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

3D Modeling and Animation: Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body aims to cover the areas of modeling and animating 3D synthetic human models at a level that is useful to students, researchers, software developers and content generators. This book provides a reference for the state-of-the-art methods, delivered by the leading researchers in this area, who are invited to contribute to the appropriate chapters according to their expertise. The reader will be presented with the latest, research-level, techniques for the analysis and synthesis of still and moving human bodies, with particular emphasis in facial and gesture characteristics.

Packed with more than 350 techniques, this book delivers what you need to know-on the spot. Its concise presentation of professional techniques is suited to experienced artists whether you are:
*Migrating from another visual effects application
*Upgrading to Houdini 9
*Seeking a handy reference to raise your proficiency with Houdini
Houdini On the Spot presents immediate solutions in an accessible format. It clearly illustrates the essential methods that pros use to get the job done efficiently and creatively. Screenshots and step-by-step instructions show you how to:
*Navigate and manipulate the version 9 interface
*Create procedural models that can be modified quickly and efficiently with Surface Operators (SOPs)
*Use Particle Operators (POPs) to build complex simulations with speed and precision
*Minimize the number of operators in your simulations with Dynamics Operators (DOPs)
*Extend Houdini with customized tools to include data or scripts with Houdini Digital Assets (HDAs)
*Master the version 9 rendering options including Physically Based Rendering (PBR), volume rendering and motion blur
*Quickly modify timing, geometry, space and rotational values of your animations with Channel Operators (CHOPs)
*Create and manipulate elements with Composite Operators (COPs); Houdini's full-blown compositor toolset
*Make your own SOPs, COPs, POPs, CHOPs, and shaders with the Vector Expressions (VEX) shading language
*Configure the Houdini interface with customized environments and hotkeys
*Mine the treasures of the dozens of standalone applications that are bundled with Houdini
-Boost your efficiency and creativity
-Find immediatesolutions in an accessible format
-Unleash the power of Houdini with unpublished techniques

While some rigging books focus too much on the theory of rigging and provide little instruction, others do the exact opposite and offer no reasoning behind the button-pushing. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging, 2nd Edition, however, offers a perfect balance. Cheryl Briggs' text is built for the classroom, with step-by-step tutorials that guide the reader through the rigging process. With vibrant screenshots and a plethora of helpful tips, this book provides a strong foundation in character rigging for anyone who wants to pursue 3D animation or more advanced rigging topics. Features Provides readers with fundamental techniques to give them a firm grasp on Maya character rigging. Thorough step-by-step tutorials, which provides instruction on how to create biped, quadruped, and prop rigs. Continuous updates and further support can be located at www.cherylcreates.com Cheryl Briggs (formerly Cabrera) is an award-winning animated short film director. She has advised and guided aspiring animators, game artists, and visual effects artists for 20 years. Since 2009, Cheryl has taught all aspects of production in the Character Animation specialization in the School of Visual Arts and Design at the University of Central Florida. She also taught as Professor of Animation at the Savannah College of Art and Design from 2001 to 2009. Cheryl is currently on the Board of Directors for the Animation Hall of Fame. She also is a member of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH), the International Animated Film Society (ASIFA-Hollywood), Women in Animation, Women in Film and Television, and the Society for Animation Studies. Cheryl is also an Autodesk Certified Professional and an Autodesk Certified Instructor in Maya. She is the author of An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging (Focal Press, 2008), Reel Success: Creating Demo Reels and Animation Portfolios (Focal Press, 2013), and Animating Short Stories: Narrative Techniques and Visual Design (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Cheryl holds a B.A. and M.Ed. in Education and an M.F.A. in Computer Art with a specialization in 3D Animation. She is a digital artist and animator that blends the lines between digital imagery and the traditional painting medium. She has participated is numerous group and solo exhibitions in the United States and her work is featured in several private collections. Her award-winning students have been featured in animation festivals worldwide, and many have gone on to work within the entertainment industry.

This book contains keynote lectures and full papers presented at the International Symposium on Computational Modelling of Objects Represented in Images (CompIMAGE), held in Coimbra, Portugal, on 20-21 October 2006. International contributions from nineteen countries provide a comprehensive coverage of the current state-of-the-art in the fields of: - Image Processing and Analysis; - Image Segmentation; - Data Interpolation; - Registration, Acquisition and Compression; - 3D Reconstruction; - Objects Tracking; - Motion and Deformation Analysis; - Objects Simulation; - Medical Imaging; - Computational Bioimaging and Visualization. Related techniques also covered in this book include the finite element method, modal analyses, stochastic methods, principal and independent components analyses and distribution models. Computational Modelling of Objects Represented in Images will be useful to academics, researchers and professionals in Computational Vision (image processing and analysis), Computer Sciences, and Computational Mechanics.

The fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 Classroom in a Book (R), the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, offers what no other book or training program does -- an official training series from Adobe, developed with the support of Adobe product experts. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 Classroom in a Book contains 10 lessons that cover the basics and beyond, providing countless tips and techniques to help you become more productive with the program. You can follow the book from start to finish or choose only those lessons that interest you. Purchasing this book includes valuable online extras. Follow the instructions in the book's "Getting Started" section to unlock access to: Downloadable lesson files you need to work through the projects in the book Web Edition containing the complete text of the book What you need to use this book: Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 software, for either Windows or macOS. (Software not included.) Note: Classroom in a Book does not replace the documentation, support, updates, or any other benefits of being a registered owner of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 software.

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.

Want to offer your clients more to chose from? Here's how: award winning photographer, Christopher Grey, has developed techniques to enhance portrait photography, using the creative applications available in Photoshop. Photoshop Effects for Portrait Photographers contains detailed explanations of how to replicate many darkroom techniques with Photoshop (Dodging, Burning, Vignettes, etc.) as well as camera and earlier technology techniques (Short Focus, High Speed Film Grain, Hand Coloring, etc.). Grey has also developed almost two dozen ways to replicate traditional painterly and illustrative techniques such as Rough Charcoal Sketch, Wet Watercolor, Silkscreen, and Oil Chalk. Images available for downloading at http://www.ChristopherGrey.com/booksamples.

This book teaches beginners and aspiring game developers how to develop 2D games with Unity. Thousands of commercial games have been built with Unity. The reader will learn the complete process of 2D game development, step by step. The theory behind each step is fully explained. This book contains numerous color illustrations and access to all source code and companion videos. Key Features: Fully detailed game projects from scratch. Beginners can do the steps and create games right away. No coding experience is necessary. Numerous examples take a raw beginner toward professional coding proficiency in C# and Unity. Includes a thorough introduction to Unity 2020, including 2D game development, prefabs, cameras, animation, character controllers, lighting, and sound. Includes a step-by-step introduction to Unity 2019.3. Extensive coverage of GIMP, Audacity, and MuseScore for the creation of 2D graphics, sound effects, and music. All required software is free to use for any purpose including commercial applications and games. Franz Lanzinger is the owner and chief game developer of Lanzinger Studio, an independent game development and music studio in Sunnyvale, California. He started his career in game programming in 1982 at Atari Games, Inc., where he designed and programmed the classic arcade game Crystal Castles. In 1989, he joined Tengen, where he was a programmer and designer for Ms. Pac-Man and Toobin' on the NES. He co-founded Bitmasters, where he designed and coded games including Rampart and Championship Pool for the NES and SNES, and NCAA Final Four Basketball for the SNES and Sega Genesis. In 1996, he founded Actual Entertainment, publisher and developer of the Gubble video game series. He has a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and attended graduate school in mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a former world record holder on Centipede and Burgertime. He is a professional author, game developer, accompanist, and piano teacher. He is currently working on remaking the original Gubble game in Unity and Blender.

The International Scientific and Professional Conference on Geodesy, Cartography and Geoinformatics 2017 (GCG 2017) was organized under the auspices of the Faculty of Mining, Ecology, Process Control and Geotechnologies, Technical University of Kosice (SK), Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice (SK), Faculty of Civil Engineering, STU Bratislava (SK), Faculty of Civil Engineering, CTU Prague (CZ), University of Technology, Kielce (PL), AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow (PL), Upper Nitra Mines Prievidza, plc. (SK) and the Slovakian Mining Society (SK). The conference was held from October 10 - 13, 2017, in Low Tatras, Slovakia. The purpose of the conference was to provide a forum for prominent scientists, researchers and professionals from Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic to present novel and fundamental advances in the fields of geodesy, cartography and geoinformatics. Conference participants had the opportunity to exchange and share their experiences, research and results solved within scientific research projects with other colleagues. The conference focused on a wide spectrum of actual topics and subject areas in Surveying and Mine Surveying, Geodetic Control and Geodynamics, and Cartography and Geoinformatics and collected in this proceedings volume.

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is a combination of computer graphics and computer vision that produces renderings in various artistic, expressive or stylized ways such as painting and drawing. This book focuses on image and video based NPR, where the input is a 2D photograph or a video rather than a 3D model. 2D NPR techniques have application in areas as diverse as consumer and professional digital photography and visual effects for TV and film production. The book covers the full range of the state of the art of NPR with every chapter authored by internationally renowned experts in the field, covering both classical and contemporary techniques. It will enable both graduate students in computer graphics, computer vision or image processing and professional developers alike to quickly become familiar with contemporary techniques, enabling them to apply 2D NPR algorithms in their own projects.

Radar scattering and imaging of rough surfaces is an active interdisciplinary area of research with many practical applications in fields such as mineral and resource exploration, ocean and physical oceanography, military and national defense, planetary exploration, city planning and land use, environmental science, and many more. By focusing on the most advanced analytical and numerical modeling and describing both forward and inverse modeling, Radar Scattering and Imaging of Rough Surfaces: Modeling and Applications with MATLAB (R) connects the scattering process to imaging techniques by vivid examples through numerical and experimental demonstrations and provides computer codes and practical uses. This book is unique in its simultaneous treatment of radar scattering and imaging. Key Features Bridges physical modeling with simulation for resolving radar imaging problems (the first comprehensive work to do so) Provides excellent basic and advanced information for microwave remote-sensing professionals in various fields of science and engineering Covers most advanced analytical and numerical modeling for both backscattering and bistatic scattering Includes MATLAB (R) codes useful not only for academics but also for radar engineers and scientists to develop tools applicable in different areas of earth studies Covering both the theoretical and the practical, Radar Scattering and Imaging of Rough Surfaces: Modeling and Applications with MATLAB (R) is an invaluable resource for professionals and students using remote sensing to study and explain the Earth and its processes. University and research institutes, electrical and radar engineers, remote-sensing image users, application software developers, students, and academics alike will benefit from this book. The author, Kun-Shan Chen, is an internationally known and respected engineer and scientist and an expert in the field of electromagnetic modeling.

Build your VFX arsenal with quick-access, step-by-step instruction on how to create today's hottest digital VFX shots. This essential toolkit provides techniques for creating effects seen in movies such as 300, Spiderman 3, Predator and others, with lessons on how-to: * splatter blood or digitally lop someone's arm off * create a scene with actors running from an explosion * create the "twin effect" (same actor, same location, 2 performances) * produce space-ship dog fights Organized in a 'cookbook' style, this allows you to reference a certain effect in the index and immediately access concise instructions to create that effect. Techniques are demonstrated in each of the most popular software tools- After Effects, Final Cut Studio, Photoshop, and Combustion are all covered. Brilliant, 4-color presentation provides inspiration and stimulating visual guidance to the lessons presented, while the downloadable resources contain project media files enabling you to put concepts learned into immediate practice.

This book offers a full history of a homeless movement in Tokyo that lasted nearly a decade. It shows how homeless people and their external supporters in the city combined their scarce resources to generate and sustain the movement. The study advocates a more nuanced analysis of movement gains to appreciate how poor people can benefit by acting collectively. It also draws attention to potential difficulties faced by lower-stratum movements aided by external allies. In particular, the study highlights how actions of the state can undermine the relations between aggrieved allies in such a way as to limit gains. The book is the first in English to detail homeless mobilization in Japan. It also addresses the origins of increased homelessness and development of homelessness policy in the country. Besides homelessness, it covers a number of current social issues, including economic globalization, social exclusion, and politics over space.

The book presents papers delivered by researchers, industrial experts and academicians at the Conference on Emerging Trends in Computing and Communication (ETCC 2014). As such, the book is a collection of recent and innovative works in the field Network Security and Cryptography, Cloud Computing and Big Data Analytics, Data Mining and Data Warehouse, Communication and Nanotechnology and VLSI and Image Processing.

Andrew Rapo and Alex Michael explain all the important programming concepts from a designer's point of view, making them completely accessible to non-programmers. Completely revised and rewritten this second edition will help you develop professional ActionScript 2 applications, and communicate knowledgably about current, Object Oriented ActionScript 2 techniques.
Divided into four sections to take you from novice to professional results:
* Flash Fundamentals: Introduces the Flash authoring environment and basic core Flash concepts.
* ActionScript 2 Fundamentals: Explains basic programming concepts and terminology, and shows how ActionScript 2 classes are constructed and used.
* Built-in Classes: Describes the built-in ActionScript classes that are available for use in applications, including the MovieClip class, Key class, Sound class, etc.
* Using ActionScript to Build a Game: Describes the development process for creating a complex Flash application and presents commercial-quality game coding examples.
- Benefit from explanations and examples of why and how ActionScript can simplify Flash production and expand your design potential
- Learn all the basics of strong scripting skills to produce professional results
- Example code is available and ready to use with either Flash MX 2004 or Flash 8 - at www.rapo.org/as2book

The hand is quicker than the eye. In many cases, so is digital video. Maintaining image quality in bandwidth- and memory-restricted environments is quickly becoming a reality as thriving research delves ever deeper into perceptual coding techniques, which discard superfluous data that humans cannot process or detect. Surveying the topic from a Human Visual System (HVS)-based approach, Digital Video Image Quality and Perceptual Coding outlines the principles, metrics, and standards associated with perceptual coding, as well as the latest techniques and applications. This book is divided broadly into three parts. First, it introduces the fundamental theory, concepts, principles, and techniques underlying the field, such as the basics of compression, HVS modeling, and coding artifacts associated with current well-known techniques. The next section focuses on picture quality assessment criteria; subjective and objective methods and metrics, including vision model based digital video impairment metrics; testing procedures; and international standards regarding image quality. Finally, practical applications come into focus, including digital image and video coder designs based on the HVS as well as post-filtering, restoration, error correction, and concealment techniques. The permeation of digital images and video throughout the world cannot be understated. Nor can the importance of preserving quality while using minimal storage space, and Digital Video Image Quality and Perceptual Coding provides the tools necessary to accomplish this goal. Instructors and lecturers wishing to make use of this work as a textbook can download a presentation of 786 slides in PDF format organized to augment thetext. accompany our book (H.R. Wu and K.R. Rao, Digital Video Image Quality and Perceptual Coding, CRC Press (ISBN: 0-8247-2777-0), Nov. 2005) for lecturers or instructor to use for their classes if they use the book.

Software programs are complex, the books that explain them shouldn t be. This thoroughly illustrated, full-color guide explains everything you need to know to get up and running quickly with Combustion. Get a jump-start learning the major features or the software without bogging you down with unnecessary detail.
The author shares his professional insight and extensive training experience to ensure you'll get the most out of all the professional paint, animation, editing and 3D compositing tools Combustion offers. Also featured are many workflow tips which show how to tap into the full power of Combustion 4 in your effects and motion graphics work.
For useful tips and tutorials, visit the book's companion site at www.elsevierdirect.com/companions/9780240520100
* Unique, fast introduction to Combustion 4, but relevant to all versions
* Concise color coverage, written by an experienced professional and trainer
* Ideal for professionals, new users and those migrating to Combustion from other compositing or effects packages
* Companion site with useful tips and tutorials can be found at http: //www.elsevierdirect.com/companions/9780240520100

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.

Edited and expanded to keep pace with the digital revolution, the new edition of this highly popular and critically acclaimed work provides a comprehensive exploration of imaging science. Brilliantly written and extensively illustrated, The Science of Imaging: An Introduction, Second Edition covers the fundamental laws of physics as well as the cutting-edge techniques defining current and future directions in the field. Improvements to this Edition Include: A new chapter on astronomical imaging A larger format with a wealth of illustrations Major revisions in the areas of digital imaging and modern technology Updated references with links to a wealth of online resources-including teaching material and expanded information This accessible introduction to the subject takes students on a grand tour of imaging. Starting with the fundamentals of light and basic cameras, the author journeys through television and holography to advanced scientific and medical imaging. He highlights essential formulas, while keeping the complex mathematics to a minimum. Copiously illustrated with a wealth of examples and a 16-page color insert, the text covers optics, imaging systems, materials, and image interpretation and creation in a manner that makes it easy to understand. Praise for the critically acclaimed First Edition: It's the best book I have read on the subject at this level.-Ron Graham, RPS Journal... every student should read it, every photographer should own it, and every lecturer and journalist should know its contents inside out.-Jon Tarrant, British Journal of Photography

Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters,1880-1930 is a classic work on a little-studied subject in American music history: the contribution of African-American songwriters to the world of popular song. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "thoroughly researched and entertainingly written," this work documents the careers of songwriters like James A. Bland ("Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny"), Bert Williams ("Nobody"), W. C. Handy ("St. Louis Blues"), Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake ("I'm Just Wild About Harry"), and many more. Richly illustrated with rare photographs from sheet music, newspapers, and other unique sources, the book documents an entire era of performance when black singers, dancers, and actors were active on the New York stage. In sheer depth of research, new information, and full coverage, Spreadin' Rhythm Around offers a comprehensive picture of the contributions of black musicians to American popular song. For anyone interested in the history of jazz, pop song, or Broadway, this book will be a revelation.

A Sampler of Useful Computational Tools for Applied Geometry, Computer Graphics, and Image Processing shows how to use a collection of mathematical techniques to solve important problems in applied mathematics and computer science areas. The book discusses fundamental tools in analytical geometry and linear algebra. It covers a wide range of topics, from matrix decomposition to curvature analysis and principal component analysis to dimensionality reduction. Written by a team of highly respected professors, the book can be used in a one-semester, intermediate-level course in computer science. It takes a practical problem-solving approach, avoiding detailed proofs and analysis. Suitable for readers without a deep academic background in mathematics, the text explains how to solve non-trivial geometric problems. It quickly gets readers up to speed on a variety of tools employed in visual computing and applied geometry.

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.

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