Graphics Zone

Graphics Main

2006-09-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

In this zone, you will find the Ebooks of Graphics & Multimedia Tools and Languages such as 3D Max, Adobe and Maya. This section is purely dedicated towards providing Latest Ebooks on the various aspects of the multimedia development using Dreamweaver and Macromedia Products. Also, Please post your request in Suggestion/Comments/Request Box so that we can post the material requested by you as soon as possible so that this section can serve you in better manner.

3D Max MAYA Adobe MacroMedia DreamWeaver Direct X

3D Max

2006-09-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

3D Max is a full-featured 3D graphics application developed by Autodesk Media & Entertainment. It runs only on the Win32 platform, although a Linux command-line renderer is available. As of August 2006, 3ds Max is in its 9th version generation.

3ds Max is one of the most widely-used off the shelf 3D animation programs. It has strong modeling capabilities, a ubiquitous plugin architecture and a long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is mostly used by video game developers but can also be used for pre-rendered productions such as movies, special effects and architectural presentations.

In addition to its modeling and animation tools, the latest version of 3ds Max also features advanced shaders (such as ambient occlusion and subsurface scattering), dynamical simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, an intuitive and fully-customizable user interface, its own scripting language and much more. There is also a plethora of specialized plugins that can be bought separately, such as Brazil r/s and finalRender.

Earlier versions required a special copy prevention device (a dongle) to be plugged into the parallel port while the program was run. A software copy prevention method was later implemented instead. Registration involving personal information such as name, address and e-mail address is now required.

The original 3D Studio product was created for the DOS platform by the Yost Group and published by Autodesk. Autodesk purchased the product at its second release mark and internalized development entirely over the next two releases. After 3D Studio Release 4, the product was ported to the Windows NT platform, and originally named "3D Studio MAX." This version was also originally created by the Yost Group. It was released by Kinetix, which was at that time Autodesk's division of media and entertainment. Later, the product name was changed to "3ds max" (all lower case) to better comply with the naming conventions of discreet, a Montreal-based software company which Autodesk had purchased.

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Direct X

2006-09-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

DirectX is a collection of APIs for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming, on Microsoft platforms. It is widely used in the development of computer games for Windows, the Xbox and Xbox 360.

Both the DirectX runtime and SDK are available free from Microsoft. The DirectX runtime was originally redistributed by computer game developers along with their games, but later it was included in Windows. Game developers still often include an updated version of DirectX that prompts installation automatically after the game installation to ensure proper program functionality.

The latest release version of DirectX is the August 2006 version of DirectX 9.0c. Direct3D 10 Beta is available as of Windows Vista build 5238.

Originally targeted at the game development industry, DirectX has become more widely used among other software production industries. Most notably, Direct3D is becoming more popular among the engineering sector because of its ability to quickly render high-quality 3D graphics using the latest 3D graphics hardware.

In 1994, Microsoft was just on the verge of releasing its next operating system, Windows 95. The main factor that would determine the value consumers would place on their new operating system very much rested on what programs would be able to run on it. Three Microsoft employees — Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrom — were concerned, because programmers tended to see Microsoft's previous operating system, DOS, as a better platform for game programming, meaning few games would be developed for Windows 95 and the operating system would not be as much of a success.

DOS allowed direct access to video cards, keyboards and mice, sound devices and all other parts of the system, while Windows 95, with its protected memory model, restricted access to all of these, working on a much more standardized model. Microsoft needed a way that would let programmers get what they wanted, and they needed it quickly; the operating system was only months away from being released. Eisler, St. John, and Engstrom conspired together to fix this problem, with a solution that they eventually named DirectX.

DirectX was built upon the concepts of a development system known as "Exodus" developed by Kinesoft Development under the direction of the their Founder, Peter Sills and their Director of Technology, Andrew Glaister. Exodus was first shown to Eric Engstrom early in 1994, thus sparking the concept that games could indeed be developed directly for Microsoft's forthcoming operating system, Windows 95. In fact, the first commercial game to ship using Exodus, was Pitfall for Windows 95 (from Activision). It was this title which Bill Gates showed off at that year's COMDEX tradeshow - announcing that Windows 95 would be a top-notch gaming platform. Microsoft worked closely with Kinesoft during that year to develop DirectX 1.0 Earthworm Jim (Activision) and Gex (Microsoft) were also shipped shortly after the release of Windows 95, both using the Exodus engine, which then evolved into DirectX.

Andrew Glaister later went on to be the Development Manager of the Microsoft Game Studios in Redmond, Washington.

The first version of DirectX released was shipped September of 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was the Win32 replacement for the poorly designed APIs for the Win16 operating system (DCI and WinG). A development team at ATI brought fundamental game graphics technology to the attention of Microsoft. The development of DirectX was led by the team of Eisler (development lead), St. John, and Engstrom (program manager). Simply put, it allowed all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 95, to incorporate high-performance multimedia. Eisler wrote about the frenzy to build DirectX 1 through 5 in his blog.

Prior to DirectX's existence, Microsoft had already included OpenGL on their Windows NT platform. At the time, OpenGL required "high-end" hardware and was limited to engineering and CAD uses. Direct3D (introduced by Eisler, Engstrom, and St. John as an alternative to SGI's OpenGL) was intended to be a lightweight partner to the back then slower OpenGL for game use. As the power of graphics cards and the computers running them grew, OpenGL became the de-facto standard and a mainstream product. At that point a "battle" began between supporters of the cross-platform OpenGL and the Windows-only Direct3D, which many argued was another example of Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish business tactic (see Fahrenheit or Direct3D vs. OpenGL). Nevertheless, the other APIs of DirectX are often combined with OpenGL in many computer games because OpenGL does not include all of DirectX's functionality (such as sound or joystick support).

In a console specific version, DirectX was used as a basis for Microsoft's Xbox and xbox360 console API. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and NVIDIA, who developed the custom graphics hardware used by the console. The Xbox API is similar to DirectX version 8.1, but is non-updateable like other console technologies. The Xbox was code named DirectXbox, but this was shortened to Xbox for its commercial name. (J. Allard, PC Pro Interview, April 2004)

In 2002, Microsoft released DirectX 9 with support for the use of much longer shader programs than before with pixel and vertex shader version 2.0. Microsoft has continued to update the DirectX suite since then, introducing shader model 3.0 in DirectX 9.0c, released in August 2004.

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Macromedia

2006-09-16T19:47:00.001-07:00

Macromedia Dreamweaver is a web development tool, created by Macromedia (now Adobe Systems), which is currently in version 8. Initial versions of the application served as simple WYSIWYG HTML editors but more recent versions have incorporated notable support for many other web technologies such as CSS, JavaScript, and various server-side scripting frameworks. Dreamweaver has enjoyed widespread success since the late 1990s and currently holds approximately 80% of the HTML editor market. [citation needed] The software is available for both the Mac and Windows platforms, but can also be run on Unix-like platforms through the use of emulation software such as Wine.It is also a Web authoring program for Windows and the Macintosh from Macromedia. It is a sophisticated program that is noted for many advanced features, including the "Roundtrip" capability which lets you seamlessly move back and forth and make changes in both the visual mode and HTML mode.

As a WYSIWYG editor powered by the Presto Rendering engine, Dreamweaver can hide the details of pages' HTML code from the user, making it possible for non-experts to easily create web pages and sites. Some web developers criticize this approach as producing HTML pages that are much larger than they should be, which can cause web browsers to perform poorly. This can be particularly true because the application makes it very easy to create table-based layouts. In addition, some web site developers have criticized Dreamweaver in the past for producing code that often does not comply with W3C standards though this has improved considerably in recent versions. The most recent version of Dreamweaver (8) performs poorly on the Acid2 Test, developed by the Web Standards Project. However, Macromedia has increased the support for CSS and other ways to lay out a page without tables in later versions of the application.

Dreamweaver allows the user to use most browsers to preview websites, provided that they are installed on his or her computer. It also has some site management tools, such as the ability to find and replace lines of text or code by whatever parameters specified across the entire site, and a templatization feature for creating multiple pages with similar structures. The behaviors panel also allows creation of basic JavaScript without any coding knowledge.

With the advent of version MX, Macromedia incorporated dynamic content creation tools into Dreamweaver. In the spirit of HTML WYSIWYG tools, it allows users to connect to databases (such as MySQL and Microsoft Access) to filter and display content using scripting technologies such as Active Server Pages(ASP), ASP.NET, ColdFusion, JavaServer Pages(JSP), PHP, and more without any previous programming experience.

A highly regarded aspect of Dreamweaver is its extensible architecture. "Extensions", as they are known, are small programs, which any web developer can write (usually in HTML and Javascript) and anyone can download and install, which provide added functionality to the software. Dreamweaver is supported by a large community of extension developers who make extensions available (both commercial and free) for most web development tasks from simple rollover effects to full-featured shopping carts.

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Dreamweaver

2006-09-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

Adobe

2006-09-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

Adobe Photoshop, or simply Photoshop, is a graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation, and, in addition to Adobe Acrobat, is one of the best-known pieces of software produced by Adobe Systems. It is considered the industry standard in most jobs related to the use of visual elements. Photoshop is available for Mac OS, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows; versions up to Photoshop 9.0 can also be used with other operating systems such as Linux using software such as CrossOver Office. Past versions of the program were ported to the SGI IRIX and Sun Solaris platforms, but official support for this port was dropped after version 3.

Although primarily designed to edit images for paper-based printing, Photoshop is used increasingly to produce images for the World Wide Web. Recent versions bundle a related application, Adobe ImageReady, to provide a more specialized set of tools for this purpose.

Photoshop also has strong ties with other Adobe software for media editing, animation and authoring. Files in Photoshop's native format, .PSD, can be exported to and from Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Adobe Encore DVD to make professional standard DVDs, provide non-linear editing and special effects services such as backgrounds, textures and so on for television, film and the Web. For example, Photoshop CS broadly supports making menus and buttons for DVDs. For .PSD files exported as a menu or button, it only needs to have layers, nested in layer sets with a cueing format and Adobe Encore DVD reads them as buttons or menus.

An Adobe illustrator is a graphic artist who specializes in enhancing written text by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, or the illustration may be intended for entertainment, as in greeting cards, or cover art or interior art for books and magazines, or for advertisement, as on posters.

Most contemporary illustrators make their living creating artwork for use in children's books, advertising, newspapers and magazines. Pen and ink and airbrush artists traditionally dominated this realm.

Computers dramatically changed the industry, and today computers are used to produce most of the commercial illustrations. The most commonly used computer applications are Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Corel Painter is popular with artists desiring in a traditional media style. Also gaining popularity are 3D computer graphics programs.

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Maya

2006-09-15T05:18:00.000-07:00

Maya is a high-end 3D computer graphics and 3D modelling software package, originally by Alias Systems Corporation but now owned by Autodesk under its Media and Entertainment division. Autodesk acquired the software in October 2005 upon purchasing Alias. It is often used in the film and TV industry, as well as for computer and video games.

Maya, used in many films today, is named for the Sanskrit word meaning illusion and is a popular, proprietary integrated 3D software suite, evolved from Alias PowerAnimator. Maya comes in two main versions, Maya Complete (the less powerful package) and Maya Unlimited. Maya Unlimited is now priced similarly to other proprietary 3D programs, but used to be considerably more expensive. Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE) is available for non-commercial use, and is available at no cost. Images rendered with Maya PLE are watermarked.

Maya was developed by Alias and is released for the Microsoft Windows, Linux, IRIX, and Mac OS X operating systems. The latest version of Maya, version 8.0, was released in August 2006. 6.5 was the last version that supported IRIX, due to the platform's declining popularity in recent years. When Autodesk acquired Alias in October 2005, they agreed to continue the product line. At the time of the acquisition, the question among Maya users was if Autodesk would merge Maya and their 3D Graphics Software 3D Studio Max creating a hybrid dubbed "Mayax". Subsequent interviews clarified that they will be kept separated. The acquisition was completed in January 10th, 2006.

The most important feature of Maya is its openness to third-party software, which can strip Maya completely of its standard appearance and, using only the Maya kernel, can transform it into a highly customized version of the software. Apart from its intrinsic power and flexibility, this feature in itself made Maya appealing to large studios which tend to write quite a lot of custom code for their productions using the provided software development kit.

Maya also features a powerful, interpreted, cross-platform scripting language called Maya Embedded Language (MEL), which is similar to Tcl. It is not only provided as a scripting language, but as means to customize Maya's core functionality (much of Maya's environment and tools are written in the language). Additionally, user interactions are implemented and recorded as MEL scripting code which users can view and drag onto a toolbar to create new 'macro' tools instantly. This provides animators with the power to add functionality to Maya without experience in C or C++ programming and compilers, though that option is provided with the software development kit.

Project files, including all geometry and animation data, are stored as sequences of MEL operations which can be optionally saved as a 'human readable' file (.ma, for Maya ASCII), editable in any text editor outside of the Maya environment and allows for a tremendous level of flexibility when working with external tools. It can also be edited to allow the file to be opened on previous versions of the software.

Hotbox provides instant access to the majority of features in Maya via a large menu that surrounds the mouse pointer at any time when a user holds down the space bar.

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