Chapter 1, Learn Cinder Basics – Now!, provides a brief introduction about creative coding and Cinder. It will help you to set up and test Cinder on Mac OS X and Windows machines.

Chapter 2, Know What is Possible – The Cinder Toolset, introduces you to various basic tasks that can be performed with Cinder through compiling, running, and discussing some of the Cinder sample applications.

Chapter 3, Initial Setup – Creating the BaseApp, explains how to create a base project by using Cinder's integrated tool TinderBox, and from scratch.

Chapter 4, Prepare Your Brushes – Drawing Basic Shapes, provides insight into Cinder's built-in basic shape drawing functions that are usually there in other creative coding frameworks.

Chapter 5, Making Use of Images – Loading and Displaying, explains loading and displaying of images, which is an important part of every creative coding language. In this chapter we will learn how to load and display images from local and networked storage with Cinder.

Chapter 6, Accelerate – Creating Generative Animation, teaches the basics of generative or procedural animation with Cinder. Throughout the chapter we will create an infinite looped animation application.

Chapter 7, Working with Images – Real-time Postprocessing and Effects, explains the several features that Cinder provides to let you manipulate images, and moving image frames down to the pixel level without loosing speed. In this chapter we will learn how to use Cinder for applying and creating basic effects for still images and real-time use.

Chapter 8, Adding Depth – Cinder 3D Basics, introduces you to the basic 3D aspects and practical methods, as well as the 3D primitives that can be drawn with Cinder.

Chapter 9, Enter Sound – Adding Sound and Audio, explains how to load, modify, play back, and use sound files, as well as live audio input to draw and animate.

Chapter 10, Talk to the User – Adding Interactivity and UI Events, explains how to handle mouse, keyboard, and other events in Cinder.

Appendix A, Basic Cinder Functionality Reference, helps you find some basic Cinder functionality used in this book for later reference.

Bonus Chapter, Escaping Singleness – Communicating with Other Applications, is not present in the book but is available for download at the following link: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Escaping_Singleness.pdf

All you need is a Mac OS X or Windows computer. The code samples in this book are tested on Mac OS X 10.6+ and Windows 7 machines. There is a list of development software for each operating system and further details about it will be discussed in the following chapters. In this book we will make use of the following software:

Mac OS X

Windows

Both

This book is for those who want to make a change either from a lower-level creative coding framework or from other kinds of coding to creative coding with Cinder. You will not find an introductory chapter about programming in general in this book, you should know something about it already.

This book is for you if you have previous experience with text-based programming languages such as Processing, ActionScript, JavaScript, or visual ones, such as Pure Data, Max MSP, VVVV, or Quartz Composer.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

void TextBoxApp::render()
{
  string txt = "Here is some text that is larger than can fit 
  naturally inside of 100 pixels.\nAnd here is another line after 
  a hard break."; [default]

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

void TextBoxApp::render()
{
  string txt = "Here is some text that is larger than can fit 
  naturally inside of 100 pixels.\nAnd here is another line after 
  a hard break."; [default]

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message. If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

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