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Blender is the graphics software of choice for designers and media professionals alike. This book will teach you how to utilize the power of the Blender 2.7 series to create a wide variety of materials, textures, and effects with the Cycles rendering engine. You will learn about node-based shader creation, and master cycles through step-by-step, recipe-based advice. With this book, you will start small by rendering the textures of stones and water, then scale things up to massive landscapes of mountains and oceans. You will then learn how to create the look of different artificial materials such as plastic, carpenter wood, and metal, and utilize volumetric shaders to create the effects of smoke, clouds, and subsurface scattering effects of skin. You will also learn how illumination works in Cycles, improvising the quality of the final render, and how to avoid the presence of noise and fireflies. By the end, you will know how to create an impressive library of realistic-looking materials and textures.

In Detail SketchUp is an amazing and remarkably powerful 3D modeling software used by millions of architects, visualizers, and drafters across the globe. It allows you to create animated 3D drawings and photorealistic renderings that approximate real-life objects easily. This book is the perfect introduction to SketchUp 2014. It will help you to get started quickly and efficiently to produce and present commercial quality photorealistic or artistic outputs of your designs. It will teach you how to plan and set up the content of your scenes, use SketchUp and professional rendering software to produce stunning visuals and animations, and how to add an artistic touch to your images. Approach Beginning with a quick start tutorial which will get you up and running with SketchUp 2014 quickly, you will move on to learning the key skills you will need to wow your clients with stunning visualizations through a series practical steps, tips and tricks. Who this book is for If you are a SketchUp user, from an amateur right through to an architectural technician, professional architect, or designer, this is the book for you. This book is also suitable as a companion to any architectural design or multimedia course, and is accessible to anyone who has learned the basics of SketchUp.

Using the Audacity software as the starting off point, we discuss what the software is, what it can do, how you can use it, and where you go to get started installing it. All of this information is grounded in some basic audio editing terminology and background for those that aren't so technology inclined. Then we'll start digging into a sample project! You'll learn about how to set up a project, create a voice track, record an interview with Skype, and basic audio editing techniques. All of this done in an easy to follow, task based approach with lots of examples. Here, we plan to go a step further, we teach how to wrap all of these steps together and create a podcast that can be posted on your own website or blog. There's always more you can do with Audacity! The last portion of the book is dedicated to just that - discussing more advanced editing and mixing techniques, using affects, adding music, adding additional plug-ins to the software. All still incorporating examples and easy to follow tasks you can try on your own audio projects.

Moodle is the leading open source e-learning management system. Using Moodle, teachers and professors can easily construct richly-textured web-based courses. A course can consist of a number of lessons, with each lesson including reading materials; activities such as quizzes, tests, surveys, and projects; and social elements that encourage interaction and group work between students. Packed with clear step-by-step instructions, plenty of screenshots, and thorough explanations, this book guides you through the many features and options that you have to choose from when using Moodle 2.8. Throughout this book, you will follow an example course that will help you to explore the sort of decisions, design considerations, and thought processes that goes into developing a successful course. This book will show you how to use every feature of Moodle to meet your course goals. Moodle is relatively easy to install and use, but the real challenge is to develop a learning process that leverages its power and maps effectively onto the content-established learning situation. This book guides you through meeting that challenge.

The ultimate power-packed crash course in building Arduino-based projects in just 10 days! About This Book • A carefully designed 10-day crash course, covering major project/device types, with 20+ unique hands-on examples • Get easy-to-understand explanations of basic electronics fundamentals and commonly used C sketch functions • This step-by-step guide with 90+ diagrams and 50+ important tips will help you become completely self-reliant and confident Who This Book Is For This book is a beginner's crash course for professionals, hobbyists, and students who are tech savvy, have a basic level of C programming knowledge, and basic familiarity with electronics, be it for embedded systems or the Internet of Things. What You Will Learn • Write Arduino sketches and understand the fundamentals of building prototype circuits using basic electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, and diodes • Build simple, compound, and standalone devices with auxiliary storage (SD card), a DC battery, and AC power supplies • Deal with basic sensors and interface sensor modules by using sensor datasheets • Discover the fundamental techniques of prototyping with actuators • Build remote-controlled devices with infrared (IR), radio frequency (RF), and telephony with GSM • Learn IoT edge device prototyping (using ESP8266) and IoT cloud configuration In Detail This book is a quick, 10-day crash course that will help you become well acquainted with the Arduino platform. The primary focus is to empower you to use the Arduino platform by applying basic fundamental principles. You will be able to apply these principles to build almost any type of physical device. The projects you will work through in this book are self-contained micro-controller projects, interfacing with single peripheral devices (such as sensors), building compound devices (multiple devices in a single setup), prototyping standalone devices (powered from independent power sources), working with actuators (such as DC motors), interfacing with an AC-powered device, wireless devices (with Infrared, Radio Frequency and GSM techniques), and finally implementing the Internet of Things (using the ESP8266 series Wi-Fi chip with an IoT cloud platform). The first half of the book focuses on fundamental techniques and building basic types of device, and the final few chapters will show you how to prototype wireless devices. By the end of this book, you will have become acquainted with the fundamental principles in a pragmatic and scientific manner. You will also be confident enough to take up new device prototyping challenges. Style and approach This step-by- step guide will serve as a quick, 10-day crash course to help you become well acquainted with the Arduino platform.

A quick and comprehensive tutorial book for media designers to jump-start interactive multimedia production with computer graphics, digital audio, digital video, and interactivity, using the Pure Data graphical programming environment.An introductory book on multimedia programming for media artists/designers who like to work on interactivity in their projects, digital art/design students who like to learn the first multimedia programming technique, and audio-visual performers who like to customize their performance sets

About This Book Learn how to interface with and control Arduino using Android devices Discover how you can utilize the combined power of Android and Arduino for your own projects Practical, step-by-step examples to help you

Arduino is an open source electronics prototyping platform for building a multitude of smart devices and gadgets. Developers can benefit from using Arduino in their projects because of the ease of coding, allowing you to build cool and amazing devices supported by numerous hardware resources such as shields in no time at all. Whether you're a seasoned developer or brand new to Arduino, this book will provide you with the knowledge and skill to build amazing smart electronic devices and gadgets. First, you will learn how to build a sound effects generator using recorded audio-wave files you've made or obtained from the Internet. Next, you will build DC motor controllers operated by a web page, a slide switch, or a touch sensor. Finally, the book will explain how to build an electronic operating status display for an FM radio circuit using Arduino.

Every new embedded board that comes into existence gives us the power to access highly technological objects that can be shaped according to our desires and ideas. BeagleBone is one such low power, open source, single-board computer with all the functionality of a basic computer. This book begins with a quick installation of MediaDrop, a versatile media content manager, showing you how to manage your music, video, and podcasts. You will learn how to configure access permissions for your users and select the way you would want them to retrieve your shared media. Next, you'll get to grips with how to use existing ready-to-use modules or video devices in your own projects. As you continue your journey, you will learn how to build your personal media player. Toward the end of the book, you will create an interesting project using BeagleBone, that is, an 8 x 8 LED matrix that will groove to your music. By the end of the book, you will be armed with all the knowledge required to interface and configure all media center components using BeagleBone.