Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook. If you're already au fait with Blender, this book gives extra power to your artist's elbow with a fantastic grounding in Cycles. Packed with tips and recipes, it makes light work of the toughest concepts. - Second Edition

Bernardo Iraci, Ton Roosendaal

Blender provides a broad spectrum of modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing functionality in one package. It provides cross-platform interoperability, extensibility and a tightly integrated workflow. Blender is one of the most popular Open Source 3D graphics applications in the world.Modern GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) have some limitations for rendering complex scenes. This is mainly because of limited memory, and interactivity issues when the same graphics card is also used for displaying and rendering frames. This is where Cycles rendering engine comes into play. Cycles is bundled as an add-on with Blender. Some of the features of Cycles is its quality, speed and having integrated industry standard libraries.This book will show you how to carry out your first steps in Cycles - a brand new rendering engine for Blender. In a gradual and logical way, you will learn how to create complex shaders and lighting setups to face any kind of situation that you may find in Computer Graphics.This book provides information on how to setup your first application in Cycles. You will start by adding lights, materials, and textures to your scene. When it's time for the final render, you will see how to setup Cycles in the best way. You will learn about a wide variety of materials, lighting, techniques, tips, and tricks to get the best out of Cycles. Further on in the book, you will get to know about animation and still shots, and learn how to create advanced materials for realistic rendering, as well cartoon style shaders.This cookbook contains a wide range of different scenes, proposed in a structured and progressive order. During this journey, you will get involved in the concepts behind every step you take in order to really master what you learn.

The Mini Book of Agile. Everything you really need to know about Agile, Agile Project Management and Agile Delivery

Mauricio Rubio Parra

Think of this book as Agile for Dummies (or Agile for anyone and everyone). This Agile book will allow you to master the most important concepts of Agile development, Agile project delivery, and Agile project management. This mini book has been designed to enable you to manage your projects in an Agile way.This mini book will walk you through the fundamentals, principles, and key concepts of Agile, Agile project management, and Agile Delivery.The book includes valuable resources, graphics, and examples that will allow you to grasp the key essence of Agile, Agile rituals, Agile practices, Agile concepts, and the key differences between Agile and traditional project management.After reading this book, you will have a thorough understanding of Agile and how to put Agile into practice at work and in your personal projects.

Microsoft Azure IaaS Essentials. Design, configure, and build your cloud-based infrastructure using Microsoft Azure

Guy Dillen, Gethyn Ellis

Architectural Visualization in Unreal Engine 5. Create photorealistic architectural interior renderings in UE5

Ludovico Palmeri

If you excel at creating beautiful architectural renderings using traditional software but want to master real-time, interactive visualizations, this book will show you how the versatile Unreal Engine 5 enables such transformations effortlessly. While UE5 is widely popular, existing online training resources can be overwhelming and often lack a focus on Architectural visualization. This comprehensive guide is for both beginners and experienced users offering a clear, end-to-end approach to creating stunning visualizations from scratch as well as managing tight deadlines, striving for photorealism, and handling typical client revisions inherent to architectural visualization.The book starts with an introduction to UE5 and its capabilities, as well as the basic concepts and principles of architectural visualization. You'll then progress to essential topics such as setting up a project, modeling and texturing 3D assets, lighting and materials, and post-processing effects. Along the way, you'll find practical tips, best practices, and hands-on exercises to develop your skills by applying what you learn.By the end of this book, you'll have acquired the skills to confidently create high-quality architectural visualizations in UE5 and become proficient in building an architectural interior scene to produce professional still images.

Express Your Creativity with Adobe Express. Create stunning graphics, captivating videos, and impressive web pages without any coding skills

Rosie Sue

Working with graphics can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a background in graphic design, but with Adobe Express, you can create stunning content without prior experience. This book will show you how you can choose from thousands of beautiful templates, customize them to your brand, and watch your visuals come to life.This book is your ultimate guide to Adobe Express, covering every function, from formatting typography to animating your graphics. With practical exercises, you’ll be able to put your newfound knowledge into action and start creating right away. You’ll learn the art of crafting stunning social media graphics, thumb-stopping animations, beautiful landing pages, and captivating videos.Whether you prefer the browser or mobile experience, Adobe Express provides the flexibility to create beautiful content seamlessly. Learning new skills and applying them has never been easier, as each chapter equips you to accomplish remarkable feats.By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered Adobe Express for elevating your online presence.

Learning Hyper-V. Learn how to design, deploy, configure, and manage virtualization infrastructure using Hyper-V

Vinicius R Apolinario, Vinicius Ramos Apolinario

Learning SaltStack. Build, manage, and secure your infrastructure with the power of SaltStack - Second Edition

Colton Myers

SaltStack is one of the best infrastructure management platforms available. It provides powerful tools for defining and enforcing the state of your infrastructure in a clear, concise way. With this book learn how to use these tools for your own infrastructure by understanding the core pieces of Salt.In this book we will take you from the initial installation of Salt, through running their first commands, and then talk about extending Salt for individual use cases. From there you will explore the state system inside of Salt, learning to define the desired state of our infrastructure in such a way that Salt can enforce that state with a single command. Finally, you will learn about some of the additional tools that salt provides, including salt-cloud, the reactor, and the event system. We?ll finish by exploring how to get involved with salt and what'?s new in the salt community.Finally, by the end of the book, you'll be able to build a reliable, scalable, secure, high-performance infrastructure and fully utilize the power of cloud computing.

Bootstrap Site Blueprints. Without Bootstrap your web designs may not be reaching their full potential. This book will change that through a series of hands-on projects covering everything from custom icon fonts to JavaScript plugins

David Cochran, Ian Whitley

Developer Career Masterplan. Build your path to senior level and beyond with practical insights from industry experts

Heather VanCura, Bruno Souza, Ed Burns

Written by industry experts that have spent the last 20+ years helping developers grow their careers, this book offers invaluable insights and guidance tailored to the specific needs of technical professionals. By discovering the secret of continuous learning and adapting in the ever-evolving field of software development, you’ll explore various learning paths with formal and informal methods, as well as gain an understanding of the value of certifications to validate your skills. This book will teach you the significance of building a strong support network, holding crucial conversations, and taking ownership of your career growth. You'll delve into acquiring both soft and hard skills, becoming a well-rounded and sought-after developer. Packed with practical examples, stories of successful developers, and real-world applications, the chapters will equip you with actionable advice on how to push beyond your comfort zone and embracing communities to enhance your teamwork abilities. Additionally, you’ll uncover the benefits of joining open-source projects, speaking at conferences, and building a personal brand to amplify your visibility and reputation. By the end of this book, you'll have a well-laid-out long-term and short-term plan for your career progression, equipping you with advanced technical skills, strategic thinking, and the ability to effectively manage relationships within your organization.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook. Over 100 simple and incredibly effective recipes to help transform your static business data into exciting dashboards filled with dynamic charts and graphics

David Lai, XJ Hacking, David Lai, Xavier Jean-Marie Hacking

Mastering KVM Virtualization. Design expert data center virtualization solutions with the power of Linux KVM - Second Edition

Vedran Dakic, Humble Devassy Chirammal, Prasad Mukhedkar, Anil Vettathu

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) enables you to virtualize your data center by transforming your Linux operating system into a powerful hypervisor that allows you to manage multiple operating systems with minimal fuss. With this book, you'll gain insights into configuring, troubleshooting, and fixing bugs in KVM virtualization and related software.This second edition of Mastering KVM Virtualization is updated to cover the latest developments in the core KVM components - libvirt and QEMU. Starting with the basics of Linux virtualization, you'll explore VM lifecycle management and migration techniques. You’ll then learn how to use SPICE and VNC protocols while creating VMs and discover best practices for using snapshots. As you progress, you'll integrate third-party tools with Ansible for automation and orchestration. You’ll also learn to scale out and monitor your environments, and will cover oVirt, OpenStack, Eucalyptus, AWS, and ELK stack. Throughout the book, you’ll find out more about tools such as Cloud-Init and Cloudbase-Init. Finally, you'll be taken through the performance tuning and troubleshooting guidelines for KVM-based virtual machines and a hypervisor.By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed with KVM virtualization and the tools and technologies needed to build and manage diverse virtualization environments.

Building Web Applications with Python and Neo4j. Develop exciting real-world Python-based web applications with Neo4j using frameworks such as Flask, Py2neo, and Django

Sumit Gupta

Windows Malware Analysis Essentials. Master the fundamentals of malware analysis for the Windows platform and enhance your anti-malware skill set

Victor Marak

JavaScript JSON Cookbook. Over 80 recipes to make the most of JSON in your desktop, server, web, and mobile applications

Ray Rischpater, Brian Ritchie, Ray Rischpater

Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration. A step-by-step guide to creating and running scalable Silverlight Enterprise Applications on the Windows Azure platform with this book and

David Burela

Microsoft Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating rich media applications and line of business applications for the web and desktop.Microsoft Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform.Silverlight allows you to integrate with Windows Azure and create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on Windows AzureThis book shows you how to create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on Windows Azure.Integrating Silverlight and Windows Azure can be difficult without guidance. This book will take you through all the steps to create and run Silverlight Enterprise Applications on the Windows Azure platform. The book starts by providing the steps required to set up the development environment, providing an overview of Azure. The book then dives deep into topics such as hosting Silverlight applications in Azure, using Azure Queues in Silverlight, storing data in Azure table storage from Silverlight, accessing Azure blob storage from Silverlight, relational data with SQL Azure and RIA, and manipulating data with RIA services amongst others.

Mastering iOS 12 Programming. Build professional-grade iOS applications with Swift and Xcode 10 - Third Edition

Donny Wals

The iOS development environment has significantly matured, and with Apple users spending more money in the App Store, there are plenty of development opportunities for professional iOS developers. However, the journey to mastering iOS development and the new features of iOS 12 is not straightforward. This book will help you make that transition smoothly and easily. With the help of Swift 4.2, you’ll not only learn how to program for iOS 12, but also how to write efficient, readable, and maintainable Swift code that maintains industry best practices. Mastering iOS 12 Programming will help you build real-world applications and reflect the real-world development flow. You will also find a mix of thorough background information and practical examples, teaching you how to start implementing your newly gained knowledge. By the end of this book, you will have got to grips with building iOS applications that harness advanced techniques and make best use of the latest and greatest features available in iOS 12.