We will start by discussing the foundational skills and vocabulary that will be essential as you begin your Maya learning. From there we will move directly into modeling, where we will begin building the vehicle that will be used for the duration of this course. Once the vehicle is built we will move into texturing, rigging, animation, dynamics, and we will finish up with the lighting and rendering of our final animation.

We will begin the tutorial by learning how to create the basic shape and style of our hair with a high level of precision and a minimal amount of effort. We will use paint effects strokes to assist in the styling and creation of our hair, we will learn how to apply dynamic forces while retaining the styled shape of our hair, and many additional topics that will allow you to start creating beautiful hairstyles for your Maya characters.

Over the series of tutorials, we will use Maya's very robust and intuitive muscle system improve the overall realism of an animated character. We will start with an animated rig that has some major deformation problems that will need to be addressed. From there, we will start to strategically build an efficient muscle rig that will preserve volume in critical areas that are prone to collapse, like the shoulders and forearms. We'll learn how to customize Maya muscle shapes and follow-through effects to create the illusion of weight and realism! We'll also cover integrating blend shapes with Maya Muscle and file referencing to work smarter, not harder. By the end of this tutorial, you will be equipped with the knowledge you need to incorporate Maya Muscle into your own rigging pipeline.

We'll start the tutorial by giving you the foundational skills and vocabulary you'll need in order to move around within Maya, and then we'll jump right into the Modeling section of the course. After completing the Modeling section, you'll get the chance try your hand at Texturing, Rigging, Animation, Dynamics, and finally, Lighting and Rendering your own animation. Our goal is not to weigh you down with technical information, but rather to help you form really good habits so you can have a successful future using Maya.

We will learn things like how to control your render settings, shadows, use the Maya Hair system to add dynamics as well as how to render fur using mental ray. This is a perfect course for those of you using fur in production and want a refresher on the different menus as well as those of you touching Maya Fur for the first time. This is a second part of a two part Maya tutorial. We'll build upon what we covered in the first tutorial. You are welcome to start here but I would recommend you complete the first course as a pre-requisite.

We will spend most of our time with the core node of this system the Fur Description. This tutorial is a perfect review of the fur description for those of you who are already using Fur as well as a perfect overview for new artists using Fur for the first time. We will go through the process of loading the plugin and go through each of the attributes one by one in the Fur Desc. Node. By learning more about what the individual attributes do you will be armed with the knowledge to tackle your own fur projects. This is the first part of a 2 part series covering the fur system in Maya.

This tutorial is an introductory look at Fluid Containers both 2D and 3D in Maya. Fluids in Maya is part of the Unlimited toolset and has the ability to create some amazing simulations that are extremely hard to achieve with particle simulations alone. This tutorial will explore the different attributes in the Fluid Shape node as well as the workflow when creating fluid simulations. The goal is to help you gain a level of comfort with Maya Fluids so you will be prepared for the advanced fluids tutorial. We also hope you will gain the confidence to experiment on our own and learn how to create your very own simulations in Maya.

We'll begin this tutorial by learning about the most basic locator, the Ocean Surface locator. We'll then branch into the more complicated locators that allow us to have dynamic motion including buoyancy, damping and gravity. We'll finish the locator section with a lesson on the fun feature of Motorboats, which let us have a throttle and rudder on an object and make a realistic boat animation complete with pitching and rolling. We'll then learn the basics of using wakes to deform our surface as if something has just dropped into the water. We'll learn a few advanced techniques such as, connecting a foam generator to our ocean as well as advanced color bleeding and foamy waves.

We'll begin this project by learning the basics of creating a Maya Ocean and what it is actually made of. We'll then learn about attributes we need to set early in the project. Then we'll learn how to control the noisiness of waves and their length. After that, we'll create line graphs to change each wave's height, turbulence and peak. We'll finish the tutorial by adding foam and editing the color information of the shader.

Popular highlights include: Paint Hair Tool; Modify Curve Tools; Constraint Systems; Collision Objects; Converting Curves into Dynamic Curves; Paint FX; Scale Ramp Widgets; Hair Turbulence; MEL; Braiding and Curly Hair; mental ray; Applying Hair to Polygon Surfaces.

This lesson breathes new life into an old rigid body solver as we will learn about some basic workflow issues including the concept of standing and proxy objects. We will also spend time learning how to set-up rigid body clones, use rigid bodies on characters, and utilize MEL to solve different rigid body problems.

Popular highlights include: Interface Overview, NURBS Modeling, Polygon Modeling, Subdivision Surfaces, Texturing, Procedural Textures, Hypershade, UV Layout, Building Control Rigs, Custom Attributes, Writing Expressions, Setting Key Frames, Path Animation, Dynamics, Particle Shader, Lighting, Image Planes, Light Linking, Environments, Displacement Maps, Rendering.

Popular highlights include: Realistic Fire and Smoke Effects; Navier-Stokes Fluid Solvers; Spring Mesh Fluid Solvers; Interacting Fluids with Particles; Fluid Container Properties; Expression-controlled Fluids; Advanced Heat Dynamics; Combustible Fluids; Soft Surface Simulations; Realistic Liquid Simulations; Converting Fluids to Polygons.

Popular highlights include: nParticles Overview; nParticle Emission; nParticle Style Presets; nParticle Collisions; Nucleus Node Attributes; Applying Space Scale; Liquid Simulation Properties; Collision Layers; Point Force Generation; Wind Field Generation; nConstraints on nParticles; Per-particle Expressions; Emitter Rate Per Point; Fields; Particle Sizes; Lifespan Types; Shading Attributes; Initial State; NCaching; Rendering Blobbies; Output Mesh Conversion; Bounce, Friction, Stickiness; Working with Ramp Widgets.

Popular highlights include: Maya Muscle Overview; Capsules, Bones and Muscles; Muscle Builder User Interface; Modeling Muscle Definition; Custom Muscle Shapes; Muscle Spline Deformer; Muscle Stretch Deformer; Muscle Skin Deformers; Sliding and Shrinkwrap; Painting Muscle Weights; Jiggle, Cycle and Rest Attributes; Relax and Smooth Attributes; Muscle Caching; Surface Attach; Muscle Setup for Symmetrical Characters.

Popular highlights include: Overview of Nucleus Node; Realistic Cloth Simulation; Scene Scale and Settings; Time Scale; Mass; Dynamics Forces; Friction; Dynamic Attributes; Rigidity; Passive Object Collisions; Glue Strength; Pressure; Tearing Surfaces; Caching nCloth; Deformation Resistance; Lift and Drag; Controlling Scene Playback; Collision Layers; Painting Values and Property Maps; Input Mesh Attraction vs. Rest Shapes; Stretch/Compression Resistance; Links; Constraints.

Popular highlights include: Introduction to Particle Systems; Understanding Rigid Body Simulations; Overview of Dynamic Fields; Setting up Simulations; Particle Instancing; Rendering Particles with Maya Hardware; Software and Hardware Render Buffer; Fire Effects; Smoke Effects; Lightning; Fireworks; Explosive Effects; Attaching Particles to Curves; Creating Soft Body Effects; Colliding Particles with Surfaces; Rigid Body Simulations with Weighted Objects; Particles Interaction with Rigid Bodies;

Popular highlights include: Shave Interface Overview; Using Hair Presets; Creating Hairstyles based on Curves; Growing and Scalping Techniques; Styling Guide Hairs using Brush and Cut Tools; Guide Selection Modes; Hair Attenuation; Popping Hairs; Shave Node Overview; Working with Various Attribute Maps; Frizzing to Create Ruffled Hair; Kinking to Create Curly and Wavy Hair; Using Multi-Strand Properties to Create Trendy Hairstyles; Setting Render Options with the Shave Globals; Exploring Hair Shadows and Lighting Techniques; Rendering and Compositing with Shave Buffer; Rendering Shave Hair with mental ray; Outputting Hair Passes; Setting Collision Surfaces; Driving Shave Hair with Maya Fields; Working with Shave Dynamics; Hair Instancing for Alternative Uses; Duplicating and Transferring Hairstyles.

Popular highlights include: Clothing Techniques for Animated Characters; SyCloth, SyHair, SySkin, SyFlesh; Forces: Gravity, Damp, Air, Wind, Turbulence, Volume, Magnet, Sew; Constraints: Nail, Pin, Mimic ; Wrinkle Maps; Hair Maps; Attenuation Maps; Rigging SyFlex for Secondary Animation; Initial States and Caching; Collisions; Live Mode; Visualization Attributes; Maya Artisan; Troubleshooting Simulations; Efficient Workflow Using EZFlex.

Popular highlights include: Custom Toon Shaders; Shader Network Creation; Toon Outlines; Toon Outline Attributes; Paint Effects; Converting Toon to Polygons; Crosshatching and Stippling; Particle Dynamics; Profile Lines; Border Lines; Creases; Intersection Lines.

Popular highlights include: Importing Geometry to RealFlow; Daemons; Advanced Mesh Generation; Keyframing in RealFlow; Particle and Mesh Loaders; Exporting Particles and Meshes; Scene Setup in Maya; mental ray Materials; Photons; Caustics; Particle Expressions.

Popular highlights include: Toon Rendering; Mesh Brush; Optimizing Scenes; Light Based Effects; Control Curve Based Effects; Secondary Animation; Custom Brushes; Paint Effects Overview.