Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
|
 |
Visual Special Effects Toolkit in C++ |
List Price: $49.99
Your Price: $49.99 |
 |
|
|
|
| Product Info |
Reviews |
Description:
Visual Special Effects Toolkit in C++ isn't an in-depth guide to C++ but rather an introduction to creating special effects on your PC using C++, mathematics, and VRML. The author, Tim Wittenburg, assumes that you already know C++ very well but aren't well-acquainted with graphics technology. The book starts off with a discussion of CGI, or computer graphics imagery, the generalized term for computer graphics. Wittenburg provides a high-level discussion of sophisticated graphics that includes descriptions of the work behind many TV commercials and movies. He explains the production of a Halloween episode of the TV show The Simpsons in which Bart and Homer appeared in another and decidedly 3D dimension. He also shows how studios produce animations using a maquette, or puppet, of the human figure using 3D modeling software and then converting the digitizations into a video. These pages provide an interesting glimpse into studio production of visual effects, a world that many of us only see as a final and somewhat mysterious product. Wittenburg then teaches you how to produce equally stunning effects on your PC. To step through the projects in the book, you must create your project files in Image Compositing Toolkit (ICT), a 32-bit, extensible software application written in C++, which is on the CD included with the book. ICT lets you create images combining several individual ones. Wittenburg discusses the technology behind creating composite images, explaining alpha-blending, alpha-channels, Z-buffering, and color adjustment. Then he explains how to design animations, use texture-mapping procedures, and create blue-screen and 2D and 3D morphing effects in C++ and ICT. Finally, he provides an introduction to VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language). Appendices, which comprise almost a third of the book, include a mathematics reference, a guide to using ICT and its class libraries, C++ source code (also on the included CD), and a glossary.
|
|
|
|
