Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook. With this book you'll be able to explore and master all that the Cycles rendering engine is capable of. From the basics right through to refining, this is a must-read if you're serious about the realism of your materials and textures

Ton Roosendaal, Enrico Valenza

Cycles is Blender's new, powerful rendering engine. Using practical examples, this book will show you how to create a vast array of realistic and stunning materials and texture effects using the Cycles rendering engine.Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook is a practical journey into the new and exciting Cycles rendering engine for Blender. In this book you will learn how to create a vast array of materials and textures in Cycles, including glass, ice, snow, rock, metal and water. If you want to take your 3D models to the next level, but don't know how, then this cookbook is for you!In this practical cookbook, you will learn how to create stunning materials and textures to really bring your 3D models to life! Diving deep into Cycles you will learn Cycle's node-based material system, how to set-up a 3D scene for rendering, how to create a natural and man-made materials as well as the correct organization and re-use of Cycles materials to save you time and effort.To ensure that your creations look stunning you will learn how illumination works in Cycles, improve the quality of the final render and to avoid the presence of noise and fireflies. Each chapter of Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook builds on the complexity of the last so that by the end of this book you will know how to create an impressive library of realistic-looking materials and textures.

ChronoForms 3.1 for Joomla! site Cookbook. 80 recipes for building attractive and interactive Joomla! forms

Bob Janes

Joomla! is a fantastic way to create a dynamic CMS. Now you want to go to the next step and interact with your users. Forms are the way you ask questions and get replies. ChronoForms is the extension that lets you do that and this book tells you how.From building your first form to creating rich form based applications we will cover the features that ChronoForms offers you in a clear hands-on way. Drawing on three years daily experience using ChronoForms and supporting users there is valuable help for new users and experienced developers alike.We will take you through form development step by step: from creating your first form using ChronoForms’ built-in drag-and-drop tool; validating user input; emailing the results; saving data in the database, showing the form in your Joomla! site and much more.Each chapter addresses a topic like ‘validation’ or ‘email’ and the recipes in the chapter each address a different user question from the beginners’ question ‘How do I set up an email?’ through to more advanced questions like using some PHP to create a custom email Subject line.Over eight chapters and eighty recipes we cover all of the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ that new users and developers have about using ChronoForms. The recipe structure allows you to pick and choose just the solution that you need.

Learning Java by Building Android Games. Learn Java and Android from scratch by building five exciting games - Third Edition

John Horton

Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems today. It uses the most popular programming language, Java, as one of the primary languages for building apps of all types. Unlike most other Android books, this book doesn’t assume that you have any prior knowledge of Java programming, instead helps you get started with building Android games as a beginner.This new, improved, and updated third edition of Learning Java by Building Android Games helps you to build Android games from scratch. Once you've got to grips with the fundamentals, the difficulty level increases steadily as you explore key Java topics, such as variables, loops, methods, object-oriented programming (OOP), and design patterns while working with up-to-date code and supporting examples. At each stage, you'll be able to test your understanding by implementing the concepts that you’ve learned to develop a game. Toward the end, you’ll build games such as Sub Hunter, Retro Pong, Bullet Hell, Classic Snake, and Scrolling Shooter.By the end of this Java book, you'll not only have a solid understanding of Java and Android basics but will also have developed five cool games for the Android platform.

Time Series Analysis with Python Cookbook. Practical recipes for exploratory data analysis, data preparation, forecasting, and model evaluation

Tarek A. Atwan

Time series data is everywhere, available at a high frequency and volume. It is complex and can contain noise, irregularities, and multiple patterns, making it crucial to be well-versed with the techniques covered in this book for data preparation, analysis, and forecasting.This book covers practical techniques for working with time series data, starting with ingesting time series data from various sources and formats, whether in private cloud storage, relational databases, non-relational databases, or specialized time series databases such as InfluxDB. Next, you’ll learn strategies for handling missing data, dealing with time zones and custom business days, and detecting anomalies using intuitive statistical methods, followed by more advanced unsupervised ML models. The book will also explore forecasting using classical statistical models such as Holt-Winters, SARIMA, and VAR. The recipes will present practical techniques for handling non-stationary data, using power transforms, ACF and PACF plots, and decomposing time series data with multiple seasonal patterns. Later, you’ll work with ML and DL models using TensorFlow and PyTorch.Finally, you’ll learn how to evaluate, compare, optimize models, and more using the recipes covered in the book.

DevOps Unleashed with Git and GitHub. Automate, collaborate, and innovate to enhance your DevOps workflow and development experience

Yuki Hattori, Isabel Drost-Fromm

Git and GitHub are absolutely crucial for DevOps, playing a multifaceted role in streamlining the software development lifecycle and enabling smoother collaboration between development and operations teams.DevOps Unleashed with Git and GitHub enables you to harness the power of Git and GitHub to streamline workflows, drive collaboration, and fuel innovation. Authored by an expert from GitHub, the book starts by guiding you through Git fundamentals and delving into DevOps and the developer experience. As you progress, you’ll understand how to leverage GitHub's collaboration and automation features, and even use GitHub Copilot for enhanced productivity. You'll also learn how to bridge the DevOps gap, maintain code quality, and implement robust security measures. Additionally, hands-on exercises will equip you to elevate your developer experience, foster teamwork, and drive innovation at the speed of DevOps.By the end of this DevOps book, you’ll have mastered the Git fundamentals, conquered collaboration challenges, and unleashed the power of GitHub as you transform your DevOps workflows.

Professional CSS3. Harness the power of CSS3 to design stunning, modern websites

Piotr Sikora

CSS is the preferred technology to design modern web pages. Although CSS is often perceived as a simple language, applying modern styles to web pages with CSS and maintaining the code for larger websites can be quite tricky.We will take you right from understanding CSS to designing high-quality web pages in CSS3. We'll quickly take you through CSS3's features, and show you how to resolve common issues so you can build your basic framework. Finally, you will learn about code architecture and CSS methodologies used in scalable apps and you'll explore the various new features of CSS3, such as FlexBox, to help you create the most modern layout methodologies. By the end of the book, you will be a master at creating pure CSS web pages and will know sophisticated web design techniques, giving you an edge over other web designers.

Cross-Platform UIs with Flutter. Unlock the ability to create native multiplatform UIs using a single code base with Flutter 3

Ryan Edge, Alberto Miola

Flutter is a UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, desktop, and embedded devices from a single code base. With Flutter, you can write your code once and run it anywhere using a single code base to target multiple platforms. This book is a comprehensive, project-based guide for new and emerging Flutter developers that will help empower you to build bulletproof applications.Once you start reading book, you’ll quickly realize what sets Flutter apart from its competition and establish some of the fundamentals of the toolkit. As you work on various project applications, you’ll understand just how easy Flutter is to use for building stunning UIs. This book covers navigation strategies, state management, advanced animation handling, and the two main UI design styles: Material and Cupertino. It’ll help you extend your knowledge with good code practices, UI testing strategies, and CI setup to constantly keep your repository’s quality at the highest level possible.By the end of this book, you'll feel confident in your ability to transfer the lessons from the example projects and build your own Flutter applications for any platform you wish.

Hands-On Deep Learning with Go. A practical guide to building and implementing neural network models using Go

Gareth Seneque, Darrell Chua

Go is an open source programming language designed by Google for handling large-scale projects efficiently. The Go ecosystem comprises some really powerful deep learning tools such as DQN and CUDA. With this book, you'll be able to use these tools to train and deploy scalable deep learning models from scratch. This deep learning book begins by introducing you to a variety of tools and libraries available in Go. It then takes you through building neural networks, including activation functions and the learning algorithms that make neural networks tick. In addition to this, you'll learn how to build advanced architectures such as autoencoders, restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and more. You'll also understand how you can scale model deployments on the AWS cloud infrastructure for training and inference. By the end of this book, you'll have mastered the art of building, training, and deploying deep learning models in Go to solve real-world problems.