This book takes the practicality of other "Gems" series such as "Graphics Gems" and "Game Programming Gems" and provide a quick reference for novice and expert programmers alike to swiftly track down a solution to a task needed for their VR project. Reading the book from cover to cover is not the expected use case, but being familiar with the territory from the Introduction and then jumping to the needed explanations is how the book will mostly be used. Each chapter (other than Introduction) will contain between 5 to 10 "tips", each of which is a self-contained explanation with implementation detail generally demonstrated as pseudo code, or in cases where it makes sense, actual code. Key Features Sections written by veteran virtual reality researchers and developers Usable code snipits that readers can put to immediate use in their own projects. Tips of value both to readers entering the field as well as those looking for solutions that expand their repertoire.

The arrival of the digital age has created the need to be able to store, manage, and digitally use an ever-increasing amount of video and audio material. Thus, video cataloguing has emerged as a requirement of the times. Video Cataloguing: Structure Parsing and Content Extraction explains how to efficiently perform video structure analysis as well as extract the basic semantic contents for video summarization, which is essential for handling large-scale video data. This book addresses the issues of video cataloguing, including video structure parsing and basic semantic word extraction, particularly for movie and teleplay videos. It starts by providing readers with a fundamental understanding of video structure parsing. It examines video shot boundary detection, recent research on video scene detection, and basic ideas for semantic word extraction, including video text recognition, scene recognition, and character identification. The book lists and introduces some of the most commonly used features in video analysis. It introduces and analyzes the most popular shot boundary detection methods and also presents recent research on movie scene detection as another important and critical step for video cataloguing, video indexing, and retrieval. The authors propose a robust movie scene recognition approach based on a panoramic frame and representative feature patch. They describe how to recognize characters in movies and TV series accurately and efficiently as well as how to use these character names as cataloguing items for an intelligent catalogue. The book proposes an interesting application of highlight extraction in basketball videos and concludes by demonstrating how to design and implement a prototype system of automatic movie and teleplay cataloguing (AMTC) based on the approaches introduced in the book.

Achieving believable motion in animation requires an understanding of physics that most of us missed out on in art school. Although animators often break the laws of physics for comedic or dramatic effect, you need to know which laws you're breaking in order to make it work. And while large studios might be able to spend a lot of time and money testing different approaches or hiring a physics consultant, smaller studios and independent animators have no such luxury. This book takes the mystery out of physics tasks like character motion, light and shadow placement, explosions, ocean movement, and outer space scenes, making it easy to apply realistic physics to your work. Physics concepts are explained in animator's terms, relating concepts specifically to animation movement and appearance. Complex mathematical concepts are broken down into clear steps you can follow to solve animation problems quickly and effectively. Bonus companion website at www.physicsforanimators.com offers additional resources, including examples in movies and games, links to resources, and tips on using physics in your work. Uniting theory and practice, author Michele Bousquet teaches animators how to swiftly and efficiently create scientifically accurate scenes and fix problem spots, and how and when to break the laws of physics. Ideal for everything from classical 2D animation to advanced CG special effects, this book provides animators with solutions that are simple, quick, and powerful.

This book describes the technical problems and solutions for automatically recognizing and parsing a medical image into multiple objects, structures, or anatomies. It gives all the key methods, including state-of- the-art approaches based on machine learning, for recognizing or detecting, parsing or segmenting, a cohort of anatomical structures from a medical image. Written by top experts in Medical Imaging, this book is ideal for university researchers and industry practitioners in medical imaging who want a complete reference on key methods, algorithms and applications in medical image recognition, segmentation and parsing of multiple objects. Learn: Research challenges and problems in medical image recognition, segmentation and parsing of multiple objects Methods and theories for medical image recognition, segmentation and parsing of multiple objects Efficient and effective machine learning solutions based on big datasets Selected applications of medical image parsing using proven algorithms

The first of its kind, this anthology in the burgeoning field of technology ethics offers students and other interested readers 32 chapters, each written in an accessible and lively manner specifically for this volume. The chapters are conveniently organized into five parts: I. Perspectives on Technology and its Value II. Technology and the Good Life III. Computer and Information Technology IV. Technology and Business V. Biotechnologies and the Ethics of Enhancement A hallmark of the volume is multidisciplinary contributions both (1) in "analytic" and "continental" philosophies and (2) across several hot-button topics of interest to students, including the ethics of autonomous vehicles, psychotherapeutic phone apps, and bio-enhancement of cognition and in sports. The volume editors, both teachers of technology ethics, have compiled a set of original and timely chapters that will advance scholarly debate and stimulate fascinating and lively classroom discussion. Downloadable eResources (available from www.routledge.com/9781032038704) provide a glossary of all relevant terms, sample classroom activities/discussion questions relevant for chapters, and links to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries and other relevant online materials. Key Features: Examines the most pivotal ethical questions around our use of technology, equipping readers to better understand technology's promises and perils. Explores throughout a central tension raised by technological progress: maintaining social stability vs. pursuing dynamic social improvements. Provides ample coverage of the pressing issues of free speech and productive online discourse.

VipIMAGE 2015 contains invited lectures and full papers presented at VIPIMAGE 2015 - V ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Vision and Medical Image Processing (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, 19-21 October, 2015). International contributions from 19 countries provide a comprehensive coverage of the current state-of-the-art in the fields of: 3D Vision; Computational Bio-Imaging and Visualization; Computational Vision; Computer Aided Diagnosis, Surgery, Therapy and Treatment; Data Interpolation, Registration, Acquisition and Compression; Industrial Inspection; Image Enhancement; Image Processing and Analysis; Image Segmentation; Medical Imaging; Medical Rehabilitation; Physics of Medical Imaging; Shape Reconstruction; Signal Processing; Simulation and Modelling; Software Development for Image Processing and Analysis; Telemedicine Systems and their Applications; Tracking and Analysis of Movement and Deformation; Virtual Reality. Computational Vision and Medical Image Processing. VipIMAGE 2015 will be useful to academics, researchers and professionals in Biomechanics, Biomedical Engineering, Computational Vision (image processing and analysis), Computer Sciences, Computational Mechanics, Signal Processing, Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Learning has never been easier than with ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS6 ILLUSTRATED, International Edition. This reader-friendly book presents each skill on two facing pages, providing detailed instructions on the left-hand page and large, full-color screenshots on the right page. The visual format helps you intuitively grasp the concepts in the book and apply them to the classroom and workplace environment.

This book provides critical commentary on key issues around virtual reality, using media technology as a tool to challenge perspectives for learning and understanding cultural diversities. With a focus on empathy, embodiment and ethics, the book interrogates the use of immersive technologies for formal and informal educational contexts. Taking a critical approach to discourses around emerging technology and learning, the book presents the idea that a new literacy is emerging and an emphasis on media and technology is needed in the context of education to explore and experience cultural diversities. Employing a personal reflexive narrative, the chapters highlight key issues through research and interviews with leading practitioners in the field. Understanding Virtual Reality will be of great interest to academics and students interested in the effects of immersive realities on the education experience, and to anyone keen on exploring the paradigm shift from entertainment to education.

1) Engineering approach, applications oriented 2) Numerous examples and exercises to illustrate concepts and their implementation 3) Clearly written and concise 4) Learn concepts so that the reader can develop their own algorithms 5) Software tools provided for both C and Matlab

Provides tools from different disciplines and shows how they can be used in the game design world. Offers practical tools for all the main aspects of game design from conception through to testing. Gives concrete examples of how to use each tool with practical applications.

This book offers a thorough examination of digital work by women comedians in the US, exploring their use of digital media to perform jokes, engage with fans, remake their reputations, and become political activists This book argues that despite its many adverse effects, digital work is changing comedy, empowering women to create new comic forms and negotiate the contentious political climate incited by former President Donald. J. Trump Chapters are focused on video-podcasting, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and the streaming platform Netflix - each containing informative case studies on significant women comedians who use them, including Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, Leslie Jones, Mindy Kaling, Colleen Ballinger, Lilly Singh, Ms. Pat, Whitney Cummings, Issa Rae, and others To understand their strategies, this book examines the popularity of their digital content, their career-outcomes in television and film, as well as the ups and downs of their critical reputations in magazines, newspapers, the trade press, and with their participatory audiences online This insightful and timely work will appeal to scholars researching and teaching in the areas of media studies, digital communication, gender studies and performance

This book explores environments where art, imagination, and creative practice meet urban spaces at the point where they connect to the digital world. It investigates relationships between urban visualizations, aesthetics, and politics in the context of new technologies, and social and urban challenges toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Responding to questions stemming from critical theory, the book focuses on an interdisciplinary actualization of technological developments and social challenges. It demonstrates how art, architecture, and design can transform culture, society, and nature through artistic and cultural achievements, integration, and new developments. The book begins with the theoretical framework of social aesthetics theories before discussing global contemporary visual culture and technological evolution. Across the 12 chapters, it looks at how architecture and design play significant roles in causing and solving complex environmental transformations in the digital turn. By fostering transdisciplinary encounters between architecture, design, visual arts, and cinematography, this book presents different theoretical approaches to how the arts' interplay with the environment responds to the logic of the constructions of reality. This book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and upper-level students in aesthetics, philosophy, visual cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies with a particular interest in sociopolitical and environmental discussions.

Videogames and Agency explores the trend in videogames and their marketing to offer a player higher volumes, or even more distinct kinds, of player freedom. The book offers a new conceptual framework that helps us understand how this freedom to act is discussed by designers, and how that in turn reflects in their design principles. What can we learn from existing theories around agency? How do paratextual materials reflect design intention with regards to what the player can and cannot do in a videogame? How does game design shape the possibility space for player action? Through these questions and selected case studies that include AAA and independent games alike, the book presents a unique approach to studying agency that combines game design, game studies, and game developer discourse. By doing so, the book examines what discourses around player action, as well as a game's design can reveal about the nature of agency and videogame aesthetics. This book will appeal to readers specifically interested in videogames, such as game studies scholars or game designers, but also to media studies students and media and screen studies scholars less familiar with digital games.

The slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a large cell visible by the unaided eye. It behaves as an intelligent nonlinear spatially extended active medium encapsulated in an elastic membrane. The cell optimises its growth patterns in configurations of attractants and repellents. This behaviour is interpreted as computation. Numerous prototypes of slime mould computers were designed to solve problems of computational geometry, graphs and transport networks and to implement universal computing circuits.In this unique set of scientific photographs and micrographs, the leading experts in computer science, biology, chemistry and material science illustrate in superb detail the nature of the slime mould computers and hybrid devices. Every photograph or micrograph in this book is of real scientific, theoretical or technological interest. Each entry includes a self-contained description of how the visualised phenomenon is used in the relevant slime mould computer. This atlas is unique in providing the depth and breadth of knowledge in harnessing behaviour of the slime mould to perform computation. It will help readers to understand how exploitation of biological processes has sparked new ideas and spurred progress in many fields of science and engineering.

* Covers the entire process of creating animated films in an accessible and approachable way. * Includes colour-coded exercises to help readers practice the theories explained within. * Heavily illustrated with full colour images.

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 anthropology, history and media studies to explore the production and consumption of risk, risky places, risk technology, 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; globalizing technologies and local markets; regulation as it operates across local, regional and international scales; globalization, and the rise of games, virtual worlds, and social media.

This book covers the distinguishing characteristics and tropes of visual novels (VNs) as choice-based games and analyzes VNs like 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors; Hatoful Boyfriend; and Monster Prom, some of the best examples of the genre as illustrations. The author covers structuring branching narrative and plot, designing impactful and compelling choices, writing entertaining relationships and character interactions, understanding the importance of a VN's prose, and planning a VN's overall narrative design and story delivery. The book contains exercises at the end of chapters to practice the techniques discussed. By the end of the book, if the reader finishes all the exercises, they may have several portfolio pieces or a significant portion of their own VN project designed. Features: Discusses different aspects and genres of VNs, what makes them enjoyable, and successful techniques developers can incorporate into their own games Analyzes various VNs and choice-based games that use these successful techniques Shares tips from developers on portfolio pieces, hiring a team to work on VNs, and plotting and outlining VNs Branching Story, Unlocked Dialogue: Designing and Writing Visual Novels is a valuable resource for developers and narrative designers interested in working on VNs. The book will show them how they can design their own VN projects, design branching narratives, develop entertaining plots and relationships, design impactful and compelling choices, and write prose that's a pleasure to read.

Key features include: Introduction to Projective Geometry, Image Based Lighting (IBL), Global Illumination solved by the Monte Carlo Method (Pathtracing), an explanation of a set of Optimization Methods, and the techniques used for Calibrating One, Two, and Many cameras, including how to use the RANSAC algorithm in order to make the process robust, and providing code to be implemented using the Gnu Scientific Library. C/C++ code using the OpenCV library, to be used in the process of tracking points on a movie (an important step for the matchmove process), and in the construction of Modeling Tools for Visual Effects. A simple model of the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) of surfaces and the Differential Rendering Method, allowing the reader to generate consistent shadows, supported by a code that can be used in combination with a software like Luminance HDR.

Building Science Graphics: An illustrated guide to communicating science through diagrams and visualizations is a practical guide for anyone-regardless of previous design experience and preferred drawing tools-interested in creating science-centric illustrated explanatory diagrams. Starting with a clear introduction to the concept of information graphics and their role in contemporary science communication, it then outlines a process for creating graphics using evidence-based design strategies. The heart of the book is composed of two step-by-step graphical worksheets, designed to help jump-start any new project. This is both a textbook and a practical reference for anyone that needs to convey scientific information in an illustrated form for articles, poster presentations, slide shows, press releases, blog posts, social media posts and beyond.

While the earliest character representations in video games were rudimentary in terms of their presentation and performance, the virtual characters that appear in games today can be extremely complex and lifelike. These are characters that have the potential to make a powerful and emotional connection with gamers. As virtual characters become more intricate and varied, there is a growing need to examine the theory and practice of virtual character design. This book seeks to develop a series of critical frameworks to support the analysis and design of virtual characters. Virtual Character Design for Games and Interactive Media covers a breadth of topics to establish a relationship between pertinent artistic and scientific theories and good character design practice. Targeted at students, researchers, and professionals, the book aims to show how both character presentation and character performance can be enhanced through careful consideration of underlying theory. The book begins with a focus on virtual character presentation, underpinned by a discussion of biological, artistic, and sociological principles. Next it looks at the performance of virtual characters, encompassing the psychology of emotion and personality, narrative and game design theories, animation, and acting. The book concludes with a series of applied virtual character design examples. These examples examine the aesthetics of player characters, the design and performance of the wider cast of game characters, and the performance of characters within complex, hyperreal worlds.

1. Provides a toolkit of templates for common VR interactions, as well as practical advice on when to use them and how to tailor them for specific use cases; 2. Includes case studies detailing the practical application of interaction theory discussed in each chapter; 3. Presents tables of guidelines for practicing VR developers, for reference during software development; 4. Covers procedures for Interface Evaluation - formulas and testing methodologies to ensure that VR interfaces are effective, efficient, engaging, error-tolerant, and easy to learn; 5. Non-linear organisation - chapters of the book on different concepts can be read to gain knowledge on a single topic, without requiring other chapters to be read beforehand; 6. Includes ancillaries - PowerPoint slides, 3D models, videos, and a teacher's guide

- the book can be used by beginners in the field, tracking from basic principles to how to bend the rules, in reader-friendly language throughout - the book is based on a popular blog which dovetails as a fantastic companion website: https://questionsindataviz.com/ - the author is a very experienced and well-respected practitioner in the field, with a good-size following on social media: https://twitter.com/theneilrichards

* Provides a comprehensive approach to Motion Design as Design Practice with specific areas of focus for a range of audiences. * Integrates professional examples, case studies, and interviews to validate its themes. * Written from ongoing and pragmatic experience in both education and professional practice.

This interdisciplinary study participates in the ongoing critical conversation about postwar American poetry and visual culture, while advancing that field into the arena of the museum. Turning to contemporary poems about the visual arts that foreground and interrogate a museum setting, the book demonstrates the particular importance of the museum as a cultural site that is both inspiration and provocation for poets. The study uniquely bridges the "dual canon" in contemporary poetry (and calls the lyric/avant-garde distinction into question) by analyzing museum-sponsored anthologies as well as poems by John Ashbery, Richard Howard, Kenneth Koch, Kathleen Fraser, Cole Swensen, Anne Carson, and others. Through these case studies of poets with diverse affiliations, the author shows that the boom in ekphrasis in the past 20 years is not only an aesthetic but a critical phenomenon, a way that poets have come to terms with the critical dilemmas of our moment. Highlighting the importance of poets' "peripheral vision"-awareness of the institutional conditions that frame encounters with art-the author contend that a museum visit becomes a forum for questioning oppositions that have preoccupied literary criticism for the past 50 years: homage and innovation, modernism and postmodernism, subjectivity and collectivity. The study shows that ekphrasis becomes a strategy for negotiating these impasses-a mode of political inquiry, a meditation on canonization, a venue for comic appraisal of institutionalization, and a means of "site-specific" feminist revision-in a vital synthesis of critique, perspicacity, and pleasure.

Create your first 2D, 3D, and AR/VR games with the awesome Unity game platform. With this hands-on beginner's guide, you'll start building games fast! In Unity in Action, Third Edition, you will learn how to: Create characters that run, jump, and bump into things Build 3D first-person shooters and third-person action games Construct 2D card games and side-scrolling platformers Script enemies with AI Improve game graphics by importing models and images Design an intuitive user interface for your games Play music and spatially-aware sound effects Connect your games to the internet for online play Deploy your games to desktop, mobile, and the web Thousands of new game developers have chosen Joe Hocking's Unity in Action as their first step toward Unity mastery. This fully updated third edition comes packed with fully refreshed graphics, Unity's latest features, and coverage of the augmented and virtual reality toolkits. Using your existing coding skills, you'll write custom code instead of just clicking together premade scripts. You'll master the Unity toolset from the ground up, adding the skills you need to go from application coder to game developer. Build your next game without sweating the low-level details. The Unity game engine handles the heavy lifting, so you can focus on game play, graphics, and user experience. With support for C#, a huge ecosystem of production-quality prebuilt assets, and a strong dev community, Unity will get your game idea off the drawing board and onto the screen! You can even use Unity for more than game development, with new tools for VR and augmented reality that are perfect for developing useful apps.