Rss Bot

They say the journey of education is never-ending, and that's why you need SitePoint Premium Courses: Lifetime Subscription. Keep up with the ever-changing demands of today's tech-savvy workforce by accessing SitePoint's impressive library of e-books, courses, and tutorials. You'll learn everything about topics such as HTML, JavaScript, and blockchain. By adding important skills to your resume, you'll be more valuable to employers and become an in-demand member of the workforce. You'll even get special deals on external courses, and you won't have to deal with pesky ads on any SitePoint sites. Get SitePoint Premium Courses: Lifetime Subscription for just $39.99. Related articles: Get started with HTML canvas 16 amazing HTML examples Nail your HTML with this cheat sheet View the full article

In the early days of the internet, the web was largely open and decentralised. But in the roughly 25 years since, the consumer internet has changed: today, the web is more consolidated and centralised in its structures than ever before. Network effects tend to favour a winner-takes-all dynamic and so we have, by and large, one really big search engine, one really big social network and one really big ecommerce site. 7 hot web trends for 2019 But consolidation isn’t the only thing that has changed. Over time, security and privacy safeguards have been added, like end-to-end encryption for web traffic (although less so for email). These safeguards have been tacked onto existing structures and amended to standards. They hadn’t been part of the internet’s original design; they simply weren’t necessary in the web’s original, academically focused ecosystem. For emerging tech today, especially the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), it’s very different. We are now creating a data layer that extends to, and shapes, our physical environments. In this context, openness and safeguards for security and privacy are essential. We now casually embed internet-connected microphones and cameras in living rooms and bedrooms. This different context requires different thinking. We need to be able to trust the technology we live with. To think this through, consider three different contexts: the smart home, the smart city and algorithmic decision-making (AKA artificial intelligence or AI). Emerging tech in context Let’s first look at IoT in the smart home. Voice assistants have microphones that by definition are always listening (to a degree) or at the very least could be. In political science, the potential or threat of abuse is considered just about as bad as the real thing because it can lead to chilling effects – if someone feels like they might be spied on, they change their behaviour. How is this relevant to how we design connected products? As we add more and more microphones (and other sensors) to our physical environment, we multiply the potential for abuse. If we want folks to use connected products, we need to ensure they know they can trust them. Otherwise the privacy of our homes is a thing of the past. Large-scale data-driven systems with little openness, oversight, accountability and transparency are likely to cause massive damage Now zoom out of the home and onto the city: when smart-city technology with all its sensors and algorithms is rolled out across the urban fabric, it applies to everyone. Nobody can opt out of public space. So this had better work – and work well – for everyone. Instead of efficiency, smart cities should promote openness, be transparent, and allow for well-intentioned ‘hacking’ (in the sense of modifying for unexpected needs). Finally, the third frontier: algorithmic decision-making or AI. Algorithms make decisions that impact all areas of our lives, from managing resource allocation to predictive policing. And so we need to make sure that we understand the algorithms – effectively making them more open – in order to guarantee appropriate mechanisms for governance, accountability and recourse. Governments need to understand that algorithmic decision-making directly affects people’s lives. People are wary of emerging technologies and you can’t blame them. Large-scale data-driven systems with little openness, oversight, accountability and transparency – in other words, systems that aren’t built within an ethical, healthy framework – are likely to cause massive damages and unintended consequences. So let’s do better. More trustworthy tech To be clear, this isn’t an exercise in making consumers trust emerging technologies more – it’s an exercise in making emerging technologies more trustworthy. Today’s consumers don’t have good ways to make informed decisions about, say, a connected device’s trustworthiness. In his book Radical Technologies, Adam Greenfield sums up the dilemma: “Let’s be clear: none of our instincts will guide us in our approach to the next normal.” Gut feeling won’t cut it. We need better mechanisms, design practices and tools. Luckily, there are promising approaches to tackle this. As an industry, we must follow through with best practices in all things data-related. As consumers, we need to demand better from industry. And as citizens we need policy makers to get smart about regulation. Fortunately, after the Snowden revelations shook consumer trust in connected devices like never before, things have been looking up. Policy makers are slowly starting to get ahead of technology, rather than play catch-up. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been the first major regulatory initiative in this space that tries to protect consumer data at scale. (If and how the GDPR will play out over time remains to be seen.) California followed up with the California Consumer Privacy Act, which offers GDPR-like provisions. Digital wellbeing In the tech industry, there is a growing awareness of the need to design emerging tech to be better and more open – digital wellbeing initiatives by Apple and Google and the debates on how to thwart fake news are just two current examples of the industry trying to get their house in order. Consumers benefit from all of this but they still haven’t had good tools to evaluate which products or companies deserve their trust. This, too, can change. As an example, take a concrete project we have initiated this year: the Trustable Tech Mark, a consumer trust mark for connected devices. Developed by the ThingsCon network with support from Mozilla, the Trustable Tech Mark will soon start offering an assessment framework to determine which connected devices are trustworthy. It looks at five dimensions: openness, privacy & data practices, security, transparency and stability. Trustable Tech Mark will offer an assessment framework to determine which connected devices are trustworthy The Trustable Tech Mark aims not just to weed out the really inferior products at the bottom of the pile but also to highlight the ones that are truly trustworthy and employing – or establishing – best practices for user rights. For example, imagine an intelligent smart-home assistant that does all the data processing on the device without sending sensitive data to the cloud. Or smart lighting that avoids privacy risks by not using microphones in its light bulbs. Or a company that ensures that in case of bankruptcy or an acquisition, user data remains safe and the code is released as open source, so the product will work even after the company is gone. The Trustable Tech Mark is only one of what we hope will be many initiatives to empower consumers to make better-informed decisions and make emerging tech more open. If industry, policy makers and consumers all can agree that transparency, decentralisation, accountability and openness are conditions that enable trust in technology, then we can look forward to an exciting – rather than scary – decade of emerging technology. As designers, developers, and technologists, we have an outsized role to play in this journey but we can – and should – also demand better as consumers. Industry and policy makers will follow this pressure. In the end, all parties benefit from better, more trustworthy emerging tech. Illustration by Kym Winters This article was originally published in net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 312 or subscribe. Read more: How to switch off after a long coding session 18 top CSS animation examples 14 awesome design books that aren't about design View the full article

This one-day Christmas deal from Amazon slashes the cost of Sony’s original full-frame mirrorless camera, the A7 – plus a 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 standard zoom lens – to just £509 with cashback. That's a ridiculously low price for what was one of the best cameras you could buy when it first launched. For today only, Amazon itself has cut £366 from the list price, taking it down to £659. With Sony offering a further £150 cashback, this one-day deal is better than the one we saw on Amazon Prime Day (which sold out within 24 hours) and equals the lowest price we saw on Black Friday. The best Christmas gifts for kids The Sony A7 is a great camera for anyone looking to get into photography, or upgrade to a full-frame or mirrorless camera. It’s been replaced now by the A7 II and A7 III, but it was a landmark camera when it first launched, packing a 24.3MP 35mm full-frame sensor and lens interchangeability into a compact body half the weight of leading DSLRs. At just over £500, this is an unbelievable price for what remains a very good camera. As well as squeezing a full-frame sensor into a compact body, the Sony A7 was also notable when it launched because it adopted Sony’s smaller E-mount – giving the camera great quality, portability and improved usability. Image quality is great, with high sensitivity and extreme dynamic range, low noise, maximum detail and realistic colours. Performance is perhaps a little sluggish compared to the newer models, but we're still big fans of this camera – and at this price, it’s a very affordable way to get into full-frame photography. This Christmas deal runs out tonight, so take a look before then if it appeals. Read more: The best camera for photography The best tripods to support your camera The 10 best point-and-shoot cameras in 2018 View the full article

The trojan purports to be a battery optimization app - and then steals up to 1,000 euro from victims' PayPal accounts. View the full article

At its worst, data visualisation can just be an exercise in dressing up dull statistics in fancy clobber to try to make them look more interesting, and usually failing. At its best it can be a fantastic way of communicating otherwise impenetrable facts and figures in a way that makes them instantly accessible, and this dataviz project from The Pudding is definitely in the latter category. Areas of dense population show up as virtual mountains on the map It can be hard to grasp just how populations are spread out around the world, but The Pudding's Population Mountains project presents this data in a way that enables you to immediately identify the world's population hotspots. Using data from the Global Human Settlement Layer – which uses a mix of satellite imagery, census data and geographic information to create population density maps – the project creates a detailed 3D height map, where the most heavily populated areas appear as virtual mountains. Looking at a zoomed-out map of the the world in this view, you can instantly identify the major cities as vivid spikes on an otherwise flat plane; zoom in closer and you can see how some cities feature a lot of people crammed into a relatively small space that looks like a thick needle, while other cities with sprawling suburban areas appear as more gentle inclines. Here a big city is surrounded by lots of smaller, densely populated areas In The Pudding's post about the project you'll find some fascinating studies of how population density can vary across the world; in some places, you'll find a huge proportion of the population packed into major cities, with the surrounding areas appearing as almost flat spaces by comparison, while in others, such as Bengalaru in India, you can see that the vast city is surrounded by loads of amazingly dense urban settlements. See the difference between the north of France and the south of England Another interesting comparison is between London and Paris; London is a chunky peak among a load of the sizeable population hills that make up the Home Counties, while Paris is a vast spike, with nothing but the occasional foothill making up the rest of the north of France. It's easy to explore the data for yourself You can read the Population Mountains post over at The Pudding for some great curated views and accompanying insight; alternatively you can head straight for the interactive map and see the data for yourself. There are two datasets to play with; the most recent population data from 2015, and an older set from 1990, and there's even an option to compare the two datasets to see how populations have shifted over the last quarter of a century. Related articles: The 62 best infographics How to create amazing infographics The data trend set to revolutionise app design View the full article

By researching your market's keyword demand you can not only learn which terms and phrases to target, but also learn more about your audience and their user experience. Your primary objective shouldn’t be ranking for just one single keyword but increasing your site's total domain authority through content quality and relevancy to your target audience. Keywords have long been a useful web design tool as they play a central role in SEO and in driving traffic to websites. Originally the mechanics were straightforward, although today the use of keywords is much more complicated. Google’s algorithms have become much more complex (Rank Brain AI, in particular), and they now evaluate the intention behind your query and then search for a 'best fit' candidate in its network of indexed sites. Clarifying the intentions and purpose of your business to Google is therefore paramount in achieving good quality traffic. The modern customer journey is also complex, so it’s important to focus on the key moments that can help inspire people to interact and engage with your business. With the evolution of SERP features and a more personalised approach to search results, you cannot solely rely on a page 1 keyword ranking to get you as much traffic as possible. Here's how you can master keyword research… 01. Understand short and long tail Researching the terminology that inspires your audience and encourages them to convert is crucial. These high intent keywords are an excellent opportunity to connect with qualified, conversion-ready audiences. These keywords can be broken down into: Short tail (shorter, more generalised with greater search volume). Long tail (longer, more specific with less search volume, which also has an impact with voice search). These variants will have an impact on impressions, click through rates and competition. 02. Start with ideation and research Ideation is a great way to identify your niche A good place to start is with ideation. Brainstorm your ideal customer's keyword search terms and establish a baseline list. These seed keywords define your niche and describe your service. Get into the mindset of your audience: who they are and what are their pain points; get to know them better by studying their terminology. If you can, utilise your ‘search box’ result terminology to outline what your target customer is thinking during their buyer journey. Brainstorm their Awareness stages (inspiration-pain points), Consideration stages (research-comparison) and Decision stages (purchase-advocacy). 03. Google your initial ideas Google itself can help you identify useful phrases The next step is to understand what keyword terminology, in line with your ideation list, is used by your audiences in the search engines. Investigate the SERP and review what Google believes is the most relevant to your keyword. There is also an opportunity to review the ‘searches related to’ field in Google (bottom of the page). This will showcase a wealth of related keyword searches aligned with your initial thoughts. You can also head over to Google Trends and review how your keywords have evolved. This will give you a good indication of interest and related topics due to seasonality, geography/location and media coverage to add further weight and terms to your list. 04. Don't forget about Bing Google isn't the only search engine you need to keep in mind Bing is increasing its share of the search engine market, with the mass release and rollout of Windows 10. The savvy marketers will capitalise on this and understand that Bing may have a certain demographic to target. Keyword terminology will therefore be a key factor with this channel and nuisances between this and Google will be evident. Research keyword terminology around this older demographic and the opportunities that come from it. 05. Analyse your competitors' organic keywords One way to beat the competition is to study them Having an insight into what your competition is doing well – and what keywords they rank for – can give you a huge advantage. Review the websites appearing on the first page naturally alongside your ideation list. Dig deeper into these websites, understanding the keyword terminology used within their URLs, header hierarchy, meta titles and descriptions. Site Explorer in AHRefs enables you to browse the keywords your competitors rank for, closing the gap between those terms you are not taking advantage of and ultimately increasing traffic to your own domain. The Content Gap Tool also highlights keywords that all your competitors rank for, but you don’t. 06. Analyse your competitors' PPC keywords SpyFu can help you study competitors Look at what keyword terms the competition is bidding on. You can do this as per your initial research process utilising your ideation list within the search engines. As well as utilising third-party tools to save time, a useful tool that can help with this is SpyFu. Simply enter the competitor’s website domain and press enter. 07. Understand what you already rank for Make the most of your existing rankings with Google Search Console As well as building your keyword list, knowing what you already rank for can increase opportunities to target keyword placements outside of page 1 positioning. This can highlight ‘easy wins’ with page 2 positions that need a simple push! Go to Google Search Console, click Search Traffic > Search Analytics, filter by Queries and click ‘Clicks/ Impressions/CTR/Position’. Then select Dates and Filter by Position to view the positioning and terminology. 08. Set primary and secondary keywords Now you have a list, select a primary keyword and a set of related secondary keywords that share your searcher's intent (understanding what their motivation is crucial). The intent behind these keyword terms and phrases should be the same, so the same landing page content can ultimately serve it. Employ these primary, secondary and related keywords in the page's content, metas and links. 09. Gain some metrics Get greater insight into your rankings with Google Keyword Planner Use your keyword list inside the free Google Keyword Planner. Here you can review these metrics: Search Volume: understand the search demand for a keyword and utilise this alongside Google Trends for insights on seasonality. Keyword Difficulty: a balance between the business value of the keyword and its ranking difficulty. Invest in where you will receive the best return and be patient for the results. Clicks: Having volume is great, but pay-per-click (PPC) adverts, localised map listings and rich snippets can immediately answer or steal clicks. Be mindful of this metric when selecting keywords. 10. Structure your keyword list Having generated a list and used the metrics to identify the very best keywords, it’s now time to add some structure to your list. Ideally this process is whatever makes the most sense to you. For example, group by keyword topic and landing page, or group by user intent, or group by business value. This article was originally published in issue 280 of creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 280 here or subscribe to Web Designer here. Related articles: 5 ways to boost your website's SEO Climb the Google rankings: How to master SEO 10 must-know SEO tools for search success View the full article

As designers, you'll have an appreciation of unique and lovingly crafted gifts. Hunting out indie gems can be easier said than done, however. To help you out, we've rounded up some of the best independent shops around – these are the places to snap up a unique gift this holiday season. Some of these brands have physical shops in the US or UK, but most are mainly based online and will ship worldwide – just check postal times to make sure your gift will arrive in time! Can't find what you're after? Take a look at our gift guides for illustrators, graphic designers, freelancers and kids – or the best stocking fillers for designers. 01. Ugmonk Ugmonk's products sport simple, fresh graphics In 2008, designer Jeff Sheldon spotted a gap in the market for quality products featuring simple, fresh graphics. He launched Ugmonk to fill that niche, and it was a resounding success. Alongside the T-shirts Sheldon started with, the shop also sells hats, notebooks and a range of leather and canvas goods, including wallets and coasters. Ugmonk partners with an organisation called Rice Bowls, which supports children in orphanages around the world – so you can shop in the knowledge that some of your cash will be going to a good cause. 02. Nuno All of Nuno's products are made from recycled PET bottles Nuno sells the most colourful and vibrant scarves, robes and eye masks. This indie shop's USP is that all of its products are made from its own fabric – NeoSilk – crafted entirely from recycled PET bottles, making it super eco-friendly. It was launched by graphic designers Ann Hintze and Cassandra Zimmerman, and is based in Utah. As well as their own designs, the duo also collaborate with other artists (the scarf pictured features a design by artist Jason Naylor). 03. Studio Neat Neat creates smart products to solve tricky problems Founded in 2010 by designers Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost, Studio Neat sells simple products that solve interesting problems. The duo first invented the Glif – a tripod mount for smartphones, and its Kickstarter exceeded its goal 10 times over. More cunning products followed, from the Cosmonaut (a wide-grip stylus for touchscreens), to the intriguing Neat Ice Kit (for making perfect ice). This is the place to shop for gadget lovers who thought they had everything. 04. Rock Cakes Rock Cakes' patches and pins aim to spread a little joy Rock Cakes is run by Brighton-based illustrator Sarah Meredith, who launched the company in 2008. In this shop you'll find quirky jewellery, patches, pins and brooches, all of which aim to "spread a little joy and happiness". "I’d always had a burning desire to have my own business – to have creative freedom and work for myself," she says. "I wanted to make and sell the jewellery ideas that popped into my head. I love clothing as well as jewellery – patches bridge this gap and are also super-accessible." 05. Oliver Jeffers Stuff Jeffers' charming illustrations have made their way on to T-shirts and collectables Oliver Jeffers is a best-selling picture book artist and author who also runs an online store of delightful products. As well as these his well-known books, you can pick up T-shirts and sweaters (for adults as well as children), cool collectables and prints, all in Jeffers' unique and charming style. Read our interview to find out more about the artist. 06. Illustrate Illustrate's owners print other creatives' artworks onto phone cases, skateboards and more Illustrate is a slightly different proposition. Founders Toby Brusdon and James Katz have joined forces with different visual artists (they represent 10 in total at the moment), and turn their original artwork into unique gifts. You can pick up everything from screen-printed garments to cool stationery and skateboards. There are physical shops in Bristol and Cardiff, and the online store ships around the world. The shop also has a strong eco-friendly ethos. 07. Finest Imaginary Finest Imaginary specialises in laser-cut perspex jewellery Finest Imaginary is an independent British studio run by designer-maker Kim Lawler. It launched in 2007 and sells jewellery, pins and patches, homeware and stationery. Finest Imaginary built its reputation on intricate laser-cut perspex designs, which are assembled by hand in Lawler's studio in Yorkshire. 08. Abi Overland Abi Overland's crockery is whimsical and unique Abi Overland sells beautiful, unique dinnerware. Overland studied illustration in Brighton before launching her own business. Her intricate work features surreal and otherworldly landscapes, which is screen-printed or hand-painted onto bone china to create eye-catching tea sets and crockery. "I loved the idea of creating works of art that were accessible to people in their everyday lives, and ceramics had always been an interest of mine," says Overland. Read more: How to succeed as a designer-maker What NOT to get a graphic designer for Christmas 8 business tips for selling design goods View the full article

Experts sound off on how companies can work with their third-party suppliers and partners to secure the end-to-end supply chain. View the full article

If you haven't updated your Creative Cloud account yet, you may want to think twice – if you're set in your ways when it comes to keyboard commands and Photoshop shortcuts that is. That's because popular commands, such as holding Shift to scale images proportionately in Photoshop CC, no longer work in the same way. So much for your creative muscle memory. For creatives that haven't been keeping their finger on the pulse of all the latest Adobe developments, the updates have come as an unwelcome surprise. Having got so used to pressing Shift when scaling images that it became second nature, the change has been slammed as unnecessary chaos that's set to disrupt the workflow of artists and designers. Despite all the frustration the update has caused designers, it appears that a lot of people are unaware of the change. With this in mind, Alex Center, former design director at Coca-Cola resorted to the nuclear option of user irritation: taking to Twitter and posting a complaint in Caps Lock. It appears that Center wasn't alone, both in his annoyance and his bemusement that nobody seemed to be talking about the update. Dozens of creatives piled in with complaints about the new approach, which turns the Shift command on its head. Now Photoshop scales proportionately by default, and when you hold down Shift this is deactivated. As if this wasn't counter-intuitive enough for designers used to Photoshop's old ways, the command isn't even consistent across other Adobe platforms. For example, as one Twitter user pointed out, if you want to paste a shape layer into Photoshop from Illustrator, the old Shift command still applies. The misery doesn't end there though. As well as sympathising with Center's Tweet, plenty of other designers were keen to point out other changes, such as Adobe's decision to replace the Undo command. News of this irritation might come as a surprise to Adobe. It was only a couple of months ago that the updates were announced at Adobe MAX 2018 as the 'tools creatives have been waiting for'. And when they were unveiled as part of a demonstration by Adobe's Principal Worldwide Design and Photography Evangelist, Terry White, the new systems were greeted by rapturous applause. So why the anger now? Perhaps it's a case of something that sounds useful in theory proving to be pesky in practice. Perhaps people are just resistant to any change, but will grow to love this feature. Or maybe, this really is an update some users been craving. Either way, if you absolutely have to scale proportionally with the Shift key, there is a way around the update... Will Adobe give in and reverse or modify its updates? Watch this space... Related articles: 75 best Adobe Illustrator tutorials The 18 best Adobe Illustrator plugins 6 amazing free Adobe CC alternatives View the full article

We came to the review of Microsoft’s all-new Surface Go with a simple question in mind: is this a product for people working in the creative industries? But before we can answer it, we need to take an in-depth look at what’s on offer in Microsoft’s smallest and cheapest 2-in-1 laptop to date. The first thing to mention about the appearance of the Go is its diminutive size. At just 10 inches, it’s a new form factor for the Surface, and it goes head-to-head with the standard iPad. Also new to the Surface line is a smoother bezel around the edge of the device, which makes it far more comfortable to hold in the hand, especially given its weight of just 0.52kg (0.77kg with the Type Cover attached). Although the base Surface Go can be bought for £379, to unlock the device’s true potential you will need to spend some more money on the additional Signature Type Cover, and throw in a Surface Pen for good measure. Surface Go Signature Type Cover Let’s start by looking at the Signature Type Cover, which is priced at £99. Coated in Alcantara – a microfibre material used in high-end car interiors and the like – the Signature Type Cover keyboard boasts a premium look and feel, whilst also being extremely durable. And the functionality of the keyboard is of an equally high standard: the trackpad is responsive and accurate; the keys have just enough travel distance; and swipe gestures are fully supported. The cover connects via a magnetic coupling, and when it’s attached you can either lay the keyboard flat, place it at a slight angle for more comfortable typing, fold it behind the device to use it in tablet mode, or use it as a screen protector. The Signature Type Cover keyboard boasts a premium look and feel The Surface Go’s PixelSense touch display boasts punchy colour, decent brightness, and a 180-degree viewing angle. Embedded within the 1800×1200 resolution display you get front (5MP) and rear-facing (8MP) cameras, as well as a pair of 2W stereo speakers, which provide surprisingly good separation, and come with a ‘Dolby Audio Premium’. As with other Surface devices, on the reverse of the unit Microsoft uses a metal kickstand to support and angle the device, which gives a huge amount of flexibility. These are impressive features, but we’ve left the best until last, and that’s how the device performs with its companion stylus. The Surface Pen The Surface Pen (sold separately for £99) is the recommended stylus for use with the Surface Go, and whilst it is a little too expensive, we can’t imagine using the Go without one. Built on Wacom’s Penabled technology, and latterly on N-Trig technology, the Surface Pen has gone through four generations, and in its latest incarnation it can detect 4096 levels of pressure, which – despite being about half of what you get on a top-end Wacom pen – is still suitable for all but the most demanding users. On top of this, you also get over 1000 levels of tilt response. And with just 21 milliseconds of latency, the Surface Pen is now, according to Microsoft, "the fastest digital pen on the planet”. Under the hood Under the hood, the Surface Go is powered by a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Pentium Gold processor and an Intel HD Graphics 615 graphics card. And whilst the base model includes 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage, the device we tested is the 8GB version (with 128GB of SSD storage), which is priced at £599. This test device performed well across all but the most intensive uses. And we were delighted to see that Microsoft has retained the MicroSD slot in the Go, as with previous Surface models, enabling you to easily expand your storage. What can this thing handle? Whether you’re jotting down thoughts and sketches in OneNote, creating prototypes in Adobe XD, or making vector art in Affinity Designer, the experience is a good one. However, we did find some brush stutter as loads increased, and whilst the Go is great for basic inking and sketching, we wouldn’t recommend it for more complex projects. (For example, Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo take around 20 seconds to open, with a RAW photo taking around 30 seconds to import.) For apps such as Word, Chrome, Excel, and OneNote you really don’t notice any dip in performance with the Surface Go, and we were surprised at just how capable it is – especially for the price. One place where it’s hard to make compromises is gaming, and this is an area where the Go performs poorly. Taking Fortnite as an example, even with the lowest screen resolution, and all details dialled down, it’s still borderline unplayable. Minecraft fares better – which you’d expect – but any game with requirements beyond this is going to struggle. Out of the box, the Surface Go comes loaded with Microsoft’s Windows 10 Home in S mode. (For those not familiar with S mode, it’s a specific version of Windows that only allows you to install apps from the Microsoft Store.) This provides better performance and security, and is geared towards an educational setting, where you don’t want third-party apps being installed on the device. However, switching to the standard Home edition can be done in a few clicks, and we experienced no issues when doing so. Once you’ve switched out of S mode, though, there’s no rolling back– so be aware that it’s a one-way street. The Surface Go is great for basic inking and sketching, but we wouldn’t recommend it for more complex projects Perfect? Not quite. If there’s a chink in the Surface Go’s armour, it’s the battery-life. Despite an advertised nine hours of juice, we struggled to stretch it past seven, and this was with relatively lightweight tasks such as web-browsing and word processing. So that sucks. But on the bright side, it charges quickly, and you get a full battery in around two hours, which trounces the 4 hours that it takes to charge a 9.7-inch iPad Pro. And whilst this poor battery life might not be a deal breaker – because the Surface Go does so many other things so very well – it might be enough to make you think twice. But it’s our only gripe, beyond a lack of serious gaming chops, which even the harshest of critics would forgive in such a low-priced, and otherwise excellent laptop. View the full article

If you don't know how to use Microsoft Excel, you're lacking a pretty essential skill for employment. In the United States and in plenty of other countries around the globe, it's one of the most widely used office software across all different industries – an estimated 750 million people use it globally. In this course, you'll learn everything from how to create clear spreadsheets, how to manage large quantities of data, and how to use Excel's AddIn and PowerPivot functions. With 190 lectures and 15 hours of content that you can access anytime, you'll soon be a pro at Excel. Get Microsoft Excel from Beginner to Advanced for $10.99, or give someone else the gift of Excel knowledge this holiday season. Related articles: Take your freelance career to the next level The best Microsoft Surface deals in 2018 Artist creates masterpieces using Microsoft Excel View the full article

Microsoft patches nine critical bugs as part of December Patch Tuesday roundup. View the full article

Threat actors have updated their malware to include a macro-based delivery framework. View the full article

The update includes a raft of critical code-execution problems. View the full article

Issues still exist when it comes to securing biometrics. View the full article

For a long time Adobe has been number one when it comes to creative software. And for designers who can afford its Creative Cloud packages, Adobe's offering of industry-leading tools, including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC and more can be too tempting to resist. The best free graphic design software This year has seen challengers to the throne though, with Affinity broadening its range of tools and capabilities to try and convince Adobe-doubters to jump ship. But what if you can't even stretch to Affinity's one-off payment? What if you're operating on a budget of nothing or you simply want to check out a new tool that might offer a way of working that suits you better? Well, you're in luck, because here are six Adobe Creative Cloud alternatives that are free to download. 01. Photoshop alternative: Pixlr Pixlr is packed with over 600 effects Looking for a free version of Photoshop? Pixlr is one of your best shouts. While it's designed for non-professionals, the cloud-based set of photo editors include some pretty advanced tools, such as cropping, red-eye removal and teeth whitening. Suitable for iOS and Android, Pixlr is available to use on desktops, tablets and smartphones, or it can be used as a web app. And thanks to its similar layout to Photoshop, Pixlr is easy to pick up if you're already familiar with Adobe software. 02. Lightroom alternative: RawTherapee RawTherapee's in-depth tools offer extensive customisation If you've always wanted to give Lightroom a whirl, be sure to try RawTherapee. As its name suggests, this tool is capable of editing Raw photo files, as well as other formats. With its extensive range of editing tools, you'll be able to correct distortion, boost colours, recover details and much more. These aren't basic capabilities either. Due to its advanced options, RawTherapee allows users to tweak their photos until they're looking exactly how they want. And thanks to its multi-threading and batch processing, RawTherapee is one the the most powerful Lightroom alternatives we've come across. What's more, you can download it on Mac, Windows and Linux. 03. Illustrator alternative: Inkscape Inkscape can trace bitmap images and import Illustrator files Seeing as it focusses on the SVG format, Inkscape has become a popular alternative to Illustrator. Unlike other free tools on this list though, Inkscape is supported by advanced features that you don't often find elsewhere, including alpha blending, cloned objects and markers. On top of running SVGs as its native format, Inkscape also fills in for Illustrator nicely because it has full support for different colour modes. Users will immediately notice that Inkscape has a simpler interface than Illustrator, but this doesn't mean it can't create intricate and detailed artwork. Definitely one to check out on either Windows, Mac or Linux. 04. InDesign alternative: Scribus Hobbyists and professionals can get a lot out of Scribus Due to its reliability and price tag of zero, Scribus is a commonly-used InDesign alternative for creatives on a budget. This professional page layout program is suitable for Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems, and even comes with a range of press-ready output that's ready to roll out of the box. Headline features for Scribus include CMYK colours, spot colours, ICC colour management and versatile PDF creation. It also supports vector drawing tools, and thanks to an active community surrounding Scribus, you're never alone if you need some troubleshooting. 05. Premiere Pro alternative: DaVinci Resolve Correct colour and master audio with DaVinci Resolve Premiere Pro alternative, DaVinci Resolve, is a professional video editing tool that's so good that it's used on big-budget film and TV productions. Yet it's also a free package that can be run on Windows, Mac and Linux. Specialising in colour correction and post production audio, DaVinci Resolve boasts impressive features such as curve editors and primary colour wheels. It also runs facial recognition tracking, giving users the option to play with skin tones, eyes and lip colour. Factor in that DaVinci Resolve gives users the opportunity to mix and master up to 1,000 channels, and you've got a tool that goes above and beyond the expectations of its price tag. Put simply, this is possibly the strongest contender for best free Premiere Pro alternative. 06. After Effects alternative: Blender A single After Effects alternative is hard to find Finding a single alternative to After Effects is a bit of a tall order. There isn't one magic bullet solution, but tools like Blender help to fill in some of the gaps if you don't happen to run Adobe software. A free package for Mac, Windows and Linux, Blender can be used to create ultra-realistic animated graphics and 3D visual effects. Both amateurs and experts alike use its texturing, particle simulation and compositing tools to create jaw-dropping work with an added dimension. Given the unique niche After Effects has carved for itself, though, you're going to want to back up Blender with other tools such as visual effects editor Fusion, and video editing software Filmora (which you'll have to pay for, though there is a free trial available). Related articles: The 9 best alternatives to Photoshop 6 great alternatives to Adobe Illustrator Crack Adobe CC with this keyboard cheat sheet View the full article

What designer hasn’t thought about bringing their 3D art to life in the air in front of them? In the last few years we have been able to do just that, at least inside a VR head-mounted display and with controllers in our hands. Gravity Sketch started life on an iPad and was followed by the VR version which can now be experienced in an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and the Microsoft Mixed Reality headset. There’s a basic version with some limitations (only four layers, limited exports etc) and a subscription model to access the full feature set. Buy Gravity Sketch now from £22.99 on Steam Gravity Sketch: Useful toolset Unlike a lot of the other VR creation tools that have cropped up, Gravity Sketch is much more like a NURBS-based design package: more like Rhino than ZBrush. There’s no sculpting with Voxels yet but that’s not really what it’s all about. This tool is aimed at designers who are used to curves, patches and manipulating geometry with control vertices (points). The vast majority of designers who started posting work online were from an automotive or design background and that is reflected in the sort of work that is being produced. A designer can literally sketch out the frame of a vehicle with strokes in the air and then patch those strokes together with editable surfaces. The core of Gravity Sketch is making shapes with surfaces that have editable control points. With Release 1.5, there are more features including drawing surfaces between strokes The basic toolset found on your main drawing hand controller includes Ink, Strokes, Revolve, Curved Surface, Volume and Primitives. While that doesn’t sound like a huge list, it pretty much gives you what you need to make anything. The Ink and Stroke tools enable you to paint strokes in the air and they are either ribbon like or made from a shape. In addition to that, you can taper and even edit the control points once you have drawn out the stroke. There is a full colour wheel at your disposal and strokes can be painted in your chosen colour and edited afterwards. The Revolve tool is a lathe of sorts and by dragging out a stroke or clicking points you can create wheels, cylinders, jet engines and the like. Again, after the initial shape is created with a single click you can go back in and edit the control points to refine the design. Curved Surface allows you to click in two places in space and a surface will be created in the space between. By dragging from there you pull out sheets of geometry to create your surfaces. In edit mode you then snap those points to the strokes you’ve already made and in that way build up your design. Volume replaces Filled Surface and is a way to create a volume of geometry by clicking or drawing out a shape. Add to that primitives like sphere, cube and triangle and you have a pretty all-encompassing creation toolset. There’s also some pre-made mannequins that you can build around. Gravity Sketch: New features This Spider Tank was created in under an hour inside Gravity Sketch. Rendered in Cinema 4D using Redshift Version 1.5 was released in September and brought in a raft of new features the community has been calling for. For example, Group/Ungroup helps to keep your scenes organised, and Bridge Canvas brings the ability to stretch a surface between strokes and means you can quickly build up a model with a lot less cleanup. As mentioned, the Volume tool improves on an already existing Filled Surface tool, and SuperEllipsoid adds more functionality to the primitives meaning you can hit more complex shapes quickly. There’s also a new Orthographic Viewport, tapering options for strokes and the ability to edit normals which means you can actually rotate parts of a stroke to make them more visually appealing. Gravity Sketch: Is it for you? Automotive is one of Gravity Sketch’s strengths and seeing what designers like James W Robbins can do with it confirms that This software will appeal to industrial designers, product designers, technical illustrators, concept artists and anyone wanting to quickly draft out their ideas without needing to learn a huge amount of commands and tools. It might not be for you if you want to focus on 3D printing, as the surfaces generally aren’t sealed ready for print without lots of post work. It doesn’t mean they can’t be, but there’s definitely lots to do to make an exported model print-ready. One thing that will surely be in coming releases is the ability to edit and remove parts of a curved surface. Things like fillet, chamfer and Booleans must be on that list and that will make an amazing piece of software even better. If you design for a living and are looking for new ways to explore your ideas, then take a look at Gravity Sketch. It’s an affordable way to design in VR. If you are all about sculpting, painting or 3D print-ready models then look elsewhere (for now!). Buy Gravity Sketch for £22.99 on Steam Read more: How to sculpt a character in VR View the full article

If you're working in design, it's vital that you never stop learning; it's tempting to think that you might know it all, or at least enough, but if you want your work to stay fresh then you owe it to yourself to keep on expanding your design knowledge. Learning doesn't generally come free, though; you can stock up on free ebooks, but if you're really keen to boost your design wisdom then you're going to have to spend some money on graphic design books. Would you buy that for a dollar? Of course you would However, right now there's an offer available that you'd be a fool to pass up. Humble Bundle is best known for putting together bundles of video games at amazingly low prices to raise money for worthy causes, but right now it's offering a stack of design and product management ebooks from O'Reilly, and it's the perfect opportunity to expand your design library for not very much money and feel really good about it. For just $1 you can get your hands on five great ebooks: Prototype to Product by Alan Cohen Designing with Sound by Amber Case and Aaron Day Designing Products People Love by Scott Hurff Understanding Industrial Design by Simon King and Kuen Chang Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever It's a great selection for anyone looking to grow their design knowledge; but wait, there's more! We totally want to read Tragic Design If you're willing to shell out $8 or more, you'll get another five ebooks, covering topics such as design sprints and emotionally intelligent design, and also including what has to be our favourite book title of the year: Tragic Design, all about how poorly designed products can anger, sadden, exclude, and even kill people who use them. And hey, if you're happy to spend eight dollars on 10 books, it's not much more of a stretch to splash a whole $15 (or more if you prefer) for the full set of 15 books so that you can learn about product management as well as designing with data and how to design bots and voice user interfaces. Seriously, it's worth it for those bonkers animal-based O'Reilly covers; the rest is a bonus As deals go, this is pretty damn sweet – if you bought these ebooks separately they'd set you back up to $458. The ebooks are available in PDF, MOBI and ePub formats so you'll be able to read them on pretty much anything, and it's all being done in the name of raising money for Code For America, which aims to create government services that are simple, effective, and easy to use, for everyone. This incredible deal's due to run for the next 13 days, so get in there now and sort yourself out for reading matter over the Christmas holidays. Related articles: 29 web design tools to speed up your workflow 20 awesome books for web designers and developers The best Christmas gifts for graphic designers View the full article

Want to build something that makes people's lives easier, in the form of an app? First, you'll need to gain the necessary technical know-how. With Hello Web Books: Learn to Build & Design Web Apps, you're getting a video bundle that will teach you how to build an app from start to finish. The bundle has two parts: Hello Web App, and Hello Web Design. The former guide you through the process of building an app with Python and Django, while the latter teaches you web design concepts in a streamlined fashion. It's no wonder this bundle was successfully financed via Kickstarter. These 45 videos will get you where you need to go in the world of app development. Get it now for just $29. Related articles: How to make an app How to design app icons How to build an AR app View the full article

The consumer version of Google+ will now be shut down in April instead of August after a bug was found that impacts at least 50 million users. View the full article

Earlier this month, creatives from all over Europe gathered for Adobe's Creative Meetup in London to talk new Creative Cloud innovations and be inspired by some of the UK's most creative minds. Creative Cloud Evangelist Rufus Deuchler kicked the evening off, regaling some of the magic of Adobe MAX, the world's largest creativity conference held earlier this year in LA. In an awe-inspiring talk, Deuchler teased the audience with news of major updates to Adobe's flagship titles, including Photoshop, InDesign and Premiere Pro. Get Adobe Creative Cloud here And the innovation didn't stop there. The atmosphere in the room was electric as Deuchler introduced four next generation Adobe innovations: new video capture and editing app, Premiere Rush CC; all-new painting and drawing tool, Project Gemini; augmented reality app, Project Aero; and Photoshop for iPad. If the mind-blowing demonstrations of these apps are anything to go by, these are four creative tools you're going to need in your arsenal next year. Let's take a closer look... Premiere Rush CC In recent years, video has rapidly grown to dwarf other content that's being shared and consumed online. But creating quality video content doesn't come easy, or cheaply, and has remained out of reach for many. Until now. Adobe's all-new video editing application Premiere Rush CC enables anyone and everyone to easily create and publish professional-looking videos. Harnessing some of the power and basic functionality of its older sibling Premiere Pro – such as the timeline, colour and audio tools – Rush simplifies the video production process for non-professionals. Once edits are finished, Rush will automatically export in the appropriate formats for the selected social platform. "You don’t have to be a video, colour or editing expert to create quality videos," said Deuchler. Premiere Rush also features Adobe Sensei (artificial intelligence) technology in the form of auto-ducking, which automatically lowers the volume of an audio track when someone is speaking. If video is something you want to be doing more of in 2019, Premiere Rush CC is a must-have tool. And the best news? Premiere Rush CC is available direct from Adobe as a standalone app for £9.98/$9.98 a month. Rush will also be part of the All Apps subscription and Adobe is also including the program with the Premiere Pro CC single app subscription. The price includes 100GB of cloud storage, which will help manage all those video projects. Project Gemini Kyle Webster takes the stage at Adobe MAX to showcase Adobe's Project Gemini incredible capabilities If you're into traditional art, or on the hunt for an art app that 'does it all', you're in luck: Adobe has been working on something just for you. 2019 will see the arrival of Project Gemini, Adobe's next generation painting and drawing app, which combines Photoshop's powerful brush engine with an entirely new category of groundbreaking live oil and watercolour brushes. The Project Gemini team, lead by renowned artist Kyle T. Webster have put Gemini through rigorous testing with professional artists to ensure that the drawing and painting tools are as true to life as possible. And the results are absolutely mind boggling. Don't believe us? See for yourself in this demo from renowned artist and Project Gemini lead Kyle T.Webster. Project Aero Adobe senior product manager Zorana Gee presents a jaw-dropping Project Aero demonstration at Adobe MAX Speaking of mind-boggling innovation, it doesn't come much better than Project Aero, Adobe's powerful new augmented reality (AR) authoring tool. We've witnessed Aero in action, and it's fair to say this app is truly pushing the limits of creativity and storytelling in a way never seen before. "AR is the next breakthrough medium for creative storytelling," said Adobe senior product manager Zorana Gee, as she demonstrated Project Aero on stage at MAX. As Gee transformed a 2D illustration into an immersive 3D experience that she was then able to dive into (yes, you read that right), it was hard not to get excited by seemingly endless possibilities Aero offers. With Project Aero set to be released in 2019, next year could well be a creative game-changer. See Project Aero in action below and sign up for early access to the app here. Photoshop for iPad Ah, the one so many have been waiting for! 2019 is the year Photoshop will become available on the iPad. And we're not talking a watered down version either, but full Photoshop for iPad, meaning you can open and edit (huge) PSD files on an iPad, using the same tools they are used to on desktop. Photoshop for iPad uses the same base code as the desktop version, which will include all the core tools and offer the option to add filters, work with layers and make selections and adjustments, and much more. It's worth noting this new Photoshop won't be exactly the same as the desktop version, however, as it will have a "reimagined user experience" that is optimised for touch devices, making the most of the iPad's Pencil, touch gestures and mobility. Not only will creatives be able to work on PSD files on the iPad, but files will also sync across devices, via the new Cloud documents. This will mean you can begin working on your desktop, make some changes on your iPad, and then go back to desktop, without having to faff around with importing or exporting files. Photoshop for iPad will be available on its own, or as a partner to Photoshop on the desktop in 2019. Impressed by these new tools? Check out Rufus’ talk on-demand here. View the full article

You're reading Pantone’s Color of The Year is Living Coral, Examples of Use, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral is the color that will represent 2019. Vibrant and warm, this color sends a powerful message on many levels. Pantone selects a color at the end of each year to represent the following year, and while … View the full article

Marmoset Toolbag is by no means new to the 3D art industry. It’s been out for years, and it’s known for its robustness and ease of use, especially when it comes to showing off game assets and smaller, confined projects. Basically, Marmoset Toolbag is a live viewer that gives you instant feedback when you change lights, materials and so on. For me as an artist who’s used to making brush marks on paper or in Photoshop CC and instantly seeing the result, having to wait for renderers to finish to see the tweaks I made to my scene has always been a surefire way of getting me out of the creative flow. I’ve used Marmoset Toolbag for many years, but only after I started working with VR modelling and painting have I come to realise just how powerful a tool it can be. It has its limitations, and it’s not good in all scenarios, but what it does, it does really fast and really well. Turns out it’s the perfect companion for VR sculpting and drawing. In this Marmoset Toolbag tutorial, I’ll talk about how I use Marmoset with content made in VR. I use mostly four VR programs: Quill, AnimVR, Oculus Medium and MasterpieceVR. All of them can output models with vertex colours that we can then use in Marmoset. By using vertex colours, you’ll be able to completely skip the normal UV unwrapping and texturing workflow, which will save you precious time. Download the resources for this tutorial 01. Prepare content From AnimVR, go to the Save tab and select Export as FBX. From Quill, go to the Save tab and save as FBX. At the moment, animation exported from Quill and AnimVR doesn’t work right in Marmoset Toolbag, so deselect Export Animation if you have animation in your file. Make sure that your scene is aligned to the scene grid, as that way your model should align correctly in Marmoset Toolbag. 02. Basics of Marmoset If you have a big scene and you experience camera clipping, just go to the camera settings, head to Lens and drag the Near Plane slider until your scene shows up correctly The most important elements are lights, camera settings and rendering settings. We’ll talk about each element in detail as we need them. Marmoset uses a hierarchy of elements which lets you, for example, drag a light source under a camera to make it a ‘child’ of it. 03. Quill and AnimVR The first models we’ll be setting up are from Quill, but the principle is the same with AnimVR. Both programs enable you to paint in VR, without any light sources or material types. None of the programs have any built-in post-processing features, and this is where Marmoset comes in handy. You’ll be able to tweak curves and levels, add noise, glow and various camera effects such as depth of fi eld and distortion. First, we want to get as close to what we saw in VR as possible and then work from there. 04. Import into Marmoset Toolbag View all sides of exported objects by deselecting Cull Back Faces Press File > Import Model and locate your file. Hit Import. The model should appear in your scene stack. With objects exported from AnimVR and Quill, you’ll most likely have to deselect Cull Back Faces. Since most of the time you’re basically painting with flat planes in both programs, the backside of those planes will otherwise appear transparent. By turning of Cull Back Faces, both sides are visible. 05. Light your scene Experiment with lighting settings to make your drawings look natural Trying to actually light the geometry from Quill and AnimVR requires a very tight ‘drawing’ for it to look good. Due to the nature of the programs, a lot of the imperfections of the geometry they output are hidden by the fact that the surfaces are unlit. Generally, hard-surface elements do better than organic elements when you try to add lights to your scene. Also, elements made up of as simple and as few strokes as possible tend to do well. As soon as you build an element that consists of a lot of brush strokes, you’ll start to notice that it works better unlit. It’s a good idea to play around a bit with the settings. One drawing might look good lit and with reflection and glossiness enabled, yet another might look terrible. 06. Unlit scene Be sure to check your scene for transparent elements The first version is the one that will be closest to what you saw in VR. To get this result, go to your material and make sure Albedo is set to Vertex Color, Diffusion is set to Unlit, Microsurface is set to Gloss 0, Reflectivity is set to Specular with 0 intensity and finally Fresnel is at 0. If your scene contains transparent elements, make sure to enable Vertex Alpha under Albedo, and under Transparency you should set Cutout and use Albedo alpha. Also, Channel should be set to A. In our example some post-processing has been applied to add depth of field and to tweak the colours. We’ll get to that later on. 07. Light types Brightness, Distance and Contact Refinement are the most important light settings For the next two material/lighting scenarios, we need lights. Each light type in Marmoset has common settings and light-specific settings. The most important light settings are: Brightness; Distance, which has a big impact on the look of volumetric light when using fog; Contact Refinement, which does exactly what the name implies; and the shape settings, which scales the light caster and affects the sharpness of cast shadows. A small light caster gives sharp shadows, and a large one gives soft shadows. If you experience blocky shadows, go to the rendering settings and up the shadow resolution, or try to enable the Use Cascades option under Shadows. With very large scenes it might not be possible to have sharp shadows due to the way Marmoset calculates shadows. In those cases spotlights with a small radius work best, and if that doesn’t help, up the light caster scale to soften the shadows. In the above image, in the first example on the left I have a spotlight with a Brightness setting of 5, a Distance setting of 1.3 and a width of 0.3. Notice how soft the shadows appear, and how pronounced the volumetric light rays are. Jump to the Add Fog section of the tutorial for more information on how to achieve this. The second example is a directional light with a width of 0 which gives very hard shadows. The last one is an omni light with a low Distance setting, a medium-sized light caster and a fog set to react to lights. We’ll cover HDRI lights in the last part of the tutorial. 08. Lit scene Useful shortcuts that you should know are Ctrl+F, which frames the selected object, and Spacebar which hides all toolbars In this version, we use the same material for the whole scene. Once you get more comfortable with Marmoset, you can make as many individual materials as you like and apply those to the different layers in Quill or AnimVR scenes. Start off by adding a light to your scene. In my case, I added a spotlight above the house with a angle setting that’s large enough for the light to illuminate the house and the surrounding garden. I can’t see the light at the moment, due to the ‘Unlit’ property of my material. To get the material to react to the light source, you should set Albedo to Vertex Color, Microsurface to Gloss 0.3, and Horizon Smoothing to 0. Reflectivity is set to Specular with 0.006 intensity, just to get a small reflection. Fresnel is set to 1. You also need to set Diffusion to Lambertian or one of the other techniques, depending on your material; just don’t set it to Unlit. Under Render settings, enable Local Reflections and Enable GI. I set GI brightness to around 4. This basically turns all your objects into light casters which will bounce the light around in your scene to give a more realistic result. Depending on the size of your scene, you might have to up the GI resolution or tweak the Voxel Scene Fit slider. As you can see, not all elements look equally good with those settings. Particularly the girl and laundry suffer from a very uneven surface. To get usable results with scenes like this, you’ll have to experiment quite a bit… or you could go to the next step and get the best of both worlds! 09. Combine techniques Combining light techniques can benefit the whole composition As we saw above, some elements look good unlit, while others benefit from lights and shadow. So what we can do is combine the two techniques. This is a bit of a ‘hack’ and won’t work in all scenarios. For example, you’d expect a character standing in a strong cone of light to cast a shadow. But in this case, since the girl is sitting like she is, we don’t need her to cast a shadow. For most of the elements in the scene I use the material we created in the step above, except for the girl and the laundry to which I apply the Unlit material. 10. Have fun! Once you've got the hang of the basics, it's time to experiment Now that you have an idea about how materials and lights work with Quill and AnimVR scenes, it’s time to experiment. In this version I tried to go for a night-time look, and kept the girl unlit while everything else is lit. I toned the vertex colour of the girl down a bit, by applying a local colour on top of the vertex colour. There’s some pretty obvious banding going on in the grass plane, but this could easily be painted over in Photoshop for a more finished look. Being able to play around with mood in your VR drawings like this is pretty powerful for look development, concept art or illustrations in general. 11. Add fog Atmospherics like fog help to add a sense of depth One of the biggest challenges with unlit scenes is to convey distance, and atmospherics can help with that. To add fog to your scene, click the New Fog button at the top-left corner of the screen. Play with the settings to get the look you want. The settings under Illumination are especially important if you want a dramatic god-ray effect. To actually get the rays to show up, you obviously need a light source for them to emit from. So make a spot, omni or directional light behind some of your scene elements, and tweak away at fog and lights settings. 12. Prepare in Medium This leads us to the second part of the tutorial, where I’ll talk about how to present scenes from Medium or MasterpieceVR in Marmoset Toolbag. From Oculus Medium, export your file as either OBJ or FBX. OBJ merges all your layers into one, and FBX retains layers. Depending on how large and complex your scene is, it might be a good idea to decimate your model, either using the built-in decimation tool in the VR program, or through programs such as ZBrush or 3D-Coat. Generally I try to keep the polygon count below 10 million in Marmoset. 13. Prepare in MasterpieceVR Sculpting and drawing in VR is mercifully quick From MasterpieceVR, export your file as FBX. MasterpieceVR doesn’t support layers per se, but you can draw with polygons, a bit like what you do in Quill and AnimVR. These strokes are each exported as a separate layer if you export as FBX. Depending on the type of scene I’ve done in MasterpieceVR, I might take the model into ZBrush to combine polygon strokes into meaningful groups, instead of having each stroke be one layer. The model I’ll be setting up in the second part of this tutorial is a quick scene I sculpted in MasterpieceVR. Speed is one of the biggest strengths of VR sculpting and drawing, and this scene took a bit less than an hour to sculpt in VR. Now let’s see what a bit of light and materials can do! 14. Basic setup With the Transform category, you can get the lighting exactly right Start out by rotating your imported scene. I usually make a new shadow catcher object and rotate the model according to that. You can make numeric inputs in the Transform category under your imported object if you need more precision. You might also want to scale up or down elements in your scene. You can switch to transform mode by hitting ctrl+R. To get back to move mode, hit ctrl+T. 15. Find a suitable environment HDRIs work the same in Marmoset as they do in other 3D programs HDRIs in Marmoset are the last light type we need to cover. You’ll find those under the Sky object in your scene stack. You’re probably familiar with HDRIs from other 3D programs. They work about the same in Marmoset Toolbag, with the added functionality of a ‘light editor’ that allows you to click the preview of the HDRI image, and place actual lights that you can then tweak based on the colours in the HDRI. In the example here you see the difference between just lighting the scene using the HDRI and then using both HDRI and child lights. I placed a child light directly in the centre of the sun in the HDRI, which gives me cast shadows that match the sun placement. You can tweak the child lights by clicking them underneath the Sky object. When you rotate the HDRI environment, the child lights rotate too. 16. Vertex colour Just like the Quill scene, glossiness and reflection can be easily adjusted For this scene I use the vertex colour directly from MasterpieceVR. This is the same procedure as with the Quill scene. Go into the material, choose Vertex Color and tweak glossiness and reflection until you’re happy with the result. In the example, I’ve added vertex colour to the ‘solid’ part of the MasterpieceVR sculpt, leaving only the polygon strokes uncoloured. 17. Finish the basic materials Banners are positioned to make the most of the lighting I do the same for the polygon elements in the scene. At the moment, the scene looks bland and we really need some light. I plan on having the banners cast coloured lights on the surroundings and ground floor, but for now they’re just their local colour. 18. Let there be light Spotlights can be easier to adjust than directional light I add a spotlight almost directly above the scene and tweak the brightness and shape until I’m happy with the result. I find the spotlight is easier to manipulate than directional light when using fog and god rays, because of the distance setting. 19. Subsurface scattering Be sure to Enable GI to get the most out of your lighting To get the effect of the light shining through the banners, I need to enable Subsurface Scatter in the Diffuse setting of the material for the banners. Remember to turn on Enable GI in the Global Illumination settings under Render. This will enable coloured light to pass through the banners and illuminate the ground plane and surrounding buildings. As you can tell, the difference is night and day! 20. Expand the scene Duplicated elements help to give a scene variety The MasterpieceVR sculpt doesn’t cover as much space as I need, so to expand the scene, I duplicate the sculpt and rotate it to increase the length of the street in a modular fashion. Generally when doing sculpts like this, I’ll duplicate elements and move them around to add variation to the scene. You’d be amazed how much you can get by ‘cheating’ like this. 21. Extra lights Small shop lights help to give the scene extra depth and activity Finally, I add some additional lights in the small shops, and a Fog object to add atmosphere. I tweak the settings until I find a result I like. Notice the nice rays of light we get due to the small confetti-like objects in the air, and the banners which break the light into smaller rays of light. 22. Extra settings Distortions help to simulate a camera lens effect I added depth of field (you choose your focus point by pressing the scroll wheel), barrel distortion to get a fisheye lens effect, chromatic aberration to simulate a camera lens effect, lens flares, and tweaked the colour settings by changing Tone Mapping to Filmic and adjusting the curves, contrast and saturation. I also added a vignette effect and some noise to the final image and voila, we’ve reached the end of the tutorial. Feel free to reach out over social media or email if you have questions about the workflow. This article was originally published in issue 240 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 240 or subscribe to 3D World here. Related articles: Level up your VR art How to bring a 2D character to life in VR The best VR headsets for 2018 View the full article

You're reading Hand Drawn New Year Postcards (Free PDF), originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Happy holidays from Designmodo! How long has it been since you sent a postcard? It’s the most magical time of the year and these are the perfect moments to thank your family and friends for being in your life. To celebrate … View the full article

If you've ever wished you could replicate the effects of a traditional collage maker in your website layouts, this is the tutorial for you. The web design tutorial will look at three CSS properties: mask-image, clip-path and shape-outside. Even if you have used them, don’t worry. I’ll show examples that will help you create effects you probably haven’t seen on many websites. 18 top CSS animation examples My biggest inspiration in terms of using the mentioned properties is traditional collages. I was wondering if was possible to create them in a web browser, without using any graphics editors or software. With the magic of CSS, it’s totally doable! Another bonus of creating them with code is having them scalable, animated and interactive. Before you start, make sure you have the following: You will need: Your favourite web browser and developer tools – I recommend using Google Chrome since it supports all the features I use in this tutorial A code editor Assets such as images or SVG files – you can download the ones that’s we’re using in this tutorial here Mask images that overlap text CSS masks enable you to create special effects – like enabling a site heading to selectively appear and disappear as the user scrolls up and down the page (contrast this image to the one above) Masking is the first feature I’d like to show you. It helps to build more creative shapes and layouts on the web by telling your browser which asset elements should be visible. Masking can be done in three different ways: using a raster image (that is in PNG format with transparent parts); CSS gradients; or SVG elements. Note that unlike a typical raster image, SVG can be scaled or transformed without a significant loss in quality. What I especially like about masking is its ability to apply the same properties as for background – we can define a mask’s position, size and repetition, for instance, using: mask-repeat: no-repeat and mask-size: cover. Thanks to CSS masking we can create more sophisticated effects on the web. One of them can be found in our example, where parts of an image cover some text; when a user scrolls up and down the page some portions of the text are shown/hidden. This gives the impression that the page title is located behind the mountains. To create this effect, some tricks are needed and the clever application of CSS masks will help us to achieve that. Let’s create a header with a selected background image and two headers inside. One of them will be the primary one (first level of heading). The text of the heading will be kept in the <span> tag. It’s not a common thing but, in this case, we’re applying masking to heading, not to the container. Cut out images using CSS clipping Clipping paths enable you to cut out the plant image in this example Let’s explore another example and find out more about CSS clipping. In short, clipping defines which image area should be visible. Clipping is similar to chopping pieces of paper. The shape’s boundary is called the clip path: anything outside the path will be hidden, while anything inside the path will be visible. With a clip path you can remove background from your image, instead of using heavy PNG files. For this we need to already have prepared the shape for the cut out. The goal in this exercise is to clip the plant out of the image, removing the background. We can copy SVG code from our file and paste it to an HTML document. The clip path has to be placed within <defs> </defs> tags. Later we can easily reference the path defined in the SVG code by adding a URL function. Think outside the box You can use shape-inside and shape-outside to create all kinds of shapes Who said that text containers always need to be rectangular? Content can be cut into all sorts of different shapes by applying shape-outside and shape-inside properties that enable you to wrap your content around custom paths in CSS. So, how does it work? Simply apply shape-outside to the given floated image or container. It is important to note that the float property and the dimensions of the element – either height or width – have to be defined otherwise it doesn’t work. You can use the url() function, which enables the shape-outside property to define an element shape based on the path from an SVG file. The shape-outside property doesn’t change anything about an element other than its float area. This means that any borders and background images will not adapt to the shape created on the element. This is the reason why we also need to apply the mask-image property – to cut out the background of the element to match the defined shape. One important thing to note is that the shape-outside feature works only with CORS-enabled files. CORS stands for Cross Origin Resource Sharing. In this particular case the best way to view it is to use localhost, otherwise it won’t work if you just open it in your browser. The end result looks incredible – and adds considerable interest to a web page When experimenting, please do bear in mind that not all of the mentioned features are supported by all browsers, so it’s worth checking them out here. The latest example doesn’t work in Firefox, Opera and IE but hopefully it will be available soon for all the browsers. Read more: Get started with variable fonts in CSS A comprehensive guide to using CSS grid How new CSS rules to try now View the full article