Mummy's The Word
Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues create an animated terra-cotta emperor and other creatures for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Labor of Love
Meats Meier's holographic the "Animation Mother" commissioned as the face of SIGGRAPH 2008.

Unleashing the Artificial Horde
AI-driven simulation finds a new home in architecture.

Arts and Sciences
CG artists resurrect species that have long been extinct.

PDF | 8.8 MB

Feature: Create your own portfolio
Be proud of your work and show it off in style.

Paint like Seurat
Perfect the art of Pointilism and create beautiful artwork like the master himself.

Create a 3D scene
Make your work appear to swim off the page with this 3D underwater tutorial.

Using the Vanishing Point
Check out how CS3 tools can help you create a realistic DVD sleeve.

Swinging Sixties
Take a step back in time to recreate an authentic-looking psychedelic poster.

Cosmetic surgery school
Take image editing to a whole new level with these Hollywood-style fixes.

Make your own gift box
Get creative and design your own bespoke packaging.

PDF | 11.3 MB

Feature: Weather workshop
Learn how to control the weather using Photoshop.

Portrait perfection
Fine-tune your airbrushing skills and produce stunning painted portraits.

Focus on: Curves
Learn how to use the Curves function to your best advantage.

The Big Technique: Visual impact
Refine your eye for an image using our four-page guide to creating impact.

Learn about Smart Filters
Discover how CS3's new Smart Filter tool can work for you.

Focus on: Sharpening
Find out which sharpening techniques will improve your photographs.

PDF | 9.1 MB

Feature: 30 top photo fixes
Become an image-editing pro with these fabulous top tips.

Chinese painting
Learn artistic techniques of the Orient and produce a stunning mural.

Depth of field
Fake this photographic technique with nothing but Photoshop.

Warhol screen print
Create your own colour explosion with this Pop Art replica.

The Big Technique: Adjustment layers
Discover what you're missing with this multi-functional Photoshop tool.

Focus on: Chrome filter
Learn how to use the Curves function to your best advantage.

PDF | 8.4 MB

Author: Jonathan A. Zdziarski

Publisher: O'Reilly

Date: March 2008

Pages: 280

Description:

Certain technologies bring out everyone's hidden geek, and the iPhone did so instantly upon its release. Thousands of programmers want to provide applications on the iPhone, and this book shows you how to achieve the spectacular effects that made the device an immediate hit. You'll learn how to use an open, community-developed toolkit that has been widely downloaded and used. Author Jonathan Zdziarski, the developer of the first fully functional application using the open iPhone toolkit, now explains in clear language how to create applications using Objective-C and the iPhone API, which in some ways resembles Apple's desktop API and in some ways strikes new ground.

iPhone Open Application Development covers:

* Installation of the toolkits
* Background on the operating system and Objective-C
* Detailed recipes and working examples for everyone's favorite iPhone feature
* Graphics and audio programming
* The CoreImage and CoreSurfaces interfaces for games programming
* Interfacing with iTunes
* The use of sensors

Any programmer, using this book, can provide applications that impress users just as much as the official iPhone utilities.

CHM | 1.3 MB

PDF | English | 978 pages | 45.5 MB

Everything you need to create secure, reliable and easy-to-use web services using Apache Axis2. Packed with real-life examples, you will learn how to
work with Axis2 in a fast and practical way. You will learn to build SOAP and REST web services and APIs for your web applications.

In Detail:
Axis2 is an enterprise-ready web service engine that is very user friendly and provides web service interactions with a dynamic and flexible execution framework.
Apache Axis2 is a core engine for web services with two implementations: Apache Axis2/Java and Apache Axis2/C. It is a complete redesign and rewrite of the widely used Apache Axis SOAP stack that builds on the lessons learned from the Apache Axis implementation of the SOAP submission to W3C. Apache Axis2 not only supports SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2, but also has integrated support for the widely popular REST-style of web services. The same business logic implementation can offer both a WS-* style interface and a REST/POX style interface simultaneously.
Apache Axis2 is more efficient, more modular, more scalable, and more XML-oriented than the older version. It is carefully designed to support the easy addition of plug-in modules that extend its functionality for features such as security and reliability. Apache Axis2 is built on Apache AXIOM, a new high performance, pull-based XML object model. This book will take you through the basics of web services and Axis2 to the details of Axis2’s architecture.

Author: Christian Gross

Publisher: Apress

Date: February 2008

Pages: 472

Description:

This book is for anyone who wants to write good Visual Basic 2008 code -- even if you have never programmed before.

Writing good code can be a challenge, there are so many options, especially in a language like Visual Basic. If you want to really get the best from a programming language you need to know which features work best in which situations and understand their strengths and weaknesses. It is this understanding that makes the difference between coding and coding well.

Beginning VB 2008 has been written to teach you how to use the Visual Basic programming language to solve problems. From the earliest chapters, and from the first introductory concepts, you'll be looking at real-world programming challenges and learning how Visual Basic can be used to overcome them. As you progress through the book the problems become more involved and interesting while the solutions become correspondingly more complex and powerful as Visual Basic features interact to achieve the results that you want.

By the time you've finished reading this book and worked through the sample exercises, you'll be a confident and very competent Visual Basic programmer. You will still have many explorations of the .NET Framework API to look forward to in your future career, but you will have a firm foundation to build from and you will know exactly where to go to find the things that you need to progress confidently in your projects.

PDF | 7.9 MB

Prepare yourself for the ultimate test of your brain power!
We’re devised over 500 IQ puzzles to stretch your logical and lateral thinking abilities to the limit.
This book has been meticulously compiled from some of the most devious puzzles you’ve seen. Some will require keen mathematical skill, others an ability to recognise abstract patterns, but all our puzzles are supremely logical and can be solved with the right approach.
If you have a sharp mind, some of the answers to these puzzles will jump straight out of the page at you. However, others will require a bit more thought. Try not to rush for an answer straight away – have faith in your abilities and all will become clear – and don’t feel tempted to have a peek at the answer page too soon. If you feel completely stumped by one particular puzzle, then move on and come back to it later – coming up with the solution to a later puzzle just might give you the inspiration you need!

But the idea of this book is not about right and wrong answers, it’s about exercising your mind and flexing your mental muscles. With the right approach, you too can discover your IQ potential.

The large variety of puzzles here are designed to test your powers of lateral thinking and problem solving to the max! You’ll have to be able to recognize patterns and sequences, spot similarities and differences and even pick your way through our convoluted mindbenders.

The solutions to all the puzzles in this book are staring you right in the face – you just have to be looking at them in the right way!
So sit back, relax your body and let your brain take the strain – it’s all a matter of logic.