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Cinder Creative Coding Cookbook: Create Compelling Animations and Graphics With Kinect and Camera Input, Using One of the Most Powerful C++ Frameworks Available
If you know C++ this book takes your creative potential to a whole other level. The practical recipes show you how to create interactive and visually dynamic applications using Cinder which will excite and delight your audience. Overview In Detail Cinder is one of the most exciting frameworks available for creative coding. It is developed in C++ for increased performance and allows for the fast creation of visually complex, interactive applications. "Cinder Creative Coding Cookbook" will show you how to develop interactive and visually dynamic applications using simple-to-follow recipes. You will learn how to use multimedia content, draw generative graphics in 2D and 3D, and animate them in compelling ways. Beginning with creating simple projects with Cinder, you will use multimedia, create animations, and interact with the user. From animation with particles to using video, audio, and images, the reader will gain a broad knowledge of creating applications using Cinder. With recipes that include drawing in 3D, image processing, and sensing and tracking in real-time from camera input, the book will teach you how to develop interesting applications. "Cinder Creative Coding Cookbook" will give you the necessary knowledge to start creating projects with Cinder that use animations and advanced visuals. What you will learn from this book Approach Full of easy-to-follow recipes and images that will teach powerful techniques and algorithms, building from basic projects to challenging applications. Who this book is written for This book is for artists, designers, and programmers who have previous knowledge of C++, but not necessarily of Cinder.
- GenresProgramming
336 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 2013
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 24, 2013
The Cinder Creative Coding Cookbook is a new release from UK based Packt Publishing () and is the first serious endeavor I’ve seen to tackle the comprehensive C++ framework, Cinder in a eay easy for newcomers. The book really does serve as a great primer to get you up and quickly working with this framework which is not necessarily intended for novice users. Examples are clear and the code is well written overall.
I was pleased to see a great variety, especially in the beginning. This book does an excellent job of introducing a very large variety of material, and does so adeptly. The Creative Coding Cookbook touches on most if not all of the most important features or Cinder such as OSC and using blocks (Cinder's add-on system), drawing in 2D and 3D, and even dips a couple toes into using shaders. The index itself reads as a great list of just what is possible and within reach for novice Cinder users.
While the recipes are quite varied, there is little continuity between them. I was left slightly wanting to have the examples build on each other a bit or at least have a common thread tying them together, just for the reason that you rarely have a project that relies on just one of these tricks. Additionally, some of these recipes cover material that is already pretty well documented in the samples that currently ship with Cinder. While, the flocking tutorial is nice in this book, the native Cinder sample is really a great work and insight into understanding why flocking even works.
Also worth mentioning is that there are some platform dependent examples that you'll undoubtedly run into. For example the audio FFT examples is OSX only while the Kinect guestural examples uses the Windows-only Kinect SDK. With a bit of help from Google, you’ll find out that you can use the platform agnostic KissFFT, and openNI libraries, but no such mention in the book itself.
Lastly, nearly all of these examples are made up of lines and circles. While I understand the value in keeping this graphically simple for examples, I wouldn't have minded slightly more bombastic material from a creative coding book. Having said so, this book does do a great job of setting you up with parameters windows so you can tweak several of the examples. Any ambitious person would do well to fiddle with settings before moving on to subsequent recipes.
These gripes are however minor, and I would myself recommend this book to someone starting out. That fact that I have to reach for such specific examples is to the book's credit. Cinder is a remarkable, albeit challenging framework to learn, and this book would serve as a fantastic primer for anyone coming from Processing, or openFrameworks who is looking to expand their knowledge.
I was pleased to see a great variety, especially in the beginning. This book does an excellent job of introducing a very large variety of material, and does so adeptly. The Creative Coding Cookbook touches on most if not all of the most important features or Cinder such as OSC and using blocks (Cinder's add-on system), drawing in 2D and 3D, and even dips a couple toes into using shaders. The index itself reads as a great list of just what is possible and within reach for novice Cinder users.
While the recipes are quite varied, there is little continuity between them. I was left slightly wanting to have the examples build on each other a bit or at least have a common thread tying them together, just for the reason that you rarely have a project that relies on just one of these tricks. Additionally, some of these recipes cover material that is already pretty well documented in the samples that currently ship with Cinder. While, the flocking tutorial is nice in this book, the native Cinder sample is really a great work and insight into understanding why flocking even works.
Also worth mentioning is that there are some platform dependent examples that you'll undoubtedly run into. For example the audio FFT examples is OSX only while the Kinect guestural examples uses the Windows-only Kinect SDK. With a bit of help from Google, you’ll find out that you can use the platform agnostic KissFFT, and openNI libraries, but no such mention in the book itself.
Lastly, nearly all of these examples are made up of lines and circles. While I understand the value in keeping this graphically simple for examples, I wouldn't have minded slightly more bombastic material from a creative coding book. Having said so, this book does do a great job of setting you up with parameters windows so you can tweak several of the examples. Any ambitious person would do well to fiddle with settings before moving on to subsequent recipes.
These gripes are however minor, and I would myself recommend this book to someone starting out. That fact that I have to reach for such specific examples is to the book's credit. Cinder is a remarkable, albeit challenging framework to learn, and this book would serve as a fantastic primer for anyone coming from Processing, or openFrameworks who is looking to expand their knowledge.
August 1, 2013
Creative Coding Cookbook is great continuation of official Cinder tutorials and walkthroughs. It requires some prior knowledge of C++ and Cinder itself. Unfortunately on the time of book writing Cinder was in v0.8.4, and it's still in heavy development, and some things have changed in next version (0.8.5), and I suppose they will change a lot in the future. Happily this only concerns mostly some parts of first chapter (Getting Started), as new version of TinderBox changed a lot in ways you create new project and add blocks to it.
Next few chapters quickly move to more interesting topics, including integration with OpenCV as well as using external protocols (OSC and Syphon), and exporting data from Cinder (static graphics and video). It's great that authors show many possibilities to use Cinder with other tools.
Authors also show how to create more advanced particle systems (including using FFT and physics), advanced 2d and 3d graphics (including shaders), and animations. Most of the examples are not connected to each other, and code snippets are very cleanly written, allowing user to reuse them in other projects.
Next two chapters move to user interaction, starting from simple examples of mouse events, to more complicated issues of tracking motion with camera, tracking objects, and using Kinect. Unfortunately chapter about Kinect is only for windows user, and book doesn't cover other libraries to use with it (like OpenNI).
Last chapter briefly explains audio input and output usage in Cinder, including FFT rective particle system.
Overall it's really great book, aimed at people with initial knowledge of C++ programming, looking to expand their knowledge of Cinder. Despite some minor drawbacks I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for more advanced Cinder tutorials!
Next few chapters quickly move to more interesting topics, including integration with OpenCV as well as using external protocols (OSC and Syphon), and exporting data from Cinder (static graphics and video). It's great that authors show many possibilities to use Cinder with other tools.
Authors also show how to create more advanced particle systems (including using FFT and physics), advanced 2d and 3d graphics (including shaders), and animations. Most of the examples are not connected to each other, and code snippets are very cleanly written, allowing user to reuse them in other projects.
Next two chapters move to user interaction, starting from simple examples of mouse events, to more complicated issues of tracking motion with camera, tracking objects, and using Kinect. Unfortunately chapter about Kinect is only for windows user, and book doesn't cover other libraries to use with it (like OpenNI).
Last chapter briefly explains audio input and output usage in Cinder, including FFT rective particle system.
Overall it's really great book, aimed at people with initial knowledge of C++ programming, looking to expand their knowledge of Cinder. Despite some minor drawbacks I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for more advanced Cinder tutorials!
September 27, 2013
New people wanting to get involved with Cinder will find this book useful. Giving a good insight on how to get the most out of using cinder. The book includes plenty of example code and clear explanations of what does what. The chapters often include “there is more� sub-sections, pointing to additional information for advanced use.
I can tell you as an advanced user of cinder that this book does not cover all of the pitfalls and small annoying quirks, you will still have to put your foot in the hole and look them up on the online forum. But it does do a very good job at it’s main goal: being accessible and clear for the new user.
Some special featured sub-chapters like the MayaGui, OSC, OpenCV, Syphon integration are quite useful for folks who are interested in setting up those specific modules.
Negative mention to chapter 11, after reading the book description and considering how there were even a few chapters about getting OpenCV working with Cinder, one would expect some deeper examples on the topic of camera interaction. The examples are good, but the topic was hardly well covered, comparing for example with how well particles were. Similarly, regarding the Kinect, despite being a keyword on the book description, it’s only briefly covered in two examples, both of them using the official Windows SDK, ignoring all the work that has been done with OpenNI on multi-platforms before Microsoft launched the official SDK.
Positive mention goes out to the particles chapter(s) which are quite comprehensive. It includes both basic and more high level information, coupled with explicit example code, which you’ll find useful regardless of your prior knowledge on particles.
July 12, 2013
Creative Coding Cookbook
I absolutely LOVED reading this book! I really enjoy the cause and effect style the author uses. When you a presented with an issue and given the work around it really helps cement your knowledge. All of the examples in the book are all usable and you can adapt them as you learn more.
I like to keep my reviews short and simple but this book really is worth the cost!
I absolutely LOVED reading this book! I really enjoy the cause and effect style the author uses. When you a presented with an issue and given the work around it really helps cement your knowledge. All of the examples in the book are all usable and you can adapt them as you learn more.
I like to keep my reviews short and simple but this book really is worth the cost!
April 4, 2017
Completely awesome book! If you have the basics of Cinder...then this book is for you...otherwise...this book is for you anyway -;)
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