ZBrush 4 Sculpting for Games: Beginner's Guide. Sculpt machines, environments, and creatures for your game development projects

Manuel Scherer

ZBrush is a fantastic tool for creating models for use in computer games. Using a wide range of powerful tools you can create models for vehicles, props, environments, and characters.This book makes creating game art in ZBrush fast and easy. It covers everything you need to create models of all kinds for your game projects, even if you've never used ZBrush before.Built around four complete ZBrush projects, the book gives you everything you need to sculpt props, vehicles, and creatures in ZBrush. You'll start by creating a spooky tree model, mastering the sculpting, texturing, and decoration skills that are essential for all ZBrush topics. Next you'll move to man-made objects with a sci-fi drone. Next you'll see how to sculpt monsters and other creatures, deal with cloth and other soft materials, and prepare the model to become an animated, controllable character in a game. The final project returns to machines, building a complete, detailed spaceship for use in your sci-fi games.

R Deep Learning Essentials. A step-by-step guide to building deep learning models using TensorFlow, Keras, and MXNet - Second Edition

Mark Hodnett, Joshua F. Wiley

Deep learning is a powerful subset of machine learning that is very successful in domains such as computer vision and natural language processing (NLP). This second edition of R Deep Learning Essentials will open the gates for you to enter the world of neural networks by building powerful deep learning models using the R ecosystem.This book will introduce you to the basic principles of deep learning and teach you to build a neural network model from scratch. As you make your way through the book, you will explore deep learning libraries, such as Keras, MXNet, and TensorFlow, and create interesting deep learning models for a variety of tasks and problems, including structured data, computer vision, text data, anomaly detection, and recommendation systems. You’ll cover advanced topics, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), transfer learning, and large-scale deep learning in the cloud. In the concluding chapters, you will learn about the theoretical concepts of deep learning projects, such as model optimization, overfitting, and data augmentation, together with other advanced topics.By the end of this book, you will be fully prepared and able to implement deep learning concepts in your research work or projects.

Running Effective Marketing Meetings. A how-to guide to run marketing meetings that teach, inspire, and change how you and your team work

Daniel Kuperman

Twilio Best Practices. Learn how to build powerful real-time voice and SMS applications with Twilio

Timothy Rogers, Tim Rogers

Active Machine Learning with Python. Refine and elevate data quality over quantity with active learning

Margaux Masson-Forsythe

Building accurate machine learning models requires quality data—lots of it. However, for most teams, assembling massive datasets is time-consuming, expensive, or downright impossible. Led by Margaux Masson-Forsythe, a seasoned ML engineer and advocate for surgical data science and climate AI advancements, this hands-on guide to active machine learning demonstrates how to train robust models with just a fraction of the data using Python's powerful active learning tools.You’ll master the fundamental techniques of active learning, such as membership query synthesis, stream-based sampling, and pool-based sampling and gain insights for designing and implementing active learning algorithms with query strategy and Human-in-the-Loop frameworks. Exploring various active machine learning techniques, you’ll learn how to enhance the performance of computer vision models like image classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation and delve into a machine AL method for selecting the most informative frames for labeling large videos, addressing duplicated data. You’ll also assess the effectiveness and efficiency of active machine learning systems through performance evaluation.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to enhance your active learning projects by leveraging Python libraries, frameworks, and commonly used tools.

Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook. Create better operational analytics for your users with these business solutions

Derek Wilson

SQL Server Analysis Service (SSAS) has been widely used across multiple businesses to build smart online analytical reporting solutions. It includes two different types of modeling for analysis services: Tabular and Multi Dimensional. This book covers Tabular modeling, which uses tables and relationships with a fast in-memory engine to provide state of the art compression algorithms and query performance.The book begins by quickly taking you through the concepts required to model tabular data and set up the necessary tools and services. As you learn to create tabular models using tools such as Excel and Power View, you’ll be shown various strategies to deploy your model on the server and choose a query mode (In-memory or DirectQuery) that best suits your reporting needs. You’ll also learn how to implement key and newly introduced DAX functions to create calculated columns and measures for your model data. Last but not least, you’ll be shown techniques that will help you administer and secure your BI implementation along with some widely used tips and tricks to optimize your reporting solution.By the end of this book, you’ll have gained hands-on experience with the powerful new features that have been added to Tabular models in SSAS 2016 and you’ll be able to improve user satisfaction with faster reports and analytical queries.

Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform. An in-depth scenario-driven approach to architecting systems using Microsoft technologies

Stephen Thomas, Stephen W. Thomas, Mike Sexton, Rama Ramani, ...

Every day, architects and developers are asked to solve specific business problems in the most efficient way possible using a broad range of technologies. Packed with real-world examples of how to use the latest Microsoft technologies, this book tackles over a dozen specific use case patterns and provides an applied implementation with supporting code downloads for every chapter.In this book, we guide you through thirteen architectural patterns and provide detailed code samples for the following technologies: Windows Server AppFabric, Windows Azure Platform AppFabric, SQL Server (including Integration Services, Service Broker, and StreamInsight), BizTalk Server, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). This book brings together – and simplifies – the information and methodology you need to make the right architectural decisions and use a broad range of the Microsoft platform to meet your requirements. Throughout the book, we will follow a consistent architectural decision framework which considers key business, organizational, and technology factors.The book is broken up into four sections. First, we define the techniques and methodologies used to make architectural decisions throughout the book. In Part I, we provide a set of primers designed to get you up to speed with each of the technologies demonstrated in the book. Part II looks at messaging patterns and includes use cases which highlight content-based routing, workflow, publish/subscribe, and distributed messaging. Part III digs into data processing patterns and looks at bulk data processing, complex events, multi-master synchronization, and more. Finally, Part IV covers performance-related patterns including low latency, failover to the cloud, and reference data caching.

FastAPI Cookbook. Develop high-performance APIs and web applications with Python

Giunio De Luca, Antonio Ferraro

FastAPI is a cutting-edge Python framework that is revolutionizing the way web apps and APIs are built. Known for its speed, simplicity, and scalability, FastAPI empowers developers to create high-performing applications with ease. This book will help you leverage FastAPI’s immense potential to handle high-traffic scenarios and integrate seamlessly with modern Python tools.The book begins by familiarizing you with the basics of setting up and configuring your FastAPI environment before moving to the intricacies of building RESTful APIs, managing data with SQL and NoSQL databases, and handling authentication and authorization. Next, you'll focus on advanced topics such as custom middleware, WebSocket communication, and integration with various Python libraries. Each chapter is meticulously crafted with practical recipes, progressing from foundational concepts to advanced features and best practices. The concluding chapters show you how to optimize performance, implement rate limiting, and execute background tasks, empowering you to become a proficient FastAPI developer.By the end of this book, you'll have gained the skills you need to migrate existing apps to FastAPI, and be equipped to tackle any challenge in the modern web development landscape, ensuring your apps are not only functional, but also efficient, secure, and scalable.