DIGIPENDENCE - declare yours!

If you’re familiar with animating text in After Effects, you might glance at Apple’s Motion and think that it offers many of the same features for flying text around. While that is true, if you look a little closer you’ll find that Motion can create some really great looks that you just can’t get with After Effects. In this article, I’ll review the text capabilites of both programs, and lead you through in detail how to typeset and animate text in Motion. At the end, I’ll discuss some additional details that separate the two programs. (Note: This article compares Motion 3 and After Effects CS4. Motion 4 has added some new text capabilities.)

Read the six-page full tutorial.

If you’ve been interested in learning how to create an iPhone app, but only know coding and scripting languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, well, there’s a course for that (and it’s free!):

Well-known tech publisher O’Reilly is offering a free 5-part live online course, “Learn to Build iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript“.

The course - which runs from January 5th to February 2nd, 2010 - will be of interest to people who want to learn how to program web-based iPhone applications. The course is being taught by Elisabeth Robson, co-author of O’Reilly’s “Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML“. In her capacity as Special Projects director at O’Reilly Media, she has also developed a number of workshops, including, “Build, Compile, and Run Your iPhone App in 2 Days” and “Developing Android Applications“.

No experience creating iPhone applications is required. All that is needed is a working knowledge of the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. O’Reilly promises that “Each session offers easy-to-follow, hands-on lessons. You’ll begin the course by building iPhone apps with standard web tools, then you’ll learn how to create native Cocoa-based iPhone apps using Apple’s tools.” View a 22 minute course overview here - http://blip.tv/file/2962732

People who are unable to attend or who did but want to watch the course over and over will be able to buy a video of the sessions, each of which is 90-120 minutes in length. Code examples and slides are included. The video will cost U$35 until February 5, 2010. After that, it will be U$79.

Official Description:

In this four-session video workshop, you’ll quickly learn how to create simple web apps with features that take advantage of the device’s remarkable functionality. You’ll also learn to use Apple’s tools to create native Cocoa-based iPhone apps. Each video session offers an easy-to-follow, hands-on lesson. It’s the perfect way to get started with iPhone app design.

Presented by CreativeTechs in partnership with O’Reilly, each session offers easy-to-follow, hands-on lessons. You’ll begin the course by building iPhone apps with standard web tools, then you’ll learn how to create native Cocoa-based iPhone apps using Apple’s tools. It’s the perfect way to get started with iPhone app design, and all you need to know in advance is HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics.

• Build working web apps for the iPhone, using HTML and CSS web standards
• Learn what a mobile web app is and how it differs from a native iPhone app
• Create gestures and animation using JavaScript and the iUI and jQTouch libraries
• Integrate your web app with several iPhone features
• Build simple native iPhone apps using the TapLynx library – without programming!
• Learn how to build on your new-found iPhone web app development skills

UPDATE: While browsing the O’Reilly site, I discovered this related ‘early release’ ebook, “Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript“. From what I can tell, this is almost like a sneak preview as it seems the ‘dead tree edition’ hasn’t gone to print yet, and the title is only available at the moment as a PDF. The ebook is U$23.99 while book itself will be U$29.99; if you want to get both the book + the ebook, the price will be U$32.99 which is a very good deal.

Ars Technica has published An introduction to 3D on the Mac, Part I: models & textures:

“If you’re just getting into 3D rendering on the Mac and are overwhelmed by the number of packages and approaches, Ars is here to help. We take you step-by-step through rendering and texturing a 3D model, with videos and advice on tools and techniques.”

The landscape of CG applications is vast and very confusing to 3D graphics newbies. These apps span the gamut from free modelers to beefy, Python-scriptable animation packages, standalone renderers and a lot of little programs that glue them all together into a complex and intimidating workflow. People looking to get into game development know that ZBrush is popular, but Mudbox looks good, too, so they’re at a loss over which to learn. Program X looks like it does everything, but does it? What’s “ambient occlusion” and why would I ever need it? These questions and more will complicate life for the aspiring 3D newb.

3D magazines provide helpful tutorials, but since every application is also a potential advertiser, they tend to avoid saying that one package is best for a particular task, or that program X really sucks at particle animation, and so on. This two-part series will cover these differences while discussing specific workflows where these packages are used in areas like character modeling, motion graphics for TV or photorealistic rendering for architectural visualization. By the end of this first article, you should have an idea of how to approach modeling, sculpting, and texturing to achieve professional-looking results; the second article will focus on animation and rendering. You will still have lots of questions at the end, but 3D is inherently complex so there’s not much getting around that. Think of this article as an introduction to the very basics.

Read the full eleven page tutorial (there are also videos). Ars Premier Subscribers can view it all on one page or download it as a PDF. The second (and final) part is to be: Rendering and Animation.

By now, most people have heard of Google Chrome, the new browser from the giant internet company which promises to revolutionize web browsing and using applications via a browser. It utilizes the WebKit layout engine and application framework. According to Wikipedia, Chrome - which derives its name from the graphical user interface frame, or “chrome”, of web browsers - is “as of December 2009, the third most widely used browser, with 4.4% of worldwide usage share of web browsers.” Google released the entire source code in September 2008 as an open source project entitled Chromium.