Charles River Media

The Cinema 4D 9/9.1 handbook. (CD-ROM included)

Intended for beginners, this guide explains how to create and texture imaginary objects in the Cinema 4D environment, then introduces lighting, camera movement, animation tools, character setup, and rendering. The 9/9.1 edition adds chapters on cloth simulation and sketching. The CD-ROM contains a C4D demo, image files, and bonus tutorials. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Game art; creation, direction, and careers. (CD-ROM included)

Linde (who has served as technical and art director for such game titles as Road to Rome, Secret Weapons of WW2, and Battlefield Vietnam) explains the standard production process of art development for computer games and describes the techniques and skills necessary to operate as part of the project development team. He also provides career advice for aspiring artists. He assumes knowledge of at least one major 3D program (3ds max or Maya) and Photoshop. The CD-ROM contains reference images, textures, meshes, and scene files from the tutorials. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Maya 6 handbook. (CD-ROM included)

Maya is graphics software for special effects widely used by film and game studios. In this handbook for novice and intermediate level users, Watkins (computer arts, U. of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas) and Neuhahn, a Los Angeles-based professional animator, explain how to use the modeling tools of this latest Maya version and the concepts behind them. Tutorials include rendering an organic form and exterior scene. The companion CD contains the text's screenshots in full color and a tutorial folder. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Photoshop CS trickery and FX. (CD-ROM included)

Intended for intermediate Photoshop users, this tutorial walks through techniques for adding effects to photographs and creating digital art. Color images illustrate each step in the process of compositing photographic images, creating textures with animated brushes, integrating 3D objects into photography, and replacing a background. The CD-ROM contains image files and demo versions of Photoshop CS, Color Efex Pro 2.0, and Nik Sharpener Pro. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Physics-based animation.

Physics-based animation, which is increasingly used in computer games, in special effects in movies, and even as a part of surgical simulation systems, is based on theories from engineering, physics, and mathematics. It is on these theories that the authors of this text (all affiliated with the department of computer science at the U. of Copenhagen, Denmark) focus, introducing how the mathematical models are from physical and mathematical principles and how the models are solved in an efficient, robust, and stable manner on the computer. They sequentially cover kinematics, multibody animation, the dynamics of deformable objects, collision detection, and other mathematics and physics for animation. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Storytelling through animation. (CD-ROM included)

Who needs to grovel before the latest surgically-enhanced-drama- queen-superstar-flavor-of-the-month? Indie filmmaker Wellins gives detailed explanations and examples of how to make animated films from the emotional level on up to where to hang the lights. Covering everything from narrative structure and the techniques of visual storytelling cinematography, preproduction (including animatics), the sound track, character design, production (including character animation), and postproduction, Wellins considers a wide range of tools and methods, including stop motion, software manipulation, and scanner animation. The CD-ROM includes figures and movies in the text. Cue the lizards. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Visual computing; geometry, graphics, and vision.

The visual computing discipline combines computer graphics, vision, and computational geometry. This book for advanced undergraduates and for professionals in game development and graphics introduces the ideas and techniques of this interdisciplinary field. Coverage incluces abstract data structures, coordinate pipelines, images, meshes, animation, randomization, higher dimensions for 3D, and robustness. Fifteen colorplates illustrate the techniques. Concise C++ code for common tasks is included, as is a handy list of acronyms. Nielsen is a researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)