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 FeaturesThe unique, dynamic learning system that has helped thousands of artists enhance their figure drawing abilitiesDozens of updated illustrations and all-new content, exclusive to the 3rd editionSelect pages can be scanned by your smartphone or other device to pull up bonus video content, enhancing the learning processCompanion 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 Read more

This introduction to robotics offers a distinct and unified perspective of the mechanics, planning and control of robots. Ideal for self-learning, or for courses, as it assumes only freshman-level physics, ordinary differential equations, linear algebra and a little bit of computing background. Modern Robotics presents the state-of-the-art, screw-theoretic techniques capturing the most salient physical features of a robot in an intuitive geometrical way. With numerous exercises at the end of each chapter, accompanying software written to reinforce the concepts in the book and video lectures aimed at changing the classroom experience, this is the go-to textbook for learning about this fascinating subject. Read more

IMPORTANT: There are two paperback versions of this book. The cheaper one is in black and white, the more expensive one is in full color. This book covers all the basics that you need to know to start programming GUI applications with Python and Kivy. Throughout the book we will be building a GUI application from scratch, a fully functional game using all kinds of tools that Kivy has to offer.Each part of the book starts with a theoretical introduction of a topic or idea that we then implement in the project. I assume you have no prior knowledge of the Kivy library, but you should have at least some basic knowledge of the Python programming language, including the object-oriented programming paradigm as this is what we will be using a lot in this book.The book covers all the basic elements of Kivy that you have to know, like widgets, layouts, Kivy ids and properties, graphics, screens, animation, sound. Finally we’ll deploy the app to Windows. It is pretty comprehensive and after you finish it, I’m sure you’ll be able to create your own awesome GUI apps of any kind, not just games.I hope you will have at least as much fun reading the book as I had writing it. Read more

Written by an expert in the development of GPS systems with digital maps and navigation,Programming GPS and OpenStreetMap Applications with Java: The RealObject Application Framework provides a concrete paradigm for object-oriented modeling and programming. It presents a thorough introduction to the use of available global positioning data for the development of applications involving digital maps. The author first describes the different formats of GPS data and digital maps and shows how to use recorded GPS traces to replay and display this data on a digital map. Then, he works through in detail the processing steps of obtaining dedicated data from OpenStreetMaps and how to extract a network for a simple navigation application. For each topic covered―GPS data, OpenStreetMaps, and navigation―Java code is developed that can easily be adapted to the readers’ needs and locality.Finally, all components are put together in a sample computer-game application modeled on the well-known board game, Scotland Yard. The computer game is intended to be a basis from which readers can develop and customize their own application for their desired geographical area. The developed application can be "published" on the Internet and made available for interactive multiplayer competition.This book provides a fun and interesting way to learn distributed programming with Java and real-world data. Open-source software is available on a companion website at www.roaf.de Read more

What is artificial intelligence (AI)? How can AI help a learner, a teacher or a system designer? What are the positive impacts of AI on human learning? AI for Learning examines how artificial intelligence can, and should, positively impact human learning, whether it be in formal or informal educational and training contexts. The notion of ‘can’ is bound up with ongoing technological developments. The notion of ‘should’ is bound up with an ethical stance that recognises the complementary capabilities of human and artificial intelligence, as well as the objectives of doing good, not doing harm, increasing justice and maintaining fairness. The book considers the different supporting roles that can help a learner – from AI as a tutor and learning aid to AI as a classroom moderator, among others – and examines both the opportunities and risks associated with each. Read more

This book is designed to describe fundamental algorithmic techniques for constructing drawings of graphs. Suitable as a book or reference manual, its chapters offer an accurate, accessible reflection of the rapidly expanding field of graph drawing. Read more

The popular Postmortem column in Game Developer magazine features firsthand accounts of how some of the most important and successful games of recent years have been made. This book offers the opportunity to harvest this expertise with one volume. The editor has organized the articles by theme and added previously unpublished analysis to reveal successful management techniques. Readers learn how superstars of the game industry like Peter Molyneux and Warren Spector have dealt with the development challenges such as managing complexity, software and game design issues, schedule challenges, and changing staff needs. Read more

This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of cloud computing security technology and implementation, while exploring practical solutions to a wide range of cloud computing security issues. With more organizations using cloud computing and cloud providers for data operations, proper security in these and other potentially vulnerable areas have become a priority for organizations of all sizes across the globe. Research efforts from both academia and industry in all security aspects related to cloud computing are gathered within one reference guide. Read more

Lavishly illustrated with drawings from actual design projects by Corel artists, this book shows how to use CorelDRAW versions 3 through 9 for both Mac and Windows. It is organized to be useful to beginning through advanced users; each section includes basic information, tips for efficiency, step-by-step techniques, and a visual resource reference offering easy access to some of the non-intuitive twists and turns of the program. Illustrations include many kinds of work, among them: logos, business cards, posters, architectural renderings, book covers, cartoons, technical illustration web page designs, and fine art illustration. The enclosed CD-ROM contains tutorials, clip art, stock illustrations, fonts, demos, CorelDRAW scripts, and extensions. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Read more

Trying to develop your own multiplayer online game can be overwhelming, especially as information on multiplayer specifics is very scarce. The nine-volume Development and Deployment of Multiplayer Games series is an attempt to summarize a body of knowledge that is known in the industry, but is rarely published, let alone published together.The series is highly praised by prominent representatives of the multiplayer gamedev industry. An “Early Praise” page within the book lists several testimonials by people from billion-dollar and/or AAA companies with job titles ranging from Managing Director and CTO to Backend Technical Director and Principal Software Engineer.Genres: From Social Games to MMOFPS,with Stock Exchanges In Between. Development and Deployment of Multiplayer Online Games aims to cover pretty much all the MOG genres - ranging from social games to MMORPGs and MMOFPS. While there are certainly differences between the genres, around 80% of the discussed concepts apply across the board.Level: Intermediate+. This series is not trying to teach very basics of the programming (and is not a book to copy-paste your MOG from). Rather, it is intended for those intermediate developers who want to progress into senior ones, and all the way up to CTOs and architects.In particular, there is no explanation of what event-driven programming is about, what the difference is between optimistic locking and pessimistic locking, why do you need a source control system, and so on. Instead, there will be discussions on how the concept of futures fits into event-driven programming, when the use of optimistic locking makes sense for games, and how to use source control in the presence of unmergeable files.This Volume: Vol. II Vol. II continues Part ARCH(itecture), and includes four Chapters. Chapter 4 discusses choices between DIY elements of your game and re-using 3rd-party ones, advocating for "responsible re-use". Chapter 5 explores (Re)Actors - which can be seen as a generalization of classical game loop, and allow to handle all the kinds of games, including, but not limited to, simulations. Special attention is paid to (Re)Actor goodies such as replay and production post-factum analysis. Chapter 6 concentrates on Client-Side Architecture - both generic and (Re)Actor-based. Note that serious discussion of the graphics is beyond the scope. Chapter 7 is aimed at those development teams who want to re-use popular existing engines (such as Unity 5, UE4, Lumberyard, or Urho3D) to develop an MOG. Various 3rd-party communication libraries (including Photon and SmartFoxServer) are also discussed in this context. Read more

Deliver Better Games Faster, On Budget—And Make Game Development Fun Again! Game development is in crisis—facing bloated budgets, impossible schedules, unmanageable complexity, and death march overtime. It’s no wonder so many development studios are struggling to survive. Fortunately, there is a solution. Scrum and Agile methods are already revolutionizing development outside the game industry. Now, long-time game developer Clinton Keith shows exactly how to successfully apply these methods to the unique challenges of game development.  Keith has spent more than fifteen years developing games, seven of them with Scrum and agile methods. Drawing on this unparalleled expertise, he shows how teams can use Scrum to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; craft games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for development teams at the same time. You’ll learn to form successful agile teams that incorporate programmers, producers, artists, testers, and designers—and promote effective collaboration within and beyond those teams, throughout the entire process. From long-range planning to progress tracking and continuous integration, Keith offers dozens of tips, tricks, and solutions—all based firmly in reality and hard-won experience. Coverage includesUnderstanding Scrum’s goals, roles, and practices in the context of game developmentCommunicating and planning your game’s vision, features, and progress Using iterative techniques to put your game into a playable state every two to four weeks— even dailyHelping all team participants succeed in their rolesRestoring stability and predictability to the development processManaging ambiguous requirements in a fluid marketplaceScaling Scrum to large, geographically distributed development teams Getting started: overcoming inertia and integrating Scrum into your studio’s current processes Increasingly, game developers and managers are recognizing that things can’t go on the way they have in the past. Game development organizations need a far better way to work. Agile Game Development with Scrum gives them that—and brings the profitability, creativity, and fun back to game development. Read more

Sound Design for the Visual Storyteller is an overview of the sound design process for the beginner filmmaker or storyteller, providing the foundational knowledge needed to succeed at utilizing and designing sound for visual stories, films, and even podcasts.With a focus on television and film, alongside references to podcast, theatre, event, and game sound design, this all-in-one overview begins with the fundamentals of sound and the structure of a professional sound design team, before exploring the practical topics of post-production, creative workflows, and distribution. Supported by a plethora of audio and video examples to demonstrate key concepts, this book guides aspiring sound designers on the power and production value of the well-conceived soundtrack and showcases some of the most effective techniques for getting there.This is an ideal introduction for storytellers working in a range of contexts, including filmmakers, sound designers, and sound editors, as well as students of sound for film and broadcast. Read more

Providing an essential and unique bridge between the theories of signal processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) in music, this book provides a holistic overview of foundational ideas in music, from the physical and mathematical properties of sound to symbolic representations. Combining signals and language models in one place, this book explores how sound may be represented and manipulated by computer systems, and how our devices may come to recognize particular sonic patterns as musically meaningful or creative through the lens of information theory.Introducing popular fundamental ideas in AI at a comfortable pace, more complex discussions around implementations and implications in musical creativity are gradually incorporated as the book progresses. Each chapter is accompanied by guided programming activities designed to familiarize readers with practical implications of discussed theory, without the frustrations of free-form coding.Surveying state-of-the art methods in applications of deep neural networks to audio and sound computing, as well as offering a research perspective that suggests future challenges in music and AI research, this book appeals to both students of AI and music, as well as industry professionals in the fields of machine learning, music, and AI. Read more

From the reviews: "This book offers a coherent treatment, at the graduate textbook level, of the field that has come to be known in the last decade or so as computational geometry. ... ... The book is well organized and lucidly written; a timely contribution by two founders of the field. It clearly demonstrates that computational geometry in the plane is now a fairly well-understood branch of computer science and mathematics. It also points the way to the solution of the more challenging problems in dimensions higher than two." #Mathematical Reviews#1 "... This remarkable book is a comprehensive and systematic study on research results obtained especially in the last ten years. The very clear presentation concentrates on basic ideas, fundamental combinatorial structures, and crucial algorithmic techniques. The plenty of results is clever organized following these guidelines and within the framework of some detailed case studies. A large number of figures and examples also aid the understanding of the material. Therefore, it can be highly recommended as an early graduate text but it should prove also to be essential to researchers and professionals in applied fields of computer-aided design, computer graphics, and robotics." #Biometrical Journal#2 Read more

As games grow more complex and gamers' expectations soar, the discipline of game systems design becomes ever more important. Game systems designers plan a game's rules and balance, its characters' attributes, most of its data, and how its AI, weapons, and objects work and interact. Introduction to Game Systems Design is the first complete beginner's guide to this crucial discipline. Writing for all aspiring game professionals, even those with absolutely no experience, leading game designer and instructor Dax Gazaway presents a step-by-step, hands-on approach to designing game systems with industry-standard tools. Drawing on his experience building AAA-level game systems (including games in the Star Wars and Marvel franchises), Gazaway covers all this, and more: Exploring the essentials of game design and its emerging subdisciplinesAsking the essential questions at the heart of all designGetting started with modern game system design tools, including the spreadsheets most professionals now useCreating systems and data from a blank pagePopulating and quantifying a world of data into a gameTuning and balancing game systemsTesting game systems and dataLeveraging communication, psychology, and rewards within your gamesBalancing game probability within systems Whether you're a college freshman entering a game design program, an indie developer using Unreal or Unity, a Dungeon Master, or anyone who wants to really understand modern games, this guide will help you get where you want to go. Read more

Action Analysis is one of the fundamental princples of animation that underpins all types of animation: 2d, 3d, computer animation, stop motion, etc. This is a fundamental skill that all animators need to create polished, believable animation. An example of Action Analysis would be Shrek's swagger in the film, Shrek. The animators clearly understood (through action analysis) the type of walk achieved by a large and heavy individual (the real) and then applied their observations to the animated character of an ogre (the fantastic). It is action analysis that enabled the animation team to visually translate a real life situation into an ogre's walk, achieving such fantastic results. Key animation skills are demonstrated with in-depth illustrations, photographs and live action footage filmed with high speed cameras. Detailed Case Studies and practical assignments ground action analysis methodology with real life examples. Action Analysis for Animators is a essential guide for students, amateurs and professionals. Read more

Data Insights offers multi-disciplinary perspectives and useful information about how visualizations can open your eyes to data. This thought-provoking book takes a conversational approach to presenting an overview of the subject, while also focusing on key details. It highlights the ideas and work of a variety of people who are actively contributing to this still emerging field. Case studies from business analytics, healthcare, games, security, and network monitoring, among others, portray what is going on in data visualization today. A diverse blend of original illustrations and real-world examples, both classical and cutting-edge, help fill in the picture. This book provides an approachable overview of important aspects of data visualization, and...Demonstrates, with a variety of case studies, how visualizations can foster a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of dataAnswers the question, "How can data visualization help me?" with discussions of how it fits into a wide array of purposes and situationsMakes the case that data visualization is not just about technology; it also involves a deeply human process Read more

The world’s favorite guide to everything AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT—updated for 2019! Mastering AutoCAD 2019 and AutoCAD LT 2019 is the world’s all-time best-selling guide to the world’s most popular drafting software. Packed with tips, tricks, techniques, and tutorials, this guide covers every inch of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT—including certification. This new edition has been fully updated to align with the software’s 2019 update, featuring the same expert instruction augmented by videos of crucial techniques. Step-by-step walk-throughs, concise explanations, specific examples and plenty of hands-on projects help you learn essential AutoCAD skills by working directly with the necessary tools—giving you a skill set that translates directly to on-the-job use. AutoCAD is the dominant design and drafting software for 2D and 3D technical drawings, while AutoCAD LT is the more affordable version often used by students and hobbyists. Professional designers need complete command of the software’s tools and functions, but a deeper exploration of more complex capabilities can help even hobbyists produce work at a higher level of technical proficiency. This book is your ultimate guide to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, whether you’re seeking certification or just looking to draw. Get acquainted with the workspace and basic drafting tools Gain greater control of your drawings with hatches, fields, fills, dynamic blocks, and curves Explore the 3D modeling and imaging tools that bring your drawing to life Customize AutoCAD to the way you work, integrate it with other software, and more As certification preparation material, this book is Autodesk-endorsed; as a self-study guide to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT mastery, this book is the gold-standard, having led over a half million people on the journey to better design. If you’re ready to learn quickly so you can get down to work, Mastering AutoCAD 2019 and AutoCAD LT 2019 is your ideal resource.

OpenGL Game Programming teaches you how to use OpenGL to create dynamic 3D environments and effects for use in game development. Beginning with the histories of OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX, programming essentials for Microsoft Windows, and 3D theory, you'll quickly move on to lessons on the functionality of OpenGL. Most of the chapters include demo programs that will allow you to see OpenGL in action. You'll then learn how to pull together OpenGL, Microsoft DirectSound, and Microsoft DirectInput to create your own games! Read more

Discover the lessons that helped bring about a new golden age of Disney animation!Published for the first time ever, Drawn to Life is a two volume collection of the legendary lectures from long-time Disney animator Walt Stanchfield. For over twenty years, Walt helped breathe life into the new golden age of animation with these teachings at the Walt Disney Animation Studios and influenced such talented artists as Tim Burton, Brad Bird, Glen Keane, and John Lasseter. These writings represent the quintessential refresher for fine artists and film professionals, and it is a vital tutorial for students who are now poised to be part of another new generation in the art form. * Legendary lessons from a master Disney animator - meet the man who put the wiggle in Jessica Rabbit's walk!* Packed full of illustrations from some of the top animators in the world including Brad Bird, Glen Keane and John Lasseter* Two volumes and 800 pages of pure gold - get in-depth advice and instruction on bringing your characters to life Sample Pages from Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes, Volume 1(Click images for larger versions) Read more