Silverlight is Microsoft’s cross-browser, cross-platform browser plug-in that allows the creation of interactive web applications that employ high quality streaming media, vector graphics, images, and animation. Deployed as a plug-in for the major browsers on the Windows, Mac and Linux (supported by Novell) operating systems, web developers can craft interactive applications that have an identical user experience on the vast majority of web browsers deployed today. Silverlight addresses a disconnect that exists today in web development workflow where the design intent of graphics designers and interaction designers cannot be faithfully communicated to and crafted by the web developers. In Silverlight, this intent is created in design tools like Expression Design and Expression Blend and passed off to web developers in XML-based XAML data files. The fidelity of the designers’ ideas is kept as there is a clear separation between the design in XAML and the code in JavaScript.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

We present a purely functional implementation of the computational differentiation tools — the well known numeric (i.e., not symbolic) techniques which permit one to compute point-wise derivatives of functions defined by computer programs economically and exactly (with machine precision). We show how the use of lazy evaluation permits a transparent and elegant construction of the entire infinite tower of derivatives of higher order for any expressions present in the program. The formalism may be useful in various problems of scientific computing which often demand a hard and ungracious human preprocessing before writing the final code. Some concrete examples are given.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

YouTube, Podcasting, Blogs, Wikis and RSS are buzz words currently associated with the term Web 2.0 and represent a shifting pedagogical paradigm for the use of a new set of tools within education. The implication here is a possible shift from the basic archetypical vehicles used for (e)learning today (lecture notes, printed material, PowerPoint, websites, animation) towards a ubiquitous user-centric, user-content generated and user- guided experience. It is not sufficient to use online learning and teaching technologies simply for the delivery of content to students. A new “Learning Ecology” is present where these Web 2.0 technologies can be explored for collaborative and (co)creative purposes as well as for the critical assessment, evaluation and personalization of information.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Kid Pix® Deluxe 4™ for Schools is a major update of the best-selling education and creativity program. It was designed with extensive input from teachers and students to be the best personal productivity and creativity tool for every K–8 classroom.

In this version, teachers can control which graphic libraries are active for a project. This is ideal for theme-based teaching or special needs students. Teachers can add instructions to project templates, which students can listen to with the bilingual text-to-speech function.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Volocity is an innovative, high-performance imaging system for interactive, time-resolved volume visualization. Volocity is the first, multi-color 4D rendering system designed for biomedical imaging. It allows the scientist to visualize and, for the first time, explore 3D volumes over time.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Animations, whether they are in movies, television, or video games, would not capture the viewer’s interest if they were not accompanied by music. Music can set the tone for a scene and is generally added after the animation has been completed. It takes a large amount of work to coordinate a piece of music with a final animation, especially when specific movements must occur at certain times in the song. This paper describes a method of automatically synthesizing an animation that synchronizes with the input music. Our system allows the user to choose a piece of music and a character and outputs a synchronized animation that expresses the emotion and intent of the music through movement.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

Creating art in a 3D modeling package such as Max or Maya and then trying to get it to work in the Unreal Editor can sometimes be quite a feat, especially if you’ve never done it before. Hopefully this process will provide a basic understanding of the art pipeline for Unreal Ed and answer any questions you may have about getting your static meshes from the 3D package of your choice into the Unreal Editor and into your Mod.
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

This tutorial is intended to work as a student centered learning resource. It will introduce you to the basics of creating 3D models of your building designs using AutoCAD. Use the AutoCAD help menu system as required.

You will be familiar with working in 2D (two dimensions). As you may have already found, this can be quite limiting. You are representing 3D objects in a 2D format, which has then to be interpreted in order to visualise in 3D. Working with a 3D model has many advantages over 2D representations, including:
Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments