Essential Programming for the Technical Artist

This book is based on a successful curriculum designed to elevate technical artists with no programming experience up to essential programming competency as quickly as possible. Instead of abstract, theoretical problems, the curriculum employs familiar applications encountered in real production environments to demonstrate each lesson.

Written with artists in mind, this book introduces novice programmers to the advantageous world of Python programming with relevant and familiar examples. Any digital artists (not just technical artists) will find this book helpful in assisting with day-to-day production activities.

Concentrating upon subjects relevant to the creation of computer graphic assets, this book introduces Python basics, functions, data types, object-oriented programming, exception handling, file processing, graphical user interface creation, PEP 8 standards, and regular expressions. Programming within the SideFX Houdini 3D animation software provides a familiar environment for artists to create and experiment with the covered Python topics.

Chris Roda is a Technical Art instructor at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA), a graduate degree program in interactive, real-time application development at the University of Central Florida. Early in his career, Chris was a visual effects artist in the film and television industries where he contributed visual effects for films such as Spiderman, Titanic and Fifth Element. Before coming to FIEA, Chris was a CG Supervisor at Electronic Arts, where he worked on video game titles such as NCAA Football and Madden NFL Football. In addition to teaching, Chris works on generating tools and pipelines for the creation of digital immersive experiences; the amalgamation of the narrative of films, the interactivity of video games and the immersion of theme parks.