Product Description
The computer-generated image (CGI) is one of the most astounding developments in the rapidly evolving field of digital technology. It allows for the creation of make-believe worlds and characters that are so realistic they fool the eye and the mind. Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, and feature-length 3D animations like Toy Story and Ice Age-films that have left audiences speechless, forever altering our expectations of what a movie can represent-owe their distinctive details, or even their entire creation, to computer-generated imaging. This spectacularly illustrated volume is the first book to consider CGI, from big-screen effects to full-length animated films, from games to fine art, as the art form of the 21st century.

Focusing on 3D art only, the most exciting area of the field, the book features CGI's leading creators in film, television, games, and fine art, showcasing approximately 250 examples of their astonishing work in glorious reproductions. Author Peter Weishar, a professor and computer artist who is at the forefront of the field, brings both technical and aesthetic viewpoints to bear in this groundbreaking celebration of a major new art form.AUTHOR BIO: Peter Weishar is professor and dean of the School of Film and Digital Media, Savannah College of Art and Design. He is also an accomplished computer artist and animator and author of Abrams' Blue Sky: The Art of Computer Animation. Phil Tippett is a movie director and a visual effects supervisor who specializes in creature design and character animation. He has earned two Oscars and two Emmys. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Just a fine book
This isn't deep-covering book and sometimes I even felt that more info could be. It's minuses from my point of view is that it very rarely mentions software used in production of images and 3D stuff(Maya and Photoshop mentioned). I myself know around what kind of software things are going commonly but many 3D beginners who could look for inspiration of this book may suffer. Yet still - it is good book, nice choice of pictures and one thing also must be mentioned - Weishar himself mentions in the book that he even didn't intended to make best of best and that is not he claims his book is! Carefulreading is a good point
Still, those who seek the book with good quality pictures - this is good choice.

Only pictures
I thought that I would find at least little texts about the work done in each film or picture, but the books only shows images and more images from famous animation films and other films that used CGI. If you'd like to see many photos then buy it, otherwise choose a book with more things to say.

CGI - The Future is Now
Peter Weishar's latest work is a masterful and comprehensive discourse on the current state of 3d animation. This revolutionary art form has already established itself as a fundamental tool of the film industry, and its potential is scarcely imaginable.Prof. Weishar's writing is accessible to the lay person with accompanying wonderful images.A great addition to the coffee table! ... Read more

Product Description
Composed, found, changed, modified, alternated computer-programmed images.This album is dedicated to University Professor Salah Osman from Alexandria, Egypt.Five sections compose this avant-garde album of experimental electronic art:Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Radio Diagrams, TV Show, Electrical Circuits, and Marine Fauna. ... Read more

Product Description
This work features the world's most tantalizing virtual women, created by the world's most talented computer graphics whizzes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Simply Awful
The thing that occurred to me while perusing the digital beauties in this book was that 90% of the "artists" paid to be included.With the exception of 3 or 4 of them, they don't even measure up to talented amateurs.There is one guy that is embarassingly bad.I won't mention names.

If you want the cream of this crop, screen capture the book cover and let the rest go.Don't waste your money... I'm sorry I had to give it a star at all.

Picture Book
A book of digitaly created female pictures and the artists who created them.

Some brilliant work, but mostly disappointing
I purchased the book hoping to use it as a reference for my freelance pursuits in 3D human modeling and texturing. Some of the artwork offers stunningly realistic renders, and others close-up insights on modeling techniques. Examples are those by Robichaud, Dean, Koch, Stahlberg, and several Japanese artists.

However, I was disappointed to find that most works were created by the consumer-level Poser software, for which pre-made 3D models are readily available and simply need to be "posed"; there is no original creation of 3D models on the artist's part. Moreover, the Poser works in Digital Beauties rudely show the mediocre rendering capabilities of the software - the models are often defined by jagged edges. In short, the best works in the book are those with original modeling and attention to detail, not those primarily intended provide erotic gratification for the viewer.

The book itself was well-conceived and attractively designed. It could be condensed and even more appealing by excluding the less-than-professional artwork.

Pictorial collection of the most beautiful female 3d models.
Top artists of the globe bring you the best in 3d female character creation. A must-have!

Digital Beauties
If you are interested in the cutting edge of computer graphics this book is for you.It is full of images created using computer graphic programs.There are so many wonderful images to look at and study for the technique...a wonderful collection of digital art from around the world.... ... Read more

Product Description

The reproduction of nature via computer has fascinated scientists in computer graphics and artists, ever since synthetic imaging was thought to be possible. This book illustrates and exemplifies methods for the creation of artificial plant models, and the application of these methods within areas such as simulation, virtual reality, botany, landscaping, and architecture. The models are combined to create gardens, parks, and even entire landscapes. The range of creating representational forms reaches from deceptively authentic looking pictures to abstract presentations. In addition, with similar methods organic objects can be produced, changed, and animated.

Customer Reviews (2)

The first good review of this subject
This book is structured very much like a research paper with a review of alternative biological tree modelling methods before presenting the image based algorithm of their own.

The quality of the images they present are unquestionably impressive. They also readily admit the technique is not based on any botanical understanding of tree growth processes.

If you are looking for a book about solutions to the problem of procedurally modelling botanical trees then this book is exactly what you would wish for. If you do not wish to pursue the ideas the authors themselves present there are other techniques that are worthy of attention.

beautiful and strange plants
Remember when fractals were firstly applied in computer graphics? To randomly generate realistic looking landscapes and clouds. A lot has happened since, in our understanding of the possible uses. This text is an example. It deals with the generation of realistic [or even totally imaginary] plants. Of course, not all the methods here involve fractals. But those were the ones that caught my eye, and seemed to make the most realistic images.

Amongst related methods to fractals covered here is that of iterated function systems. This has been heavily espoused elsewhere by Michael Barnsley, in his book of that name. In that book, IFS were used more for backgrounds and abstract images. Deussen takes the IFS and shows how it, on top of fractals, can give rise to beautiful and strange plants.

Quite aside from the maths of the book, you can readily appreciate it for the wonderful esthetic imagery. ... Read more

Product Description
Laser Beam Mode Selection by Computer Generated Holograms brings attention to a new class of optical elements called modans, with applications in laser and fiber optics. Separation of the transverse modes by modans is discussed in close analogy to well-known effects of color separation by diffraction gratings. The book describes the basic questions of digital holography in the recording of complex wavefronts on phase-only media, binary coding cells, multilevel computer-generated holograms, quantization and sampling, image reconstruction, and computer generation of multifocal and multibeam holograms. This collective effort summarizes 12 years of scientific activities in the development of diffractive optical elements and provides considerable material never before published. An interesting appendix dedicates itself to mathematical proof of optimal properties of orthogonal base-functions and eigenfunctions. ... Read more

Product Description
Three-dimensional synthetic reincarnations of Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart were created by the authors of this book for their award-winning feature film "Rendez-vous à Montréal". The advanced computer animation techniques developed for the film are fully described in this book. They form a technological breakthrough that can be used to produce scenes featuring any celebrity in any situation. This opens new vistas in motion pictures, television and advertizing. The book explains in detail with numerous drawings and color pictures how such films are produced. The following topics are presented: - Preparation of object construction: documentation search, plaster models preparation - Object construction, digitizing, modeling - Body animation: walk - Hand animation and object grasping - Facial animation: expressions, phonemes and emotions - Choreography: decors, actors, cameras, lights - Realism: colors, lights, shading, shadows, textures - Image recording: special effects. ... Read more

Product Description
Computer Generated Physical Properties offers the environmental scientist a basis to predict the properties of molecules and reengineer them to remove those properties that are harmful to the environment. This technology is currently used in other fields and is now becoming popular in the environmental engineering field because of its pollution prevention and waste reduction capabilities.This book, interdisciplinary in scope, treats the physical properties of matter as generated by computers. It covers a wide variety of topics pointing towards synthesizing new molecules to substitute for reactants, intermediaries, and products in industrial processes with better physical and environmental properties than the original. The author achieves this with a spreadsheet program called SYNPROPS that operates on a PC computer with optimization features. A radar type graph - one for each property - visually sorts the various groups in order of their contribution to the property, creating the necessity for a computer to obtain answers for the structure of the optimum molecules for substitution or synthesis.The author discusses applications to biologically active molecules without side effects, including antineoplatic drugs. Additionally, he demonstrates model compounds and the applications of SYNPROPS' optimization and substitution. This book has everything you need to know about deriving properties and combinational chemistry from molecular structure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent Index
This book has the best index I've ever seen. The index alone is worth the price of the book. I could spend hours going over all those entries. Fabulous. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Outdated and some of the formulas used are not given
Published in 1975, this collection of computer-generated images is somewhat obsolete. The author created a program called PICTURE, which drew grid diagrams of many different shapes. Unfortunately, for many of the figures, the author did not give the formula used to create it. It would have been much better had he done so. For this reason, the book has not worn well over the years. The PICTURE program is also very obsolete, because now symbolic mathematical packages such as Mathematica or Maple can easily draw similar figures in a matter of seconds. Had the formulas been given for the figures, it would be easy to create and modify them to suit what you may want to draw. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Book Review
This book is wonderful and is the best resource book for Cinematic job information that I've seen yet.It is a must have!!

Encyclopedic
As far as I know there are two books on the subject - the other being Eric Taub's "Gaffers, Grips and Best Boys". From those two Hines' book is the more encyclopedic one. It is well structured into chapters preceeded by organigrams showing the job dependencies. All jobs featured - although it's the more complete approach of both books, don't expect the book to contain every movie job - are precisely described with pre-, production and post-production duties. If you need 'technical' and concise information, buy this book.

Great book for any filmmaker
This is a great book for anyone who has ever wondered what each person in the credits does.This edition is far more comprehensive than others (including associate producer, line producer etc.).It could be a little more comprehensive and better organized if the headers were easier to read and each new job started on a new page.However, I'm an independent filmmaker and it's a valuable resource to have. ... Read more

Product Description
The growing use of the computer in architectural and interior design has changed many work habits and procedures in the design office. The electronic revolution has opened the door to exciting options that were simply not possible before. One of these options is the almost infinite number of ways to study a proposed design in three-dimensional perspective views. Perspective Grid Sourcebook now offers architects, interior designers, and graphic designers hundreds of state-of-the-art computer-generated grids for plotting perspective and projection illustrations. This practical working tool contains several hundred small scale, exterior and interior, and nearly one hundred large scale perspective girds, including ground, eye-level, and aerial views, from a wide variety of viewing angles and distances. The volume also provides a helpful visual index that easily guides the user to the desired point of view. Created by an architect for designers as an aid in preparing perspective drawing, designs and presentation illustrations, Perspective Grid Sourcebook is the only collection of grids currently available in book form. This unique reference will enable design professionals to visualize designs quickly and to study them from a multitude of viewpoints. ... Read more

Product Description
Digital Cinematography presents computer animators with the tools and techniques at their disposal to give their animation the look and feel of a real Hollywood movie. Starting with the basics of lighting, camera movement, and genre, the book teaches how to effectively create interior and exterior lighting, how to light characters to invoke a mood or theme, and even how to create special effects. For animators who would like to create 3D computer games, this book illustrates how to light scenes effectively as well as how to cover up modeling and texturing mistakes. This book is an invaluable guide to the cinematic art of computer animation.

Key Features
* Exercises and examples focus on the implementation of 3D, and the functionality of specific graphic tools such as omnidirectional lights, depth of fields, and image processing
* Historical reference of films photographed in the style of the tutorial, as well as images of both the process and the final result
* Cinematic styles covered include film noir, naturalism, expressionism, comedy, and cartoon
* Cinematic principles covered include key light, fill light, back light, set light, single source lighting, contrast, projection and gobos, camera lenses, color usage, composition and leading lines
* Multi-platform CD-ROM provides hands-on project files for each of the tutorials, enabling the reader to explore virtually all of the book's contents in 3DAmazon.com Review
Digital Cinematography is a novice's guide to the artof filmmaking. Author Ben de Leeuw teaches you how to apply thetechniques of traditional cinematography to the digital world. Heprovides an introduction to lighting tools and to cameras and varioustypes of lenses, and then delves into explaining how to work withinterior and exterior lighting, characters, motion, and color. Thereare a few suggested exercises, such as changing the height of thecamera, animating lights, combining soft light and hard light, andworking with subtle and dramatic colors. The author also includesdefinitions of filmmaking jargon. The book isn't platform- orsoftware-specific. A hybrid CD-ROM includes sample digital animationvideo sequences used in the book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Avoid.
I've recently evaluated several better books on this topic, and this one didn't make it into my spring term reading list.The book did little beyond skimming the basics of what can be found in any cinematography textbook, and had nothing new to say about 3D rendering or graphics production.Even the author's own sample images were crude and poorly lit.

For a much better choice, consider getting "Digital Lighting & Rendering" by Jeremy Birn.Birn's new book is an amazing resource for any 3D artist, and I reviewed it on amazon with 5 stars.

Alternately, you might just pick up a first-rate book on lighting for cinematography, such as "The Technique of Lighting for Television and Film" by Gerald Millerson or "Matters of Light & Depth" by Ross Lowell (although these cimematography books don't cover any techniques that are unique to digital graphics production.)

//:practical//logikal//clear explanations//crazycool!!
//:practical//logikal//clear explanations//crazycool!

Promising Title, Very Disappointing Book
"Digital Cinematography" is a hot-sounding, promising title.It's a shame that title was wasted on this book.

We are all eager to see a good book on cinematic lighting and texturing techniques, so buying this failed attempt was a great disappointment.Crude, childish 3D renderings were shown, with no subtlety of lighting, certainly no evidence of "cinematic" techniques.The cheap black-and-white printing of the author's own beginner-level 3D work, and vague writing that seemed to do little more than rehash highlights from an old cinematography textbook, do not deliver a book that lives up to its description.

The author doesn't seem to have a lot of artistic talent, or professional graphics production experience, and these deficits show in his writing and illustrations.

Despite being the first product cranked out last year that promised to explain cinematic graphics techniques, the book itself is a cheap, incomplete, and uninformative attempt! .The author may be making money because of the title, but when you open the book, he doesn't seem to have much to say.

Maybe not the best, but has some basics...
After finishing the book, I have to downgrade my rating.Like others, I agree the title is promising, but the content is not "top."And I also agree with two other readers about the fact that all those basics can be found in any good cinematography book.As for the digital part, now we have other books that deal with the subject better (see Digital Lighting, J. Birn).

useful for all users of 3D graphics program
This is a highly practical book outlining the use of lights in 3D graphics software. The ideas and applications are independent of any particular package. The explanations are lucid, and the ideas can be put to immediate use. The black-and-white illustrations are poorly reproduced, so the real appreciation comes from applying the techniques to your own images. ... Read more

Product Description

While improvements in computer performance are dramatically changing the computer-generated art industry, scientists in natural computing have teamed up with artists to examine how bioinspired systems can influence art, technology and even aesthetic appreciation.

This comprehensive book gives an up-to-date survey of the relevant bioinspired computing research fields – such as evolutionary computation, artificial life, swarm intelligence and ant colony algorithms – and examines applications in art, music and design. The editors and contributors are researchers and artists with deep experience of the related science, tools and applications, and the book includes overviews of historical developments and future perspectives.

The book will be of interest to computer scientists and artists engaged with natural computing techniques applied to art, music and design. The accompanying DVD contains image, video and music samples, as well as source code and demonstrations, providing a good starting point for beginners. The book is supported with a dedicated website.

Product Description
Graphic designers, illustrators, artists, and printers in increasing numbers are turning to the creative possibilities of computer technology. Now there is a comprehensive reference guide specifically created to help these professionals keep pace with the rising demand for full-color, computer-generated graphics and illustrations. Full color throughout. ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture (a bitmap or raster image), or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974. A texture map is applied (mapped) to the surface of a shape or polygon. This process is akin to applying patterned paper to a plain white box. Multitexturing is the use of more than one texture at a time on a polygon. For instance, a light map texture may be used to light a surface as an alternative to recalculating that lighting every time the surface is rendered. Another multitexture technique is bump mapping, which allows a texture to directly control the facing direction of a surface for the purposes of its lighting calculations; it can give a very good appearance of a complex surface, such as tree bark or rough concrete, that takes on lighting detail in addition to the usual detailed coloring. ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A stunt is an unusual and difficult physical feat, or any act requiring a special skill, performed for artistic purposes in TV, theatre, or cinema. Stunts are a big part of many action movies.Before computer generated imagery special effects, these effects were limited to the use of models, false perspective and other in-camera effects, unless the creator could find someone willing to jump from car to car or hang from the edge of a skyscraper: the stunt performer. One of the most-frequently used practical stunts is stage combat. Although contact is normally avoided, many elements of stage combat, such as sword fighting, martial arts, and acrobatics required contact between performers in order to facilitate the creation of a particular effect, such as noise or physical interaction. ... Read more