JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide provides a thorough description of the core JavaScript language and both the legacy and standard DOMs implemented in web browsers. The book includes sophisticated examples that show you how to handle common tasks, like validating form data, working with cookies, and creating portable DHTML animations. The book also contains detailed reference sections that cover the core JavaScript API, the legacy client-side API, and the W3C standard DOM API, documenting every JavaScript object, method, property, constructor, constant, function, and event handler in those APIs.
It is particularly useful for developers working with the latest standards-compliant web browsers, like Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 6, and Mozilla. HTML authors can learn how to use JavaScript to build dynamic web pages. Experienced programmers can quickly find the information they need to start writing sophisticated JavaScript programs. This book is an indispensable reference for all JavaScript programmers, regardless of experience level.
Basic Physics : A Self-Teaching Guide by Karl F. Kuhn
Here is the most practical, complete, and easy-to-use guide available for understanding physics and the physical world. Even if you don't consider yourself a "science" person, this book helps make learning key concepts a pleasure, not a chore. Whether you need help in a course, want to review the basics for an exam, or simply have always been curious about such physical phenomena as energy, sound, electricity, light, and color, you've come to the right place!
This fully up-to-date edition of Basic Physics:
Has been tested, rewritten, and retested to ensure that you can teach yourself all about physics
Requires no math—mathematical treatments and applications are included in optional sections so that you can choose either a mathematical or nonmathematical approach
Lets you work at your own pace with a helpful question-and-answer format
Lists objectives for each chapter—you can skip ahead or find extra help if you need it
Reinforces what you learn with end-of-chapter self-tests
XML in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition by Elliotte Rusty Harold, W. Scott Means
This powerful new edition provides developers with a comprehensive guide to the rapidly evolving XML space. Serious users of XML will find topics on just about everything they need, from fundamental syntax rules, to details of DTD and XML Schema creation, to XSLT transformations, to APIs used for processing XML documents. Simply put, this is the only reference of its kind among XML books.
Quick-reference chapters also detail syntax rules and usage examples for the core XML technologies, including XML, DTDs, Xpath, XSLT, SAX, and DOM. If you need explanation of how a technology works, or just need to quickly find the precise syntax for a particular piece, this up-to-date edition is ready with the information.
XML in a Nutshell is an essential guide for developers who need to create XML-based file formats and data structures for use in XML documents. This is one book you'll want to close at hand as you delve into XML.
Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL by Hugh E. Williams, David Lane
PHP and MySQL go hand in hand; the former has been carefully adapted, through the efforts of the open-source community, to the latter. For situations that require dynamic content but don't merit the complexity and development time of Java or .NET enterprise applications, the PHP language and the MySQL database server fit the bill perfectly. That's the point Hugh Williams and David Lane make in Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, which combines language tutorials with application design advice to yield a comprehensive picture of its subjects at a reasonable price. Williams and Lane--both Australian academics who use an online wine store in many of their examples--deserve tremendous kudos for their way of presenting recommended coding strategies. Though the code listings themselves aren't remarkably well commented, the authors do a commendable job of explaining in prose what the code is up to.
Adobe Photoshop CS Classroom in a Book by Adobe Creative Team
Photoshop is one of those programs that's so cool you just want to dive right in and start creating--but by plunging in head-first, without any guidance, you're likely to miss a lot. There's a solution: With this book, you learn by doing, getting your feet wet immediately as you progress through a series of hands-on projects that build on your growing Photoshop knowledge. Simple step-by-step instructions, review questions at the end of each chapter, and a companion CD with all of the book's project files make learning a breeze as the Adobe Creative Team takes you on a self-paced tour of the image-editing powerhouse. Completely revised to cover all of Photoshop CS's new features (including a new file browser, nonsquare pixel support, Layer comps for creating design variations, and more), the book starts with an introductory tour of the software and then progresses on through lessons on everything from Photoshop's interface to more complex topics like color management, Web graphics, and photo retouching.
Poser 4 Pro Pack f/x and Design takes readers deep inside one of the hottest programs for humanoid figure animation. The insider tips and tricks are revealed! This book takes the reader from using the controls to pose their characters and modify animations down to the knuckles on the model's fingers; as well as, exporting models, prop animation, and creation of banner ads. The book features special Python scripting techniques so that designers can specify advanced joint parameters to gravity effects used in animations including making hair appear to be blowing in the wind and other gravitational effects of clothing and props. A CD-ROM is also included containing original models, animation files, special Python Scripts, and trial versions of Poser and other programs which work in conjunction with this must have character animation program.
Maya 4.5 Fundamentals by Jim Lammers, Lee Gooding
Whether you are new to the 3D environment or are porting your skills from a different 3D graphics program, if you are a hands-on learner, Maya 4.5 Fundamentals is the book for you. In this revision of the bestselling Maya 4 Fundamentals, authors Jim Lammers and Lee Gooding get you started with a straightforward conceptual framework, then launch into a series of well-developed tutorials designed to move you from being a rank beginner to a confident Maya user.
Maya 4.5 Fundamentals includes:
In-depth coverage of how to use Maya 4.5 Complete's tool set
New chapter on character animation and updated chapters including coverage of smooth proxy
Professional training through well-constructed tutorials
14 hours of movie files (on the CD), providing step-by-step demonstrations of every tutorial
Exploration of such topics as lighting, materials, particles dynamics, character animation, smooth proxy, rendering, and using paint effects
Custom marking menus and hotkeys to enhance your efficiency
Digital Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn
Digital Lighting contains strategies for lighting design that are relevant to any digital artist. It presents an awareness of computer lighting models, how they differ from real-world lighting effects, and how to approach 3D lighting projects differently from practical light. Topics covered include: What good lighting can do for you; Light sources; Shading; Shadows; Exposure and content; Color: temperature, correction, mood; Qualities of light; 3-point lighting; Indirect illumination; Multipass rendering and compositing; Lighting in production; and Case studies: natural lighting, interior lighting, character lighting, and effects lighting.
Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers
This book takes you outside the studio and walks you through the museum of life. This full color book combines traditional texture creation principles with digital texturing techniques to enhance your scenes and animations. In the first half of the book, you will learn about the history of textures in fine art and in the second half, how to apply these principles to your 2D and 3D digital scenes.
Understanding Virtual Reality: Interface, Application, and Design by William R. Sherman, Alan B. Craig
Understanding Virtual Reality arrives at a time when the technologies behind virtual reality have advanced to the point that it is possible to develop and deploy meaningful, productive virtual reality applications. The aim of this thorough, accessible exploration is to help you take advantage of this moment, equipping you with the understanding needed to identify and prepare for ways VR can be used in your field, whatever your field may be.
By approaching VR as a communications medium, the authors have created a resource that will remain relevant even as the underlying technologies evolve. You get a history of VR, along with a good look at systems currently in use. However, the focus remains squarely on the application of VR and the many issues that arise in the application design and implementation, including hardware requirements, system integration, interaction techniques, and usability. This book also counters both exaggerated claims for VR and the view that would reduce it to entertainment, citing dozens of real-world examples from many different fields and presenting (in a series of appendices) four in-depth application case studies.
Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard Bartle
Designing Virtual Worlds is the most comprehensive treatment of virtual worlddesign to-date from one of the true pioneers and most sought-after design consultants. It's a tour de force of VW design, stunning in intellectual scope, spanning the literary,economic, sociological, psychological, physical, technological, and ethicalunderpinnings of design, while providing the reader with a deep, well-grounded understanding of VW design principles. It covers everything from MUDs to MOOs to MMORPGs, from text-based to graphical VWs.
Designing Virtual Worlds brings a rich, well-developed approach to the design concepts behind virtual worlds. It is grounded in the earliest approaches to such designs, but the examples discussed in the book run the gamut from the earliest MUDs to the present-day MMORPG games mentioned above. It teaches the reader the actual, underlying design principles that many designers do not understand when they borrow or build from previous games. There is no other design book on the market in the area of online games and virtual worlds that provides the rich detail, historical context, and conceptual depth ofDesigning Virtual Worlds.
Collaborative Virtual Environments by Elizabeth F. Churchill, David N. Snowdon, Alan J. Munro
This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the field of collaborative virtual environments (CVE). Coverage provides answers to the following questions:
what is a CVE?
what are the issues in the design of embodiments and objects within CVEs?
how can CVEs support collocated and non-collocated collaborative and cooperative work?
how can CVEs support seamless interactions given differential computational resources?
what design issues arise from the meeting of social requirements and computational limitations?
what technical challenges face the designers of CVE systems?
It will be invaluable reading for anyone with an interest in collaboration but will be of particular interest to researchers and students in areas related to computer supported cooperative and collaborative work and human computer interaction.
Virtual Archaeology by Maurizio Forte
Cyberculture meets ancient culture in Forte and Siliotti's "atlas of archaeological models." Using computer reconstructions of many of the world's most fascinating archaeological sites, the editors show us just how much cybertechnology adds to our understanding of lost worlds. They document how, as sites are unearthed, measured, and documented, the discoveries find their way into cybernetic models that both sharpen scholars' understanding of the discoveries and allow scholars to further explore these worlds. The process of constructing digital models forces archaeologists to systematically ask questions about what the lighting would have been like in a particular room or what a building's original texture and color would have been. The resulting models may go so far as to allow scholars to walk the virtual roadways and hallways of ancient cities, seeing them very similarly to how they would have appeared to their inhabitants. As new data arises, archaeologists can alter the models accordingly.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison--a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.
In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about Infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous...you'll recognize it immediately.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same.
Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price....
Simulations: 15 Tales of Virtual Reality by Karie Jacobson (Editor)
Anthology of 15 stories, including two originals, with virtual reality technology in them, plus an introduction on virtual reality.
The Veldt [The World the Children Made] - Ray Bradbury
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank - John Varley
Walking the Moons - Jonathan Lethem
Virtual Reality - Michael Kandel
Dogfight - Michael Swanwick & William Gibson
The Shining Dream Road Out - M. Shayne Bell
The Total Perspective Vortex [from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe] - Douglas Adams
Plug-in Yosemite [from Dad's Nuke] - Marc Laidlaw
This Life and Later Ones - George Zebrowski
Steelcollar Worker - Vonda McIntyre
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon [Frozen Journey] - Philip K. Dick
