Blender 3D Incredible Machines. Design, model, and texture complex mechanical objects in Blender

Christopher Kuhn, Allan Brito

Blender 3D is one of the top pieces of 3D animation software. Machine modeling is an essential aspect of war games, space games, racing games, and animated action films. As the Blender software grows more powerful and popular, there is a demand to take your modeling skills to the next level. This book will cover all the topics you need to create professional models and renders. This book will help you develop a comprehensive skill set that covers the key aspects of mechanical modeling. Through this book, you will create many types of projects, including a pistol, spacecraft, robot, and a racer. We start by making a Sci-fi pistol, creating its basic shape and adding details to it. Moving on, you’ll discover modeling techniques for larger objects such as a space craft and take a look at how different techniques are required for freestyle modeling. After this, we’ll create the basic shapes for the robot and combine the meshes to create unified objects. We'll assign materials and explore the various options for freestyle rendering. We’ll discuss techniques to build low-poly models, create a low-poly racer, and explain how they differ from the high poly models we created previously. By the end of this book, you will have mastered a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations.

Engineering Data Mesh in Azure Cloud. Implement data mesh using Microsoft Azure's Cloud Adoption Framework

Aniruddha Deswandikar

Decentralizing data and centralizing governance are practical, scalable, and modern approaches to data analytics. However, implementing a data mesh can feel like changing the engine of a moving car. Most organizations struggle to start and get caught up in the concept of data domains, spending months trying to organize domains. This is where Engineering Data Mesh in Azure Cloud can help.The book starts by assessing your existing framework before helping you architect a practical design. As you progress, you’ll focus on the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure and the cloud-scale analytics framework, which will help you quickly set up a landing zone for your data mesh in the cloud.The book also resolves common challenges related to the adoption and implementation of a data mesh faced by real customers. It touches on the concepts of data contracts and helps you build practical data contracts that work for your organization. The last part of the book covers some common architecture patterns used for modern analytics frameworks such as artificial intelligence (AI).By the end of this book, you’ll be able to transform existing analytics frameworks into a streamlined data mesh using Microsoft Azure, thereby navigating challenges and implementing advanced architecture patterns for modern analytics workloads.

Puppet Cookbook. Jump-start your Puppet deployment using engaging and practical recipes

John Arundel, Thomas Uphill

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x. Get to grips with building the foundations of an RPG using Unreal Engine 4.x

Alan R. Stagner, Steve Santello

Now that Unreal Engine 4 has become one of the most cutting edge game engines in the world, developers are looking for the best ways of creating games of any genre in the engine. This book will lay out the foundation of creating a turn-based RPG in Unreal Engine 4.12. The book starts by walking you through creating a turn-based battle system that can hold commands for party members and enemies. You’ll get your hands dirty by creating NPCs such as shop owners, and important mechanics, that make up every RPG such as a currency system, inventory, dialogue, and character statistics. Although this book specifically focuses on the creation of a turn-based RPG, there are a variety of topics that can be utilized when creating many other types of genres.By the end of the book, you will be able to build upon core RPG framework elements to create your own game experience.

Pragmatic Microservices with C# and Azure. Build, deploy, and scale microservices efficiently to meet modern software demands

Christian Nagel

Pragmatic Microservices with C# and Azure introduces .NET Aspire for microservices, focusing on defining an app model, utilizing service discovery, and integrating with Azure's native cloud services. Written by a Microsoft MVP and seasoned software architect with over two decades of experience in .NET, this book will help you get to grips with robust service development using .NET features like minimal APIs, gRPC, and SignalR for real-time communication. Aside from covering essential aspects of DevOps, including testing methodologies such as unit, integration, and load testing, you’ll also explore logging and monitoring including OpenTelemetry using tools like Azure Log Analytics, Application Insights, Prometheus, and Grafana. You'll learn about asynchronous communication leveraging queues and events through Azure Event Hub and Apache. Throughout the book, theoretical aspects will be complemented by practical skills gained from building and deploying a fully functional microservices-based application. By the end, you’ll possess a deep understanding of microservices architecture, hands-on experience with various .NET technologies and Azure services, and the ability to design, build, deploy, and manage microservices applications effectively in both on-premises and cloud environments.

40 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know. Hone your problem-solving skills by learning different algorithms and their implementation in Python

Imran Ahmad

Algorithms have always played an important role in both the science and practice of computing. Beyond traditional computing, the ability to use algorithms to solve real-world problems is an important skill that any developer or programmer must have. This book will help you not only to develop the skills to select and use an algorithm to solve real-world problems but also to understand how it works.You’ll start with an introduction to algorithms and discover various algorithm design techniques, before exploring how to implement different types of algorithms, such as searching and sorting, with the help of practical examples. As you advance to a more complex set of algorithms, you'll learn about linear programming, page ranking, and graphs, and even work with machine learning algorithms, understanding the math and logic behind them. Further on, case studies such as weather prediction, tweet clustering, and movie recommendation engines will show you how to apply these algorithms optimally. Finally, you’ll become well versed in techniques that enable parallel processing, giving you the ability to use these algorithms for compute-intensive tasks.By the end of this book, you'll have become adept at solving real-world computational problems by using a wide range of algorithms.

The Road to Azure Cost Governance. Techniques to tame your monthly Azure bill with a continuous optimization journey for your apps

Paola E. Annis, Giuliano Caglio, Marco Barra Caracciolo

Cloud teams and ICT cost controllers working with Azure will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide, introducing a process model for structured cost governance. The Road to Azure Cost Governance is a must-read if you find yourself facing the harsh reality of monthly cloud costs gradually getting out of control.Starting with how resources are created and managed, everything you need to know in order to track, display, optimize, rightsize, and clean up cloud resources will be tackled with a workflow approach that will leave the choice of operation to you (be it the Azure CLI, automation, logic apps, or even custom code). Using real-world datasets, you'll learn everything from basic cost management to modeling your cloud spend across your technical resources in a sustainable way. The book will also show you how to create a recursive optimization process that will give you full control of spending and savings, while helping you reserve budget for future cloud projects and innovation.By the end of this Azure book, you'll have a clear understanding and control of your cloud spend along with knowledge of a number of cost-saving techniques used by companies around the world, application optimization patterns, and the carbon impact of your cloud infrastructure.

ChatGPT for Conversational AI and Chatbots. Learn how to automate conversations with the latest large language model technologies

Adrian Thompson

ChatGPT for Conversational AI and Chatbots is a definitive resource for exploring conversational AI, ChatGPT, and large language models.This book introduces the fundamentals of ChatGPT and conversational AI automation. You’ll explore the application of ChatGPT in conversation design, the use of ChatGPT as a tool to create conversational experiences, and a range of other practical applications. As you progress, you’ll delve into LangChain, a dynamic framework for LLMs, covering topics such as prompt engineering, chatbot memory, using vector stores, and validating responses. Additionally, you’ll learn about creating and using LLM-enabling tools, monitoring and fine tuning, LangChain UI tools such as LangFlow, and the LangChain ecosystem. You’ll also cover popular use cases, such as using ChatGPT in conjunction with your own data. Later, the book focuses on creating a ChatGPT-powered chatbot that can comprehend and respond to queries directly from your unique data sources. The book then guides you through building chatbot UIs with ChatGPT API and some of the tools and best practices available.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to confidently leverage ChatGPT technologies to build conversational AI solutions.

Technology Operating Models for Cloud and Edge. Create your purpose-built distributed operating model for public, hybrid, multicloud, and edge

Ahilan Ponnusamy, Andreas Spanner, Mirco Hering, Vincent Caldeira, ...

Cloud goals, such as faster time to market, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), capex reduction, self-service enablement, and complexity reduction are important, but organizations often struggle to achieve the desired outcomes. With edge computing gaining momentum across industries and making it possible to move workloads seamlessly between cloud and edge locations, organizations need working recipes to find ways of extracting the most value out of their cloud and edge estate.This book provides a practical way to build a strategy-aligned operating model while considering various related factors such as culture, leadership, team structures, metrics, intrinsic motivators, team incentives, tenant experience, platform engineering, operations, open source, and technology choices. Throughout the chapters, you’ll discover how single, hybrid, or multicloud architectures, security models, automation, application development, workload deployments, and application modernization can be reutilized for edge workloads to help you build a secure yet flexible technology operating model. The book also includes a case study which will walk you through the operating model build process in a step-by-step way.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to build your own fit-for-purpose distributed technology operating model for your organization in an open culture way.

WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook. Explore the complete set of tools to craft powerful plugins that extend the world’s most popular CMS - Third Edition

Yannick Lefebvre

WordPress is one of the most widely used, powerful, and open content management systems (CMSs). Whether you're a site owner trying to find the right extension, a developer who wants to contribute to the community, or a website developer working to fulfill a client's needs, learning how to extend WordPress' capabilities will help you to unleash its full potential. This book will help you become familiar with API functions to create secure plugins with easy-to-use administration interfaces.This third edition contains new recipes and up-to-date code samples, including new chapters on creating custom blocks for the block editor and integrating data from external sources. From one chapter to the next, you’ll learn how to create plugins of varying complexity, ranging from a few lines of code to complex extensions that provide intricate new capabilities. You'll start by using the basic mechanisms provided in WordPress to create plugins, followed by recipes covering how to design administration panels, enhance the post editor with custom fields, store custom data, and even create custom blocks. You'll safely incorporate dynamic elements into web pages using scripting languages, learn how to integrate data from external sources, and build new widgets that users will be able to add to WordPress sidebars and widget areas.By the end of this book, you will be able to create WordPress plugins to perform any task you can imagine.

Multimedia Programming with Pure Data. A comprehensive guide for digital artists for creating rich interactive multimedia applications using Pure Data

Bryan, Wai-ching CHUNG

Preparing interactive displays, creating computer games, and conducting audio-visual performance are now achievable without typing lines of code. With Pure Data, a graphical programming environment, creating interactive multimedia applications is just visually connecting graphical icons together. It is straightforward, intuitive, and effective. Multimedia Programming with Pure Data will show you how to create interactive multimedia applications. You will learn how to author various digital media, such as images, animations, audio, and videos together to form a coherent title. From simple to sophisticated interaction techniques, you will learn to apply these techniques in your practical multimedia projects. You start from making 2D and 3D computer graphics and proceed to animation, multimedia presentation, interface design, and more sophisticated computer vision applications with interactivity. With Pure Data and GEM, you will learn to produce animations with 2D digital imagery, 3D modelling, and particle systems. You can also design graphical interfaces, and use live video for motion tracking applications. Furthermore, you will learn Audio signal processing, which forms the key aspect to multimedia content creation. Last but not least, Network programming using Pure Data extension libraries explores applications to other portable devices.

Getting Started with ResearchKit. Enter the era of medical research using mobile devices with the help of this guide on ResearchKit!

Dhanush Balachandran, Edward Cessna

ResearchKit is an open source software development framework from Apple that lets you easily create mobile applications for clinical research studies. ResearchKit provides you the ability to orchestrate the administration of tasks and recording of the results. ResearchKit provides tasks in order to perform informed consent, active tasks, and surveys.Starting with the basics of the ResearchKit framework, this books walks you through the steps of creating iOS applications that could serve as the basis of a clinical research mobile app.This book will introduce readers to ResearchKit and how to turn your iPhone into into a clinical research tool. The book will start off by installing and building the research framework in line with the researcher's needs; during this, the reader will learn to embed ResearchKit in the application and create a small task.After this, the book will go a little deeper into creating modules for surveys, consents, and so on. The book will also cover the various aspects of privacy and security with regard to participant data, and how to build dashboards for visualizing medical data and results in line with the researcher's requirements: data backends, JSON serialization and deserialization, and so on.Readers will be able to fully utilize ResearchKit for medical research, will be able to get more and more patients to participate in their surveys, and will gain insights from the surveys using the dashboards created.

Building a Game with Unity and Blender. Learn how to build a complete 3D game using the industry-leading Unity game development engine and Blender, the graphics software that gives life to your ideas

Gustavo Vitarelli de Queiroz, Lee Zhi Eng

In the wake of the indie game development scene, game development tools are no longer luxury items costing up to millions of dollars but are now affordable by smaller teams or even individual developers. Among these cutting-edge applications, Blender and Unity stand out from the crowd as a powerful combination that allows small-to-no budget indie developers or hobbyists alike to develop games that they have always dreamt of creating.Starting from the beginning, this book will cover designing the game concept, constructing the gameplay, creating the characters and environment, implementing game logic and basic artificial intelligence, and finally deploying the game for others to play. By sequentially working through the steps in each chapter, you will quickly master the skills required to develop your dream game from scratch.

Embedded Linux Development with Yocto Project. Develop fascinating Linux-based projects using the groundbreaking Yocto Project tools

Otavio Salvador, Otavio R Salvador, Daiane Angolini

Soar with Haskell. The ultimate beginners' guide to mastering functional programming from the ground up

Tom Schrijvers

With software systems reaching new levels of complexity and programmers aiming for the highest productivity levels, software developers and language designers are turning toward functional programming because of its powerful and mature abstraction mechanisms. This book will help you tap into this approach with Haskell, the programming language that has been leading the way in pure functional programming for over three decades.The book begins by helping you get to grips with basic functions and algebraic datatypes, and gradually adds abstraction mechanisms and other powerful language features. Next, you’ll explore recursion, formulate higher-order functions as reusable templates, and get the job done with laziness. As you advance, you’ll learn how Haskell reconciliates its purity with the practical need for side effects and comes out stronger with a rich hierarchy of abstractions, such as functors, applicative functors, and monads. Finally, you’ll understand how all these elements are combined in the design and implementation of custom domain-specific languages for tackling practical problems such as parsing, as well as the revolutionary functional technique of property-based testing.By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered the key concepts of functional programming and be able to develop idiomatic Haskell solutions.

Mastering ABP Framework. Build maintainable .NET solutions by implementing software development best practices

Halil Ibrahim Kalkan, Ismail ÇAGDAŞ

ABP Framework is a complete infrastructure for creating modern web applications by following software development best practices and conventions. With ABP's high-level framework and ecosystem, you can implement the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle and focus on your business code.Written by the creator of ABP Framework, this book will help you to gain a complete understanding of the framework and modern web application development techniques. With step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, you'll understand the requirements of a modern web solution and how ABP Framework makes it enjoyable to develop your own solutions. You'll discover the common requirements of enterprise web application development and explore the infrastructure provided by ABP. Throughout the book, you’ll get to grips with software development best practices for building maintainable and modular web solutions.By the end of this book, you'll be able to create a complete web solution that is easy to develop, maintain, and test.

Mastering OpenCV 4. A comprehensive guide to building computer vision and image processing applications with C++ - Third Edition

Roy Shilkrot, David Millán Escrivá

Mastering OpenCV, now in its third edition, targets computer vision engineers taking their first steps toward mastering OpenCV. Keeping the mathematical formulations to a solid but bare minimum, the book delivers complete projects from ideation to running code, targeting current hot topics in computer vision such as face recognition, landmark detection and pose estimation, and number recognition with deep convolutional networks.You’ll learn from experienced OpenCV experts how to implement computer vision products and projects both in academia and industry in a comfortable package. You’ll get acquainted with API functionality and gain insights into design choices in a complete computer vision project. You’ll also go beyond the basics of computer vision to implement solutions for complex image processing projects.By the end of the book, you will have created various working prototypes with the help of projects in the book and be well versed with the new features of OpenCV4.

Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions AZ-400 Exam Guide. Prepare for the certification exam and successfully apply Azure DevOps strategies with practical labs - Second Edition

Subhajit Chatterjee, Swapneel Deshpande, Henry Been, Maik van der Gaag

The AZ-400 Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions certification helps DevOps engineers and administrators get to grips with practices such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), containerization, and zero downtime deployments using Azure DevOps Services.This new edition is updated with advanced topics such as site reliability engineering (SRE), continuous improvement, and planning your cloud transformation journey. The book begins with the basics of CI/CD and automated deployments, and then moves ahead to show you how to apply configuration management and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) along with managing databases in DevOps scenarios. As you make progress, you’ll explore fitting security and compliance with DevOps and find out how to instrument applications and gather metrics to understand application usage and user behavior. This book will also help you implement a container build strategy and manage Azure Kubernetes Services. Lastly, you’ll discover quick tips and tricks to confidently apply effective DevOps practices and learn to create your own Azure DevOps organization.By the end of this DevOps book, you'll have gained the knowledge needed to ensure seamless application deployments and business continuity.

Getting Started with Julia. Enter the exciting world of Julia, a high-performance language for technical computing

Ivo Balbaert

cPanel User Guide and Tutorial. Get the most from cPanel with this easy to follow guide

Aric Pedersen

A great book for getting the most out of your cPanel-supporting web hostIf you have web hosting requirements beyond the most basic, you should look for a host that offers cPanel. cPanel gives you tight control over every aspect of your web site, email accounts, and domain names.But once you've got a web site with cPanel support, how do you go about using it? While the documentation included with cPanel may provide a quick reference, to really get the most from it you need a more detailed, systematic tutorial.Read this book to find out exactly how to get the most from cPanel in all aspects of your web site management: web, email, FTP, security, domains, back ups, and more.

Meteor: Full-Stack Web Application Development. Rapidly build web apps with Meteor

Fabian Vogelsteller, Isaac Strack, Marcelo Reyna

Meteor is best JavaScript development platform and is packed with collections of libraries and packages bound together in a tidy way to take care of everything from development to production, making your web development easier.This course follows a learning path divided into three modules. Each module is a mini course in its own right, taking your knowledge to a new level as you progress. The first module takes you from the installation of Meteor to building a fully working web blog (including back end) to create and edit posts. Your path will begin with the basic concepts and folder structure of a Meteor project, learning how Meteor templates work to test packages, and seeing the application itself. The second module is a cookbook that starts with simple recipes designed for quick reference, and culminating advanced recipes that walk you through building and deploying a complete application. The cookbook covers all the major areas of Meteor development, including lesser-known and undocumented features too. With all the important concepts covered in the previous modules, the third module will get you equipped with simple solutions to boost your development skills. You’ll learn about mapping of real-world data and optimizing it, how to optimize and secure web applications and how to deploy and maintain it without breaking its features. Throughout the module, you will put your skills into practice and build an online shop from scratch.This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products:• Building Single-page Web Apps with Meteor, Fabian Vogelsteller• Meteor Cookbook, Isaac Strack• Meteor Design Patterns, Marcelo Reyna

CMS Made Simple Development Cookbook. Over 70 simple but incredibly effective recipes for extending CMS Made Simple with detailed explanations – useful for beginners and experts alike!

Ted Kulp (USD), Samuel Goldstein

CMS Made Simple has great capabilities “out of the box,” but one of its great strengths is the ease of extending those capabilities. You can add a surprising amount of functionality just by customizing the core modules, but once you learn to write your own tags and modules, your ability to add features is virtually limitless.CMS Made Simple Development Cookbook will show you how to use custom PHP code to extend the power and features of CMS Made Simple, and make it do exactly what you want. This easy to use guide contains clear recipes that introduce the key concepts behind each approach to extending the CMS, while also providing examples of solutions to real-world problems.You will learn the differences between the various kinds of tags and modules in the CMS Made Simple environment, and to which purposes each is best fit. Each technology is then explored in detail with a series of practical recipes and examples.You will not only learn the basics of creating tags and modules, but you will explore the underlying APIs that you will use to solve real-world website problems. You will become proficient with the database and form APIs, so that the code you write is portable and maintainable. You'll learn to localize your code and use templates to add its flexibility. You'll master the safe handling of parameters and the creation of secure code. You’ll be familiar with the CMS Made Simple Developer's Forge, and how you can use it in conjunction with revision control as a community-focused code management system, complete with web-based bug tracking and feature requests. You will learn to code complex interactions between modules, both directly and via the creation and handling of events. You will gain exposure to an array of advanced tips and tricks, along with commentary from the distilled experience of someone who has written dozens of modules. The CMS Made Simple Developer's Cookbook offers an amazing wealth of knowledge in approachable, bite-sized recipes. Whether you're new to the CMS or an old hand, you're sure to find valuable tips and information that will have you creating a richer CMS.

Mastering JIRA 7. Become an expert at using JIRA 7 through this one-stop guide! - Second Edition

Ravi Sagar

Atlassian JIRA 7 is an enterprise issue tracker system. One of its key strengths is its ability to adapt to the needs of an organization, ranging from building software products to managing your support issues.This book provides a comprehensive explanation covering all three components of JIRA 7, such as JIRA Software, JIRA Core, and Jira Service Desk. It shows you how to master the key functionalities of JIRA and its customizations and useful add-ons, and is packed with real-world examples and use cases. You will first learn how to plan for a JIRA 7 installation and fetch data. We cover JIRA reports in detail, which will help you analyze your data effectively. You can add additional features to your JIRA application by choosing one of the already built-in add-ons or building a new one to suit your needs. Then you'll find out about implementing Agile methodologies in JIRA by creating Scrum and Kanban boards. We'll teach you how to integrate your JIRA Application with other tools such as Confluence, SVN, Git, and more, which will help you extend your application. Finally, we'll explore best practices and troubleshooting techniques to help you find out what went wrong and understand how to fix it.

Learn Helm. Improve productivity, reduce complexity, and speed up cloud-native adoption with Helm for Kubernetes

Andrew Block, Austin Dewey

Containerization is currently known to be one of the best ways to implement DevOps. While Docker introduced containers and changed the DevOps era, Google developed an extensive container orchestration system, Kubernetes, which is now considered the frontrunner in container orchestration. With the help of this book, you’ll explore the efficiency of managing applications running on Kubernetes using Helm.Starting with a short introduction to Helm and how it can benefit the entire container environment, you’ll then delve into the architectural aspects, in addition to learning about Helm charts and its use cases. You’ll understand how to write Helm charts in order to automate application deployment on Kubernetes. Focused on providing enterprise-ready patterns relating to Helm and automation, the book covers best practices for application development, delivery, and lifecycle management with Helm.By the end of this Kubernetes book, you will have learned how to leverage Helm to develop an enterprise pattern for application delivery.