While piloting his spaceship through the skies, Captain Invincible encounters three-dimensional shapes, including cubes, cylinders, and pyramids.

Zygmunt Pizlo is Professor of Psychological Sciences and Electrical and Computer Engineering (by courtesy) at Purdue University.

An in-depth description of the state-of-the-art of 3D shape analysis techniques and their applications This book discusses the different topics that come under the title of "3D shape analysis". It covers the theoretical foundations and the major solutions that have been presented in the literature. It also establishes links between solutions proposed by different communities that studied 3D shape, such as mathematics and statistics, medical imaging, computer vision, and computer graphics. The first part of 3D Shape Analysis: Fundamentals, Theory, and Applications provides a review of the background concepts such as methods for the acquisition and representation of 3D geometries, and the fundamentals of geometry and topology. It specifically covers stereo matching, structured light, and intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties of shape. Parts 2 and 3 present a range of mathematical and algorithmic tools (which are used for e.g., global descriptors, keypoint detectors, local feature descriptors, and algorithms) that are commonly used for the detection, registration, recognition, classification, and retrieval of 3D objects. Both also place strong emphasis on recent techniques motivated by the spread of commodity devices for 3D acquisition. Part 4 demonstrates the use of these techniques in a selection of 3D shape analysis applications. It covers 3D face recognition, object recognition in 3D scenes, and 3D shape retrieval. It also discusses examples of semantic applications and cross domain 3D retrieval, i.e. how to retrieve 3D models using various types of modalities, e.g. sketches and/or images. The book concludes with a summary of the main ideas and discussions of the future trends. 3D Shape Analysis: Fundamentals, Theory, and Applications is an excellent reference for graduate students, researchers, and professionals in different fields of mathematics, computer science, and engineering. It is also ideal for courses in computer vision and computer graphics, as well as for those seeking 3D industrial/commercial solutions.

Learn 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional shapes through fun shape characters. See examples of everyday objects that reflect the shapes. Colorful illustrations and basic words. The ideal learning book for toddlers, children in preschool, kindergarten or a higher grade, for ages 2 through to 7.

One Zentangle A Day is a beautiful interactive book teaching the principles of Zentangles as well as offering fun, related drawing exercises. Zentangles are a new trend in the drawing and paper arts world. The concept was started by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas as a way to practice focus and meditation through drawing, by using repetitive lines, marks, circles, and shapes. Each mark is called a "tangle," and you combine various tangles into patterns to create "tiles" or small square drawings. This step-by-step book is divided into 6 chapters, each with 7 daily exercises. Each exercise includes new tangles to draw in sketchbooks, teaches daily tile design, and offers tips on related art principles, and contains an inspirational "ZIA" (Zentangle Inspired Art) project on a tile that incorporates patterns, art principals, and new techniques.

A grocery store is filled with much more than food. The aisles and shelves hold plenty of fun, too. As Justin helps his mother shop, he explores the variety of 3-D shapes all around him. As Justin can show you, there are always plenty of shapes to see!

Providing an intuitive modeling system, which would enable us to communicate about any free-form shape we have in mind at least as quickly as with real-world tools, is one of the main challenges of digital shape design. The user should ideally be able to create, deform, and progressively add details to a shape, without being aware of the underlying mathematical representation nor being tied by any constraint on the geometrical or topological nature of the model. This book presents the field of interactive shape design from this perspective. Since interactively creating a shape builds on the humans ability of modeling by gesture, we note that the recent advances in interactive shape design can be classified as those that rely on sculpting as opposed to sketching metaphors. Our synthetic presentation of these strategies enables us to compare the different families of solutions, discuss open issues, and identify directions for future research. Table of Contents: Introduction / Sculpting Metaphors / Sketching Systems / Future Directions: Modeling by Gesture