[audiobook] How Do I Do That in Photoshop?: The Quickest Ways to Do the Things You Want to Do; Right Now! by Scott Kelby at Arts-Photography

Description

Introduced 160 years ago as an attempt to generalize complex numbers to higher dimensions; quaternions are now recognized as one of the most important concepts in modern computer graphics. They offer a powerful way to represent rotations and compared to rotation matrices they use less memory; compose faster; and are naturally suited for efficient interpolation of rotations. Despite this; many practitioners have avoided quaternions because of the mathematics used to understand them; hoping that some day a more intuitive description will be available.The wait is over. Andrew Hansons new book is a fresh perspective on quaternions. The first part of the book focuses on visualizing quaternions to provide the intuition necessary to use them; and includes many illustrative examples to motivate why they are importantmdash;a beautiful introduction to those wanting to explore quaternions unencumbered by their mathematical aspects. The second part covers the all-important advanced applications; including quaternion curves; surfaces; and volumes. Finally; for those wanting the full story of the mathematics behind quaternions; there is a gentle introduction to their four-dimensional nature and to Clifford Algebras; the all-encompassing framework for vectors and quaternions.Richly illustrated introduction for the developer; scientist; engineer; or student in computer graphics; visualization; or entertainment computing.Covers both non-mathematical and mathematical approaches to quaternions.