crowdsourcing and user content in mind. The ideas presented will be explored through the design research developed within Plethora Project, a design practice that explores the use of video game interfaces as a mechanism for participation and user design. The research work presented throughout the book seeks to align with a larger project that is currently taking place in many different fields: The Construction of the Commons. By developing both the ideological and physical infrastructure, the project of the Commons has become an antidote to current economic practices that perpetuate inequality. The mechanisms of the production and governance of the Commons are discussed, inviting the reader to get involved and participate in the discussion. The current political and economic landscape calls for a reformulation of our current economic practices and alternative value systems that challenge the current market monopolies. This book will be of great interest not only to architects and designers studying the impact of digital technologies in the field of design but also to researchers studying novel techniques for social participation and cooperating of communities through digital networks. The book connects principles of architecture, economics and social sciences to provide alternatives to the current production trends.

The award-winning VES Handbook of Visual Effects remains the most complete guide to visual effects techniques and best practices available today. This new edition has been updated to include the latest, industry-standard techniques, technologies, and workflows for the ever-evolving fast paced world of visual effects. The Visual Effects Society (VES) tasked the original authors to update their areas of expertise, such as AR/VR Moviemaking, Color Management, Cameras, VFX Editorial, Stereoscopic and the Digital Intermediate, as well as provide detailed chapters on interactive games and full animation. Additionally, 56 contributors share their best methods, tips, tricks, and shortcuts developed through decades of trial and error and real-world, hands-on experience. This third edition has been expanded to feature lessons on 2.5D/3D Compositing; 3D Scanning; Digital Cinematography; Editorial Workflow in Animated and Visual Effects Features; Gaming updates; General Geometry Instancing; Lens Mapping for VFX; Native Stereo; Real-Time VFX and Camera Tracking; Shot/Element Pulls and Delivery to VFX; Techvis; VFX Elements and Stereo; Virtual Production; and VR/AR (Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality). A must-have for anyone working in or aspiring to work in visual effects, The VES Handbook of Visual Effects, Third Edition covers essential techniques and solutions for all VFX artists, producers, and supervisors, from pre-production to digital character creation, compositing of both live-action and CG elements, photorealistic techniques, and much more. With subjects and techniques clearly and definitively presented in beautiful four-color, this handbook is a vital resource for any serious VFX artist.

The Paradox of Transgression in Games looks at transgressive games as an aesthetic experience, tackling how players respond to game content that shocks, disturbs, and distresses, and how contemporary video games can evoke intense emotional reactions. The book delves into the commercial success of many controversial videogames: although such games may appear shocking for the observing bystander, playing them is experienced as deeply rewarding for the player. Drawing on qualitative player studies and approaches from media aesthetics theory, the book challenges the perception of games as innocent entertainment, and examines the range of emotional, moral, and intellectual experiences of players. As they explore what players consider transgressive, the authors ask whether there is something about the gameplay situation that works to mitigate the sense of transgression, stressing gameplay as an aesthetic experience. Anchoring the aesthetic game experience both in play studies as well as in aesthetic theory, this book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of game studies, aesthetics, media studies, philosophy of art, and emotions.