Character rigging is the method with which you create a system for animating a character. A rig is represented by two primary mechanics: the skeleton, consisting of hierarchical rotations to drive the motions, and a skin, or method of deforming the geometry that makes up the character model. Essential Skills in Character Rigging is a beginner's guide to learning and understanding the essential aspects of character setup, evaluation, skeletal construction, and deformation. Borrowing from the author's extensive experience in the field, it presents the primary theories, constructs, and objectives for constructing a basic rig from the ground up, just as it would be done in a professional studio. The book explains the basic elements of hierarchies, skeletons, kinematics, deformation, skinning, and creating relationships between nodes. It gives hands-on experience with taking a completed character model and setting it up with a skeleton with kinematics and soft-skin deformation. It also gives specific instructions on using inverse kinematics systems, and how to set up the essential mechanics of a human rig with these systems. All of these lessons are conducted using a simplistic, conversational style that keeps technical and mathematical jargon to a minimum. The book also includes video tutorials corresponding to specific modules. Essential Skills in Character Rigging takes aspiring character artists through the vital components in the process of taking a 3D character model and turning it into an animatable rig that is ready for production in film or games. It identifies the universal fundamentals at work behind character rigging, and the practical complexities of the process are broken down into simple steps that are easy to comprehend and execute.

The concept of content delivery (also known as content distribution) is be coming increasingly important due to rapidly growing demands for efficient distribution and fast access of information in the Internet. Content delivery is very broad and comprehensive in that the contents for distribution cover a wide range of types with significantly different characteristics and performance concerns, including HTML documents, images, multimedia streams, database tables, and dynamically generated contents. Moreover, to facilitate ubiqui tous information access, the network architectures and hardware devices also vary widely. They range from broadband wired/fixed networks to bandwid- constrained wireless/mobile networks, and from powerful workstations/PCs to personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones with limited processing and display capabilities. All these levels of diversity are introducing numerous challenges on content delivery technologies. It is desirable to deliver contents in their best quality based on the nature of the contents, network connections and client devices. This book aims at providing a snapshot of the state-of-the-art research and development activities on web content delivery and laying the foundations for future web applications. The book focuses on four main areas: (1) web con tent delivery; (2) dynamic web content; (3) streaming media delivery; and (4) ubiquitous web access. It consists of 17 chapters written by leading experts in the field. The book is designed for a professional audience including academic researchers and industrial practitioners who are interested in the most recent research and development activities on web content delivery."

First published in 1980, Steel-Engraved Book Illustration in England is a detailed and comprehensive survey of the steel engravings that were so popular in the nineteenth century. With an extensive range of illustrations, the book refutes the assumption that steel engravings are of little artistic value or importance, a common attitude rooted largely in the connection between steel engravings and mass-produced books. Beginning with an exploration of the identification problems and early history of steel engravings, it moves through the production and printing of the plates and on to a study of several engravers and artists, as well as of the books themselves. Steel-Engraved Book Illustration in England will appeal to anyone interested in the history of printing and illustration.

The analysis of QoE is not an easy task, especially for multimedia services, because all the factors (technical and non-technical) that directly or indirectly influence the user-perceived quality have to be considered. This book describes different methods to investigate users' QoE from the viewpoint of technical and non-technical parameters using multimedia services. It discusses the subjective methods for both controlled and uncontrolled environments. Collected datasets are used to analyze users' profiles, which sheds light on key factors to help network service providers understand end-users' behavior and expectations. Important adaptive video streaming technologies are discussed that run on unmanaged networks to achieve certain QoS features. The authors present a scheduling method to allocate resources to the end-user based on users' QoE and optimizes the power efficiency of users' device for LTE-A. Lastly, two key aspects of 5G networks are presented: QoE using multimedia services (VoIP and video), and power-saving model for mobile device and virtual base station.

Whether you are creating a catchy and fun cartoon, designing a print banner advertisement, or developing content for a mobile game, save time and money with expert techniques, trips and tricks from by Adobe Certified Expert, Rafiq Elmansy with Illustrator Foundations. With practical applications and step by step tutorials, solve problems quickly to develop creative projects on time and to budget. Want to hone your Illustrator skills so you can remain competitive in a diverse market while concentrating on your vector graphics projects? Then Illustrator Foundations is for you! With real-world professional projects you'll discover how to: develop mobile applications, work with layers, masks, vector images and many more tips and tricks not found anywhere else! Harness the full Creative Suite software package with tips on how to integrate Illustrator with Photoshop and After Effects. This book is a goldmine of artistic inspiration, timesaving practical tips, tricks and step-by-step walkthroughs; you'll wonder how you survived this long without it. Put the Adobe Illustrator CS6 techniques to the test with the fully updated companion website with downloadable Illustrator source files, examples and video tutorials.

The Digital Da Vinci book series opens with the interviews of music mogul Quincy Jones, MP3 inventor Karlheinz Brandenburg, Tommy Boy founder Tom Silverman and entertainment attorney Jay L. Cooper. A strong supporter of science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs in schools, The Black Eyed Peas founding member will.i.am announced in July 2013 his plan to study computer science. Leonardo da Vinci, the epitome of a Renaissance man, was an Italian polymath at the turn of the 16th century. Since the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the division of labor has brought forth specialization in the workforce and university curriculums. The endangered species of polymaths is facing extinction. Computer science has come to the rescue by enabling practitioners to accomplish more than ever in the field of music. In this book, Newton Lee recounts his journey in executive producing a Billboard-charting song like managing agile software development; M. Nyssim Lefford expounds producing and its effect on vocal recordings; Dennis Reidsma, Mustafa Radha and Anton Nijholt survey the field of mediated musical interaction and musical expression; Isaac Schankler, Elaine Chew and Alexandre Francois describe improvising with digital auto-scaffolding; Shlomo Dubnov and Greg Surges explain the use of musical algorithms in machine listening and composition; Juan Pablo Bello discusses machine listening of music; Stephen and Tim Barrass make smart things growl, purr and sing; Raffaella Folgieri, Mattia Bergomi and Simone Castellani examine EEG-based brain-computer interface for emotional involvement in games through music and last but not least, Kai Ton Chau concludes the book with computer and music pedagogy. Digital Da Vinci: Computers in Music is dedicated to polymathic education and interdisciplinary studies in the digital age empowered by computer science. Educators and researchers ought to encourage the new generation of scholars to become as well rounded as a Renaissance man or woman.

Editor's note: there has been an issue with the book's companion site. Focal Press is fixing the issue. In the meanwhile, please visit http://www.routledge.com/cw/sullivan-978024081872/ for all the material promised in the book. From demo reel creation to festival shorts, students and professionals alike are creating animated shorts that are dynamic and eye catching but the time constraints of these shorts are challenging in their own right. The unique format of the animated short of two to five minutes in length presents a practical and aesthetic challenge that is rarely addressed in the classroom. Ideas for the Animated Short is a comprehensive and practical blueprint for creative and unique animated short creation with a focus on the strength of a compelling story. A comprehensive guide to the animated short, this title is an invaluable asset for aspiring animation professionals, students and independent filmmakers. Explore the process of developing a short from conception to final delivery and adapt the industry's best practices in your own workflow. Written by four leading animators, artists and professors, Ideas for the Animated Short is written from the unique perspective of a professional animator adapting creative stories into incredible animated shorts.Follow from start to finish the creation of an animated short from the pre-production thought process to story development and character design. Explore the best practices and avoid the common pitfalls of creating two to five minute shorts. Watch a specially created animated short, demonstrating the core techniques and principles at the companion website! Packed with illustrated examples of idea generation, character and story development, acting, dialogue and storyboarding practice this is your conceptual toolkit proven to meet the challenges of this unique art form. The companion website includes in-depth interviews with industry insiders, sho

Whether you are creating an animated short, catchy and fun mobile game, or an innovative application, save time and money with expert cheats by renowned Flash Expert, Chris Georgenes with all new content for the Adobe Flash Creative Cloud revision. Solve problems quickly and develop creative projects, practical applications, and step-by-step tutorials. Chris Georgenes shows you how to work from the problem to the solution - from the viewpoint of an animator who has been commissioned to create a job and is working on a deadline and to a budget. Many of these walkthroughs are real-world client projects, with the source files supplied for you to open and explore. With these real-life professional projects you'll discover how to: center your stage, utilize the retina display support, navigate the new UI, learn how to develop interactive content, and how to use the Adobe Creative Cloud to your advantage. Put the Adobe Flash CC cheats to the test with the downloadable Flash source files, examples and video tutorials, and a creative commons game, developed with Adobe, to demonstrate the new functionality of CC!

Create high-quality photorealistic renders of architectural visualizations using 3ds Max and Vray with the project-based tutorials in this book. Learn how to combine lighting and rendering options to end-up with the most realistic final renders possible at a professional level. The tutorials in this book are filled with beautiful full-color images and they teach you how to light both interiors and exteriors and daytime and nighttime scenes. Learn how to save time without sacrificing the quality of your final renders with tips and tricks on rendering with Vray - the most accurate rendering application for 3ds Max. The downloadable resources include all the project files that you need to recreate each of the projects presented within the book. Please note that this book does not support the current versions of 3ds Max and V-Ray. Topics include:

The use of technology in music and education can no longer be described as a recent development. Music learners actively engage with technology in their music making, regardless of the opportunities afforded to them in formal settings. This volume draws together critical perspectives in three overarching areas in which technology is used to support music education: music production; game technology; musical creation, experience and understanding. The fourteen chapters reflect the emerging field of the study of technology in music from a pedagogical perspective. Contributions come not only from music pedagogues but also from musicologists, composers and performers working at the forefront of the domain. The authors examine pedagogical practice in the recording studio, how game technology relates to musical creation and expression, the use of technology to create and assess musical compositions, and how technology can foster learning within the field of Special Educational Needs (SEN). In addition, the use of technology in musical performance is examined, with a particular focus on the current trends and the ways it might be reshaped for use within performance practice. This book will be of value to educators, practitioners, musicologists, composers and performers, as well as to scholars with an interest in the critical study of how technology is used effectively in music and music education.

This textbook covers the theoretical backgrounds and practical aspects of image, video and audio feature expression, e.g., color, texture, edge, shape, salient point and area, motion, 3D structure, audio/sound in time, frequency and cepstral domains, structure and melody. Up-to-date algorithms for estimation, search, classification and compact expression of feature data are described in detail. Concepts of signal decomposition (such as segmentation, source tracking and separation), as well as composition, mixing, effects, and rendering, are discussed. Numerous figures and examples help to illustrate the aspects covered. The book was developed on the basis of a graduate-level university course, and most chapters are supplemented by problem-solving exercises. The book is also a self-contained introduction both for researchers and developers of multimedia content analysis systems in industry.

Includes a new chapter on WebGL Covers the foundations of 3D computer graphics, including animation, visual techniques, and 3D modeling Provides comprehensive coverage of OpenGL (R) 4.3, including the GLSL and vertex, fragment, tessellation, and geometry shaders Includes 170 programs with 250 experiments based on them Contains 650 exercises, 100 worked examples, and 600 four-color illustrations Balances theory with programming practice using a hands-on interactive approach to explain the underlying concepts

Telepresence is enabling human interaction at a distance, creating a sense of being present at a remote location. In the next millennium we are certain to be increasingly `telepresent' both at work and at play, with an expanding market for telepresence services. As we move from a physical to an information economy, demand will grow for services which transport bits not atoms and which support the output of the human mind. Moreover, technology continues to advance at an unprecedented rate, and it could be suggested that we are reaching key breakpoints in client processing power and global network interconnectivity. In practice, telepresence systems utilise a very wide range of technologies. In compiling this book the editors have included chapters from across these technologies which they have broadly classified as audio, data, video and virtual environments. Telepresence gives a flavour of the exciting developments in telepresence and teleconferencing technologies being researched and developed within BT. Just as the telephone began changing the world a century ago, so will telepresence one day alter the way we live, think, do business and react to the world around us. The potential for these technologies is staggering, the implications mind-boggling. Building on a strong base of established audiovisual conferencing and interactive multimedia services, BT and MCI are leading the way in defining the commercial applications of telepresence that will shape the future of global telecommunication. Telepresence is a snapshot of these groundbreaking activities and conveys the complexity, uncertainty and enthusiasm involved in this challenging and exciting work. It is essential reading for all researchers, engineers and managers working in this stimulating field.

In many of nowadays web-based environments for electronic marketing and commerce, that present large multimedia product and service catalogues, it becomes more and more difficult to provide naive end users, such as private consumers or commercial business partners, with intuitive user interfaces to access the large multimedia collections describing the presented products and services. The same holds for marketing managers and other employees responsible for managing and maintaining the large and constantly changing set of multimedia information chunks and fragments contained in these collections. As a consequence, many efforts are devoted to improve the quality of the interaction between users and databases. Virtual Reality (VR) techniques are a promising interaction paradigm particularly suited to novice and/or occasional users. The users are facilitated in the database navigation since the system proposes them an environment that reproduces a real situation and gives the possibility of interacting by manipulating objects that have a direct correspondence with known objects.

* Learn the end-to-end process, starting with capture from a video or audio source through to the consumer's media player * A quick-start quide to streaming media technologies * How to monetize content and protect revenue with digital rights management For broadcasters, web developers, project managers implementing streaming media systems, David Austerberry shows how to deploy the technology on your site, from video and audio capture through to the consumer's media player. The book first deals with Internet basics and gives a thorough coverage of telecommunications networks and the last mile to the home. Video and audio formats are covered, as well as compression standards including Windows Media and MPEG-4. The book then guides you through the streaming process, showing in-depth how to encode audio and video. The deployment of media servers, live webcasting and how the stream is displayed by the consumer's media player are also covered. A final section on associated technologies illustrates how you can protect your revenue sources with digital rights management, looks at content delivery networks and provides examples of successful streaming applications. The supporting website, www.davidausterberry.com/streaming.html, offers updated links to sources of information, manufacturers and suppliers. David Austerberry is co-owner of the new media communications consultancy, Informed Sauce. He has worked with streaming media since the late nineties. Before that, he has been product manager for a number of broadcast equipment manufacturers, and formerly had many years with a leading broadcaster.

-Focuses on what actually works in development practice, in order to inform and inspire practitioners and students -Impressive global reach, with a wide range of case studies drawn from across Algeria, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, India, Kosovo, Taiwan, USA, South Africa, Malawi, and China -Highlights development projects at the small and large scale and across a range of visual and performing arts

When the new medium of CD-ROMs emerged, industry figures and critics alike proclaimed their virtually unlimited potential. Adapting material from well-established media like television and film, CD-ROMs have quickly transformed genres such as science fiction and horror. At the same time, the realities of actual CD-ROMs often fall short of their utopian visions.

On a Silver Platter marks a "coming of age" for CD-ROMs as a commercially and aesthetically significant medium demanding critical attention. Greg Smith brings together media scholars such as Lisa Cartwright, Henry Jenkins, Janet Murray, and Scott Bukatman to analyze how CD-ROMs offer alternatives to familiar places--to museums, to cities, and especially to classrooms. Examining specific CD-ROM titles, including, Sim City, Civilization, and Phantasmagoria, the contributors argue that CD-ROMs are complex texts worthy of close consideration, both for how they have changed our understanding of space and genre, and for how they will impact the development of future media.

By examining particular CD-ROM texts and contexts, On a Silver Platter probes this new medium for insight and understanding into the current state of multimedia and into the future of technology.

Victor Perez brings together the research and expertise of world-leading color scientists, to create a comprehensive guide for VFX Artists in Color Management. The book explores the latest standards of HDR and ACES workflows, in an easily digestible and widely applicable resource. Its purpose is to make artists confident and familiar with Color Management and its science, to improve the quality of visual effects worldwide. Without assuming any previous knowledge, this self-contained book builds the readers understanding from the ground up, exploring all the elements of the Color Workflow at a scientific level. It covers how to setup a consistent pipeline in relation to other departments, inside and outside visual effects, from camera to screen, so everybody is aligned to the same standards, preserving color qualities, consistency, and maintaining the artistic intent end to end. It also delves into all the integral concepts for color management, ranging from Color Theory to Digital Image Fundamentals, and much more. This book is an invaluable resource for VFX students and professionals who want to be well-informed of the latest HDR and ACES pipelines, as well as those at every level of production, wishing to gain a deeper understanding of managing color in visual effects projects.

This book was written for statisticians, computer scientists, geographers, researchers, and others interested in visualizing data. It presents a unique foundation for producing almost every quantitative graphic found in scientific journals, newspapers, statistical packages, and data visualization systems. While the tangible results of this work have been several visualization software libraries, this book focuses on the deep structures involved in producing quantitative graphics from data. What are the rules that underlie the production of pie charts, bar charts, scatterplots, function plots, maps, mosaics, and radar charts? Those less interested in the theoretical and mathematical foundations can still get a sense of the richness and structure of the system by examining the numerous and often unique color graphics it can produce.

Multimedia Information Retrieval: Content-Based Information Retrieval from Large Text and Audio Databases addresses the future need for sophisticated search techniques that will be required to find relevant information in large digital data repositories, such as digital libraries and other multimedia databases. Because of the dramatically increasing amount of multimedia data available, there is a growing need for new search techniques that provide not only fewer bits, but also the most relevant bits, to those searching for multimedia digital data. This book serves to bridge the gap between classic ranking of text documents and modern information retrieval where composite multimedia documents are searched for relevant information. Multimedia Information Retrieval: Content-Based Information Retrieval from Large Text and Audio Databases begins to pave the way for speech retrieval; only recently has the search for information in speech recordings become feasible. This book provides the necessary introduction to speech recognition while discussing probabilistic retrieval and text retrieval, key topics in classic information retrieval. The book then discusses speech retrieval, which is even more challenging than retrieving text documents because word boundaries are difficult to detect, and recognition errors affect the retrieval effectiveness. This book also addresses the problem of integrating information retrieval and database functions, since there is an increasing need for retrieving information from frequently changing data collections which are organized and managed by a database system. Multimedia Information Retrieval: Content-Based Information Retrieval from Large Text and Audio Databases serves as an excellent reference source and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the topic.

"Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Information Technology and Software Engineering" presents selected articles from this major event, which was held in Beijing, December 8-10, 2012. This book presents the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the fields of information technology and software engineering, covering various state-of-the-art research theories and approaches. The subjects range from intelligent computing to information processing, software engineering, Web, unified modeling language (UML), multimedia, communication technologies, system identification, graphics and visualizing, etc.
The proceedings provide a major interdisciplinary forum for researchers and engineers to present the most innovative studies and advances, which can serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on information technology and software engineering.
Prof. Wei Lu, Dr. Guoqiang Cai, Prof. Weibin Liu and Dr. Weiwei Xing all work at Beijing Jiaotong University.

Broad in scope, Semantic Multimedia Analysis and Processing provides a complete reference of techniques, algorithms, and solutions for the design and the implementation of contemporary multimedia systems. Offering a balanced, global look at the latest advances in semantic indexing, retrieval, analysis, and processing of multimedia, the book features the contributions of renowned researchers from around the world. Its contents are based on four fundamental thematic pillars: 1) information and content retrieval, 2) semantic knowledge exploitation paradigms, 3) multimedia personalization, and 4) human-computer affective multimedia interaction. Its 15 chapters cover key topics such as content creation, annotation and modeling for the semantic web, multimedia content understanding, and efficiency and scalability. Fostering a deeper understanding of a popular area of research, the text: Describes state-of-the-art schemes and applications Supplies authoritative guidance on research and deployment issues Presents novel methods and applications in an informative and reproducible way Contains numerous examples, illustrations, and tables summarizing results from quantitative studies Considers ongoing trends and designates future challenges and research perspectives Includes bibliographic links for further exploration Uses both SI and US units Ideal for engineers and scientists specializing in the design of multimedia systems, software applications, and image/video analysis and processing technologies, Semantic Multimedia Analysis and Processing aids researchers, practitioners, and developers in finding innovative solutions to existing problems, opening up new avenues of research in uncharted waters.

This book is a collection of outstanding content written by experts working in the field of multimedia security. It provides an insight about various techniques used in multimedia security and identifies its progress in both technological and algorithmic perspectives. In the contemporary world, digitization offers an effective mechanism to process, preserve and transfer all types of information. The incredible progresses in computing and communication technologies augmented by economic feasibility have revolutionized the world. The availability of efficient algorithms together with inexpensive digital recording and storage peripherals have created a multimedia era bringing conveniences to people in sharing the digital data that includes images, audio and video. The ever-increasing pace, at which the multimedia and communication technology is growing, has also made it possible to combine, replicate and distribute the content faster and easier, thereby empowering mankind by having a wealth of information at their disposal. However, security of multimedia is giving tough time to the research community around the globe, due to ever-increasing and efficient attacks carried out on multimedia data by intruders, eves-droppers and hackers. Further, duplication, unauthorized use and mal-distribution of digital content have become a serious challenge as it leads to copyright violation and is considered to be the principal reason that refrains the information providers in freely sharing their proprietary digital content. The book is useful for students, researchers and professionals to advance their study.

Visualizing the data is an essential part of any data analysis. Modern computing developments have led to big improvements in graphic capabilities and there are many new possibilities for data displays. This new volume in the series Springer Handbooks of Computational Statistics gives an overview of modern data visualization methods, both in theory and practice. There are definitive chapters on modern graphical tools such as mosaic plots, parallel coordinate plots and linked views. There are chapters dedicated to graphical methodology for particular areas of statistics, for example Bayesian analysis, genomic data and cluster analysis, as well as chapters on software for graphics. Specialists from all over the world have contributed papers on their areas of expertise.

A handy reference guide to advertising copy and layout that simplifies the design process by breaking down each step into accessible components. Appropriate for advertising, graphic design, marketing, business, or communication programs with a design or strategic campaign component, covering everything budding copywriters and designers need to succeed in their craft. Goes beyond the conceptual approach to design in order to outline, for even the most novice student, the basic steps necessary to go from concept to producing a finished product.