Revitalize your architectural visualizations by bringing new levels of realism to them with an enhanced command of the mental ray toolset in 3ds Max. Full-color step-by-step tutorials give you a firm understanding of the processes and techniques needed to create impressive interior and exterior visualizations. You'll learn how to prepare materials, light a daytime interior scene, use mr Physical Sky, and how to save time during complex renders. The companion website includes all of the tutorial files and sample files from the book. Plus find more information at http://jamiecardoso-mentalray.blogspot.com/.

Apply universally accepted cinematic techniques to your Flash projects to improve the storytelling quotient in your entertainment, advertising (branding), and educational media. A defined focus on the concepts and techniques for production from story reels to the final project delivers valuable insights, time-saving practical tips, and hands-on techniques for great visual stories. Extensive illustration, step-by-step instruction, and practical exercises provide a hands-on perspective.Explore the concepts and principles of visual components used in stories so you are fluent in the use of space, line, color, and movement in communicating emotion and meaning. Apply traditional cinematography techniques into the Flash workspace with virtual camera movements, simulated 3d spaces, lighting techniques, and character animation. Add interactivity using ActionScript to enhance audience participation.

If you want to be successful in any area of game development game design, programming, graphics, sound, or publishing you should know how standouts in the industry approach their work and address problems. In Honoring the Code: Conversations with Great Game Designers, 16 groundbreaking game developers share their stories and offer advice for anyone aspiring to a career in the games industry. You'll learn from their triumphs and failures and see how they dealt with sweeping changes in technology, including critical paradigm shifts from CD-ROMs and 3D graphic cards to the Internet and mobile revolution. The book presents in-depth interviews with a diverse mix of game professionals, emphasizing the makers of adventure games, role-playing games, and real-time strategies. It focuses on developers who have contributed to multiple eras or genres as well as those who have hired, taught, or mentored newcomers. Since the mobile revolution has opened up new demographics and new gameplay mechanics, the book features current developers of games for mobile devices. It also explores how indie game developers are making commercial-quality games with a small team mostly using free tools and funded with crowdsourcing applications. While there are plenty of resources available for aspiring game developers to learn the necessary technical skills, there is hardly any historical material on the culture that made the games industry possible. Filling the void, this book provides a historical and cultural context for the games industry. It takes you into the minds of the pioneers who blazed the trails and established the industry as we know it today.

This book is written by a professional instructor and founder of CartoonSmart.com, a company specializing in new media tutorials for nearly a decade. The book is a start-to-finish guide for anyone looking to begin iOS development using Cocos2d and Xcode and submit their finished app to Apple. Even if you haven't read code before, you can begin with this book. This book is a handy reference guide, with easy to look-up sections of code snippets, pictures and links to video examples. Features: Code Video examples 5 hours of tutorial videos on Box2d, which can take the reader even further beyond what they learned in the book

Get ahead of the game with Unity 4. The Unity engine is the tool of choice for many indie and AAA game developers. Unity 4 Fundamentals gives readers a head start on the road to game development by offering beginners a comprehensive, step by step introduction to the latest Unity 4 engine. The author takes a theory-to-practice approach to demonstrate what Unity 4 has to offer which includes: Asset management tools Real-time lighting and lightmapping Particle systems Navigation and pathfinding

Animating with Stop Motion Pro is comprehensive, hands-on guide to achieving professional results with Stop Motion Pro 7.0 software. Gone are the days of stop motion guesswork and waiting to see the finalized result of your meticulous, labor intensive animations. With the push of a mouse button and the Stop Motion Pro software, animators have ten times the capability of simple camera stop motion capture. Re-visualize stop motion character movements, graph these movements and composite characters into a flawless animations with the techniques and step by step tutorials featured in Animating with Stop Motion Pro. Create professional stop motion animation immediately with detailed exercises at the companion website: www.focalpress.com/cw/sawicki-9780240812199/. Integrate classic stop motion animation techniques with the latest stop motion software features.

Game development is one of the most rewarding crafts of modern times. Not only is making games a wonderful lifelong hobby, but employment opportunities exist at many levels. Learn to Implement Games with Code guides you through the development process as you put together a release-ready game. It is written in a friendly and conversational tone, which is suitable for a wide audience of aspiring game developers, such as yourself. You will gain practical, hands-on experience with implementing game components using code. Gradually, you will build a complete game that you can be proud of. After finishing this book, you will be prepared to start making games of your very own design.

Electron Microscopy and Analysis deals with several sophisticated techniques for magnifying images of very small objects by large amounts - especially in a physical science context. It has been ten years since the last edition of Electron Microscopy and Analysis was published and there have been rapid changes in this field since then. The authors have vastly updated their very successful second edition, which is already established as an essential laboratory manual worldwide, and they have incorporated questions and answers in each chapter for ease of learning. Equally as relevant for material scientists and bioscientists, this third edition is an essential textbook.

Unity brings you ever closer to the "author once, deploy anywhere" dream. With its multiplatform capabilities, you can target desktop, web, mobile devices, and consoles using a single development engine. Little wonder that Unity has quickly become the #1 game engine out there. Mastering Unity is absolutely essential in an increasingly competitive games market where agility is expected, yet until now practical tutorials were nearly impossible to find. Creating Games with Unity and Maya gives you with an end-to-end solution for Unity game development with Maya. Written by a twelve-year veteran of the 3D animation and games industry and professor of 3D animation, this book takes you step-by-step through the process of developing an entire game from scratch-including coding, art, production, and deployment. This accessible guide provides a "non-programmer" entry point to the world of game creation. Aspiring developers with little or no coding experience will learn character development in Maya, scripts, GUI interface, and first- and third-person interactions.

Looking to become more efficient using Unity? How to Cheat in Unity 5 takes a no-nonsense approach to help you achieve fast and effective results with Unity 5. Geared towards the intermediate user, HTC in Unity 5 provides content beyond what an introductory book offers, and allows you to work more quickly and powerfully in Unity. Packed full with easy-to-follow methods to get the most from Unity, this book explores time-saving features for interface customization and scene management, along with productivity-enhancing ways to work with rendering and optimization. In addition, this book features a companion website at www.alanthorn.net, where you can download the book's companion files and also watch bonus tutorial video content. Learn bite-sized tips and tricks for effective Unity workflows Become a more powerful Unity user through interface customization Enhance your productivity with rendering tricks, better scene organization and more Better understand Unity asset and import workflows Learn techniques to save you time and money during development

Every production is built on the backbone of the pipeline. While a functional and flexible pipeline can't assure a successful project, a weak pipeline can guarantee its demise. A solid pipeline produces a superior product in less time and with happier artists who can remain creative throughout the grueling production schedule. Walk through the foundational layers of the production pipeline, including IT infrastructure, software development practices and deployment policies, asset management, shot management, and rendering management. Production Pipeline Fundamentals for Film and Games will teach you how to direct limited resources to the right technological initiatives, getting the most for every dollar spent. Learn how to prepare for and manage all aspects of the pipeline with this entirely unique, one-of-a-kind guide. Expand your knowledge with real-world pipeline secrets handed to you by a stellar group of professionals from across the globe. Visit the companion website for even further resources on the pipeline.

Photoshop is the cornerstone of the graphics industry and understanding its 3D capabilities is becoming a requirement for graphic designers, photographers, and creatives alike. Starting with the fundamental tools and ending with advanced resources, Adobe Community Professional Stephen Burns guides you with a clear voice and creative exercises that encourage you to work as you read. Accompanied by a free app that includes video tutorials, interactive models to compare your activity work from the book against, and on-going updates about the latest Photoshopreleases, this book will elevate your art off the page and into a new world of possibilities. (The app is available for the iPad and iPhone in the iTunes App Store, and Android users can find it through Google Play. Just search for 3D Photoshop on either of these platforms and download it to your device.)

Visualisation and Processing of Tensor Fields provides researchers an inspirational look at how to process and visualize complicated 2D and 3D images known as tensor fields. Tensor fields are the natural representation for many physical quantities; they can describe how water moves around in the brain, how gravity varies around the earth, or how materials are stressed and deformed. With its numerous color figures, this book helps the reader understand both the underlying mathematics and the applications of tensor fields. The reader also will learn about the most recent research topics and open research questions.

Blender is a vast and customizable 3D-modeling application used by many artists across creative industries, from television to games. This newest book, in Alan Thorn's How to Cheat series, offers insightful and bite-sized power-tips to help you develop Blender mastery. More than five hundred figures illustrate interesting shortcuts and clever ways to improve your Blender workflow. A companion website at http://www.alanthorn.net provides bonus content, including videos and resources to help sharpen your skills further. How to Cheat in Blender 2.7x is for Blender users of all levels, offering time-saving tips and powerful techniques to increase your productivity. Key Features Bite-sized tips and tricks that can be read in any order Illustrated examples and step-by-step guides for improving your workflow Explores practical applications and real-world contexts Demonstrates "lesser-known" and unconventional tips Improves your efficiency and workflow

Successful storyboards and poignant characters have the power to make elusive thoughts and emotions tangible for audiences. Packed with illustrations that illuminate and a text that entertains and informs, Prepare to Board, 3rd edition presents the methods and techniques of animation master, Nancy Beiman, with a focus on pre-production, story development and character design. As one of the only storyboard titles on the market that explores the intersection of creative character design and storyboard development, the third edition is an invaluable resource for both beginner and intermediate artists. Key Features Adapt key techniques, tips and tricks of experienced character designers and storyboard artists with 30 years of experience to your film, television and animation projects. Save time and money with workflow solutions and avoid common mistakes and problems with troubleshooting tips. Implement creative solutions for your own projects with this invaluable resource for beginner and intermediate artists with examples of what a good storyboard and character design should look like and example of poorly designed storyboards. and tricks. Further your artistic skill development with an interactive, companion website which will includes video tutorials, examples of animatics and good and bad pitching techniques.

Whether trying to land that first big gig or working to perfect the necessary skills to fill a game world with sound, Aaron Marks' Complete Guide to Game Audio 3rd edition will teach the reader everything they need to know about the audio side of the multi-million dollar video game industry. This book builds upon the success of the second edition with even more expert advice from masters in the field and notes current changes within the growing video game industry. The tools of the trade excerpts will showcase what professionals, like Marty O'Donnell, Richard Jacques and Tom Salta, use to create their work and to help newcomers in the field prepare their own sound studios. Sample contracts are reviewed within the text as well as helpful advice about contractual terms and negotiable points. These sample contracts can also be found as a downloadable zip for the reader's convenience. Aaron Marks also explores how to set your financial terms and network efficiently along with examples of how projects can go completely awry and achieving the best results in often complicated situations. Aaron Marks' Complete Guide to Game Audio serves as the ultimate survival guide to navigating an audio career in the video game industry. Key Features New, full color edition with a complete update of information. Added and expanded coverage of field recording for games, creating voiceovers, adaptive and interactive audio and other cutting edge sound creation and implementation techniques used within games. Update/Replacement of interviews. Include interviews/features on international game audio professionals New and expanded interview features from game composers and sound designers of every experience level such as Keith Arem, Bradley Meyer, Christopher Tin and Rodney Gates including many international professionals like Pasi Pitkanen, Henning Nugel and Christos Panayides. Expanded and updated game console coverage of the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4. Includes new scripting and middleware concepts and techniques and review of powerful tools such as FMOD and Wwise.

Bring your artwork to life with the power of the FORCE! Watch, listen, and follow along as Mike Mattesi demonstrates the fundamental FORCE line and explains dynamic figure drawing techniques through 30 videos that are launched through the book's companion App. Packed with superb, powerfully drawn examples, the updated third edition of FORCE features an all-new section on the "FORCE blob," and dozens of fresh illustrations. Mike Mattesi's 10th anniversary edition of FORCE will teach readers how to put thought and imagination to paper. Whether you are an illustrator, animator, comic book artist, or student, you'll learn to use rhythm, shape, and line to bring out the life in any subject. The 10th Anniversary Edition contains numerous improvements. Around 30 videos are embedded within the book and accessible through the FORCE Drawing App. In the App, click on the image of the camera, point your mobile device's camera at the page with the symbol, and then finally tap the video card image floating above the drawing to launch the video. Then sit back and watch the video that shows me creating that drawing and discussing my process. Many new drawings can be found within this edition and the addition of color now further clarifies the theory of FORCE. Key Features 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 Companion App: Nearly 50 videos are available on the free FORCE Drawing companion app that can be downloaded through Google Play or the Apple App Store

This book presents the state of the art in online visual tracking, including the motivations, practical algorithms, and experimental evaluations. Visual tracking remains a highly active area of research in Computer Vision and the performance under complex scenarios has substantially improved, driven by the high demand in connection with real-world applications and the recent advances in machine learning. A large variety of new algorithms have been proposed in the literature over the last two decades, with mixed success. Chapters 1 to 6 introduce readers to tracking methods based on online learning algorithms, including sparse representation, dictionary learning, hashing codes, local model, and model fusion. In Chapter 7, visual tracking is formulated as a foreground/background segmentation problem, and tracking methods based on superpixels and end-to-end deep networks are presented. In turn, Chapters 8 and 9 introduce the cutting-edge tracking methods based on correlation filter and deep learning. Chapter 10 summarizes the book and points out potential future research directions for visual tracking. The book is self-contained and suited for all researchers, professionals and postgraduate students working in the fields of computer vision, pattern recognition, and machine learning. It will help these readers grasp the insights provided by cutting-edge research, and benefit from the practical techniques available for designing effective visual tracking algorithms. Further, the source codes or results of most algorithms in the book are provided at an accompanying website.

The book provides an up-to-date introduction to the latest version of Unity and its workflow by guiding readers through various prototypes. These range from 2D to 3D game concepts for PC and mobile, will allow readers to get acquainted with several important concepts and allow them to become competent Unity developers able to learn at their own pace. The book starts by introducing Unity and proceeds in building a basic understanding of its main components by developing a first, simple 2D game before proceeding in developing a full casual game to development of a simple but immersive 3D game concept to be tested first on PC before exploring how to port it for mobile VR.using Google Cardboard.

From iMovie to Final Cut Pro X offers an accessible, introductory guide to those taking up video editing using Final Cut Pro X, especially users making the transition from iMovie, Apple's free video software, helping aspirational and mobile filmmakers develop the skills needed to take their career to the next stage. Written by award-winning former Apple Education trainer and Final Cut Pro expert Tom Wolsky, this full-color book illuminates the key differences between these two applications and teaches users how to produce first-class results using the professional application. Wolsky also covers best practices for those working with iMovie on an iPhone or iPad and looking to move to a more advanced desktop program. Downloadable Final Cut Pro X project libraries included with the book offer readers hands-on examples of the techniques and practices discussed. Covers Final Cut Pro X 10.3.1.

The growth of videogame design programs in higher education and explosion of amateur game development has created a need for a deeper understanding of game history that addresses not only "when," but "how" and "why." Andrew Williams takes the first step in creating a comprehensive survey on the history of digital games as commercial products and artistic forms in a textbook appropriate for university instruction. History of Digital Games adopts a unique approach and scope that traces the interrelated concepts of game design, art and design of input devices from the beginnings of coin-operated amusement in the late 1800s to the independent games of unconventional creators in the present. Rooted in the concept of videogames as designed objects, Williams investigates the sources that inspired specific game developers as well as establishing the historical, cultural, economic and technological contexts that helped shape larger design trends. Key Features Full-color images and game screenshots Focuses primarily on three interrelated digital game elements: visual design, gameplay design and the design of input devices This book is able to discuss design trends common to arcade games, home console games and computer games while also respecting the distinctions of each game context Includes discussion of game hardware as it relates to how it affects game design Links to online resources featuring games discussed in the text, video tutorial and other interactive resources will be included.

The book provides an up-to-date introduction to the latest version of Unity and its workflow by guiding readers through various prototypes. These range from 2D to 3D game concepts for PC and mobile, will allow readers to get acquainted with several important concepts and allow them to become competent Unity developers able to learn at their own pace. The book starts by introducing Unity and proceeds in building a basic understanding of its main components by developing a first, simple 2D game before proceeding in developing a full casual game to development of a simple but immersive 3D game concept to be tested first on PC before exploring how to port it for mobile VR.using Google Cardboard.

This second edition of Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing is updated with new chapters and new authors, but it's still a no-nonsense guide to the professional craft of writing for video games. Not only does the text cover story and narrative elements, but it also addresses dialogue, documentation, and strategy guides. Seasoned video game writers each address a different topic, including the best way to break into the video game industry, how to be an efficient part of a team, and the principles of narrative design. The book also offers script samples, technical writing advice, effective writing tips, and suggestions for how to innovate in game narrative. Key Features Comprehensive enough for veterans and accessible enough for novices Goes into detail about how to write tutorials, script doctoring, and writing for AAA games Delivers invaluable experiences directly from writers in the games industry Full of practical advice from industry pros on how to get a job, and then how to get the job done Author Bio Wendy Despain has more than two decades of experience spearheading digital media projects. She has worked with teams around the world as a writer, narrative designer, producer, and consultant on interactive experiences ranging from video games to augmented reality. She's worked with EA, Disney, Ubisoft, Cartoon Network, PBS, Marvel, and Wargaming. Currently, she's a Production Director at ArenaNet, makers of the Guild Wars franchise. Her books include: Writing For Videogame Genres: From FPS to RPG Talking to Artists/Talking to Programmers 100 Principles of Game Design

Stop motion animation is a challenging and time-consuming skill that requires patience, adaptability, and a close eye to detail. Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation, 3rd Edition is the essential guide to help stop motion animators overcome these challenges of this highly-skilled craft. Author Susannah Shaw provides a step-by-step guide to creating successful stop motioin films. Starting with some basic exercises, the reader will learn about developing a story, making models, creating sets and props, the mechanics of movements, filming postproduction, and how to set about finding that first elusive job in a modern studio. Key Features Interviews with current stars, step-by-step examples, coverage of Rapid Prototyping and Dragonframe Software

A comprehensive practical guide to digital manga and anime, suitable for both complete beginners and experienced digital artists. An informative introduction covers all the equipment you will need, with step-by-step guides to using the tools of Adobe Photoshop to create different effects. It also covers the translation of manga characters to the screen in the creation of anime, including the software you will need, pre-production and animation.