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Processing 2: Creative Coding Hotshot
Learn Processing with exciting and engaging projects to make your computer talk, see, hear, express emotions, and even design physical objects Overview In Detail Processing makes it convenient for developers, artists, and designers to create their own projects easily and efficiently. Processing offers you a platform for expressing your ideas and engaging audiences in new ways. This book teaches you everything you need to know to explore new frontiers in animation and interactivity with the help of Processing. "Processing 2: Creative Coding Hotshot' will present you with nine exciting projects that will take you beyond the basics and show you how you can make your programs see, hear, and even feel! With these projects, you will also learn how to build your own hardware controllers and integrate devices such as a Kinect senor board in your Processing sketches. Processing is an exciting programming environment for programmers and visual artists alike that makes it easier to create interactive programs. Through nine complete projects, "Processing 2: Creative Coding Hotshot" will help you explore the exciting possibilities that this open source language provides. The topics we will cover range from creating robot - actors performing Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", to generating objects for 3D printing, and you will learn how to run your processing sketches nearly anywhere from a desktop computer to a browser or a mobile device. What you will learn from this book Approach Using a project-based approach, you will be able to learn the coolest aspects of working with Processing. Each project contains step-by-step explanations, diagrams, screenshots, and downloadable material to make learning Processing even easier. Who this book is written for This book targets Processing developers ,visual artists, creative professionals, and students who want to move to the next level of learning Processing for gaining inspiration, work, or just for fun. The book assumes a basic understanding of programming. However, this book is also recommended to non-artistic readers, looking to expand their graphics and develop their creativity.
266 pages, Paperback
First published May 16, 2013
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8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 23, 2013
I solicited a review copy of "Processing 2: Creative Coding Hotshot" by Nikolaus Gradwohl from Packt Publishing and have just completed 1 of the 9 projects - my first foray into this new frontier that Processing has opened up. The projects are unashamedly geeky, where retro meets the new.
I chose to start with "Project 6 : Fly to the Moon" because I'm somewhat familiar with the subject areas covered and had components and devices that were required at hand. This project uses game development to explore the additional modes in Processing2 i.e. Java, Javascript and Android, and develops a trivial game which runs on the PC, a web browser, a Android emulator and on an Android device. The project was simple to implement yet ambitious in its reach. The clear and concise incremental stepwise instructions belie the underlying complexity of the program and its interfaces. The text is able to simply demonstrate the basic techniques at an introductory level, and therefore the execution is largely an exercise in 'joining the dots'. The writing is a bit terse but I prefer this to a maze of lengthy discussions, which does mean that you need to further explore concepts that interest you on your own.
However, it was not all plain sailing since I had issues with my development environment. I had to manually install the JavaScript and Android modes in the PDE. And experienced a bit of a nightmare with the Android emulator interaction. Conversely, the interaction with my Android smartphone device went off surprisingly smoothly. There is no specific setup section in the book for a development environment - so the book does assume that reader has some prior knowledge of this. To be fair, each instruction step does provides sufficient info to complete the task and the text does allude to some potential pitfalls and also points the reader to additional resources for details. But custom environments may throw up unique issues (which of course is kinda outside the remit of the project). So in these situations troubleshooting may be an effort for beginners or non techies. With this in mind, I would have preferred to see some common setup, installation and troubleshooting details in the book, perhaps as appendices so as not to disrupt the momentum and flow that the author has crafted.
Prior to purchase check out the 'Preface' to see if the project areas interest you and also if the components and devices are readily available or accessible. This book is good for readers who prefer to "learn by doing".
Processing 2: Creative Coding Hotshot
I chose to start with "Project 6 : Fly to the Moon" because I'm somewhat familiar with the subject areas covered and had components and devices that were required at hand. This project uses game development to explore the additional modes in Processing2 i.e. Java, Javascript and Android, and develops a trivial game which runs on the PC, a web browser, a Android emulator and on an Android device. The project was simple to implement yet ambitious in its reach. The clear and concise incremental stepwise instructions belie the underlying complexity of the program and its interfaces. The text is able to simply demonstrate the basic techniques at an introductory level, and therefore the execution is largely an exercise in 'joining the dots'. The writing is a bit terse but I prefer this to a maze of lengthy discussions, which does mean that you need to further explore concepts that interest you on your own.
However, it was not all plain sailing since I had issues with my development environment. I had to manually install the JavaScript and Android modes in the PDE. And experienced a bit of a nightmare with the Android emulator interaction. Conversely, the interaction with my Android smartphone device went off surprisingly smoothly. There is no specific setup section in the book for a development environment - so the book does assume that reader has some prior knowledge of this. To be fair, each instruction step does provides sufficient info to complete the task and the text does allude to some potential pitfalls and also points the reader to additional resources for details. But custom environments may throw up unique issues (which of course is kinda outside the remit of the project). So in these situations troubleshooting may be an effort for beginners or non techies. With this in mind, I would have preferred to see some common setup, installation and troubleshooting details in the book, perhaps as appendices so as not to disrupt the momentum and flow that the author has crafted.
Prior to purchase check out the 'Preface' to see if the project areas interest you and also if the components and devices are readily available or accessible. This book is good for readers who prefer to "learn by doing".
Processing 2: Creative Coding Hotshot
July 29, 2013
This book has a rich set of creative projects, each touching a different domain of interactivity, from audio processing to Kinect, from Arduino to 3D, and many more. Sketches and topics are well explained in an informal manner without too much programming jargon. Introductions to each domain ensure that readers can continue ahead to build more advanced projects of their own. This is also one of the few books available at present that makes use of the new Processing 2.0 libraries. Overall, an excellent book for those who are already familiar with Processing basics and wish to explore the possibilities of Processing. Highly recommended.
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