This book is about creating animated visual art, game objects and engineering simulations. The book provides over 100 ready-to-run Python programs. Each program was tested on Python versions 2.6, 2.7 and 3.2. This book aims to get readers quickly to the position where they can start crafting code that lets them make 3-dimensional animated images. In addition it will give the reader the tools and capability of learning to use the same techniques used in making the rich graphical worlds seen in modern video games. This book is a recipe cookbook of programs that illustrate many of the ideas and concepts used in the creation of computer games and simulations.
About the Author: Mike Ohlson de Fine is a graduate Electrical Engineer specializing in industrial process measurement and control. He has a Diploma in Electronics and Instrumentation from Technikon Witwatersrand, an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Cape Town, and a Masters in Automatic Control from Rand Afrikaans University (now re-named the University of Johannesburg). He has worked for mining and mineral extraction companies for the last 30 years. His first encounter with computers was learning Fortran 4 using punched cards on an IBM 360 as an undergraduate. Since then he has experimented with Pascal, Forth, Intel 8080 Assembler, MS Basic, C, C++ and Java but was never satisfied with any of these. Always restricted by corporate control of computing activities he encountered Linux in 2006 and Python in 2007 and became free at last. As a working engineer he needed tools that facilitated the understanding and solution of industrial process control problems using simulations and computer models of real processes. Linux and Python proved to be excellent tools for these challenges. He is now an author of books on Python programming for simulation in games and engineering processes. He is an advocate of Free and Open Source software and engineering. One of his dreams is to set up virtual workshop for his countrymen and people in other poor countries across the globe to enable the bright youngsters of these countries to be intellectually free at last. He relaxes by hiking the foothills of the lovely Rivierzonderend mountains in a little village where he lives.