We will learn how to deal with issues importing our passes and how to create a missing pass. From there we will learn the basic shuffle and compositing techniques, along with some novel uses of various passes to enhance our composite. We will color correct the foreground and background to match. To ground the vehicle we will create particle effects in NUKEX. Finally we will finish the shot with post effects like flares, lens reflections, lens distortion, blooms, grain, etc. In the end we will have our completed shot in NUKE.

Throughout these lessons we will use a combination of Maya, After Effects and Photoshop to do everything from the modeling, animating, texturing, lighting and rendering of an animated title sequence. By the end of this tutorial you'll have an understanding of the knowledge required to create a robotic title sequence from start to finish.

Rather than focusing on the higher-end scale that is commonly seen in other tutorials, with this tutorial we will be limiting ourselves to just a few thousand polygons. We will begin, not by sculpting a high detail model in ZBrush or Mudbox, but by focusing on the character's actual low polygon in-game model. Once that's built and optimized, we will then focus on adding a good set of UVs before we move onto painting diffuse, normal and specular texture maps. By the end of this tutorial we will have taken a look at numerous tips, techniques and shortcuts all geared towards saving precious time by simply focusing on the actual game model itself.

Throughout this tutorial we are going to talk about the core feaures of RealFlow. Starting with the basics, we'll discuss the fundamental parameters of a standard SPH system as well as looking at the Hybrido solver. We'll also cover some meshing techniques using the RenderKit particle mesher to avoid flickering issues. Then we'll look at how to render our mesh in V-Ray for Maya and finally how to composite our passes in NUKE. After completing this tutorial, we'll have a much better understanding of the entire process to make a realistic and believable fluid.

When creating a creature concept for the film industry, it is common for a director to ask for a detailed character rendering or even a 3D print of the creature before approving a character concept. Throughout these lessons we will look at the creative process of taking a 2D concept and turning it into a 3D digital maquette that is detailed enough to show a film director for approval. Once approved, before the VFX studio can integrate the character concept into it's pipeline it must first be fully retopologized into a clean mesh that is ready for rigging and animation. By the end of this tutorial we will have gone through the entire conceptual process of creating a film-ready character concept that is posed, prepared in accordance with 3D printing standards and rendered for a dramatic presentation.

Film and commercial projects often require very high-resolution, highly detailed vehicle models. However, these models are not appropriate for games or other real-time applications because of the large number of polygons. So in order to be able to rig, animate, or integrate these models into a game engine, we first have to convert the model to a much lower resolution. Using a motorcycle as our example, we'll use Maya to reduce the resolution of many of the pieces. We'll then use TopoGun to create new topology for the very detailed meshes like the engine or radiator. We'll cover methods for baking normal and color maps from within Maya as well as in TopoGun. These techniques will allow us to create a much lower resolution model that is visually very close to its higher-resolution counterpart. Once we're done, you'll have a good grasp of several of the tools we can use to create game-resolution vehicle models and you'll have the knowledge you need to apply those techniques to your own models. If you're interested in building the high resolution motorcycle from start to finish, please check out the Motorcycle Modeling Techniques in Maya course which will take you through that process.

Throughout these lessons we'll delve into the animated growth of a tree branch as a time-lapse video. We'll learn everything from modeling, texturing and shading to the animation and final compositing. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a better understanding of how you can employ efficient and productive techniques for a time-lapse video that can be used when up against a tight deadline.

We will be introduced to a few tools and techniques to create photorealistic material that is suitable for commercial design projects. By the end of this tutorial, we will have touched on modeling, lighting, shading, animation, scripting and rendering for efficiency and quality.

Throughout this detailed tutorial, we'll leverage the power of ZBrush and Maya to build a strong female hero character from start to finish. We'll use Zspheres to block in the rough shape of our model and then send our geometry over to Maya using the one-click GoZ functionality. In Maya, we can recreate the topology of any of our pieces, we can create new geometry to send back to ZBrush, or modify existing geometry. We'll be going back and forth quite a bit in order to use the tools most appropriate for building the character's clothing and accessories. In addition to the modeling tools in Maya, we'll also use many of ZBrush's built in modeling functions including Shadowbox, mesh extraction, and the topology tools. Once we're done, we'll have a finished high-resolution character that can be painted or prepared for rigging, and you'll have the knowledge to repeat the process on your own character.

We're going to be covering many topics, such as why we break Maya scenes into layers, getting the most information out of Maya for high dynamic range composites and how to process EXRs for much faster interaction in NUKE. From there we'll examine some render pass and layer workflows that will eliminate errors and give us much more flexibility in NUKE. Finally we'll jump completely into NUKE and look at some compositing techniques for CG renders and finally unravel the proper premultiply workflow.

Mudbox and Maya are very complementary packages. Maya gives us the ability to build up our models, rig and animate them, and render them. But Mudbox allows us to use a much more artistic approach to shaping and sculpting our models. It also allows us to paint textures very quickly and with a lot of power. By leveraging these two applications together, we can really create a solid workflow. In this tutorial we'll look at ways to get geometry and textures back and forth between Maya and Mudbox. We'll talk about new "Send to" features that make this process even easier. We'll also cover some of the practical scenarios you may encounter when working with these two applications. In the end, you'll have a good understanding of the great advantages you can get by using Maya and Mudbox in tandem.

In this course, we'll go through the process of using Maya and ZBrush to convert a high resolution, sculpted and painted character into a low resolution game-type mesh that can be rigged and animated. We'll start by using Decimation Master to reduce the resolution of our model drastically while retaining much of the visual detail. Once we're in Maya, we'll build low resolution geometry around these detailed meshes to capture the important shapes of the character. We'll create uv layouts for the low resolution pieces and finally extract the color and sculpted detail from our high resolution pieces onto the new mesh. In the end we'll have taken a model of 20 million polygons down to a very useable 8-10k. Once you're done, you'll be able to use the workflow to transfer and convert your own high resolution characters into a more useable state.

ZBrush and Maya are both very powerful 3D applications that each offers its own strengths. By combining these two programs into our workflow, we can take advantage of those strengths to get our work done quicker and more efficiently. In this course, we'’ll cover many of the tools and techniques we can use to merge ZBrush and Maya into our workflows. We'll explore methods for manually transferring geometry back and forth between the two applications. We'll also look at creating color maps, Normal maps, and Displacement maps, and transferring those to Maya. We'll look at the GoZ pipeline and how it will make working with ZBrush and Maya a really seamless process. We'll also look at some practical reasons for choosing to use Maya and ZBrush in tandem. In the end, you'll have a good understanding of how you can work efficiently between Maya and ZBrush, leveraging the strengths of both to create your best work.

We will begin this course by learning how to import RealFlow meshes into Maya, and we will go step-by-step through the process of adding lights, materials and proper render settings to mimic appearance of realistic glass and liquid materials. From there, we will go deeper into the integration process, learning how to take geometry from Maya into RealFlow, using RealFlow's soft and rigid body dynamics to create moving objects, as well as understanding how scene scale plays a critical role in the behavior of our simulations. We will learn how to cache and re-use RealFlow simulation data and discuss many tips, tricks and techniques that you will be able to use in both the simulation and the rendering stages of your RealFlow projects.

We'll begin this project by solving four of our shots in MatchMover and combining them in Maya into a cohesive 3D scene. Then we'll create our last camera in Maya and match it. Once all our camera are set-up, we'll learn how to model our object, create dynamics, animate, texture and render our scene. We'll then jump into Composite to do some color treatment on our backgrounds and then composite our layers together. Now, this is a long project that will take some time to complete. If you get stuck or have any questions, please join our forums and ask. We check the forums often and have a very active and helpful community.

We'll begin this tutorial by solving four of our shots in MatchMover and combining them in Maya into a cohesive 3D scene. Then we'll create our last camera in Maya and match it. Once all our camera are set-up, we'll learn how to model our object, create dynamics, animate, texture and render our scene. We'll then jump into After Effects to do some color treatment on our backgrounds and then composite our layers together. Now, this is a long project that will take some time to complete. If you get stuck or have any questions, please join our forums and ask. We check the forums often and have a very active and helpful community.

We'll begin the tutorial by solving four of our shots in MatchMover and combining them in Maya into a cohesive 3D scene. Then we'll create our last camera in Maya and match it. Once all our camera are set up, we'll learn how to model our object, create dynamics, animate, texture and render our scene. We'll then jump into NUKE to do some color treatment on our backgrounds and then composite our layers together. Now, this is a long project that will take some time to complete. If you get stuck or have any questions, please join our forums and ask. We check the forums often and have a very active and helpful community.

We'll begin the tutorial by setting up our motion tracked scene by adding the original footage and aligning everything to make working easier. We'll then bring in our 3d object and learn how to place it in our scene. We'll then learn how to create ground geometry and match the lighting in our original shot. We'll then create multiple render passes and layers to make compositing much easier. After we render, we'll jump into After Effects and learn about such topics as shadow matching, color matte usage and various techniques to match our 3d render with our live action back-plate. The end result of this course will be a final color corrected shot of our 3d object in real life.This tutorial will illustrate an example of how to use Maya and after Effects together to integrate a 3d model into live-action footage. This will allow us to place our own 3d models into real environments easier.

When trying to create highly realistic, lifelike characters, the importance of the eyes is often understated. In fact, the eyes are one of the most important aspects to consider when creating characters that truly look and feel alive. During this course, we will learn how to create highly realistic eye textures from scratch using Photoshop, and in a way that gives us a high degree of flexibility and control over the textures' color variations and other details. Once the texturing has been completed, we will jump into Maya, where we will discuss shading and rendering techniques that can give the eye a highly realistic final look. Along the way we will be exploring many additional tips, tricks, and workflows that you will be able to use both in Photoshop and in Maya to help create more believable, realistic eyes for your characters.

We will dedicate the first portion of this course to using Render Passes in Maya to separate various elements of our scene at render time. We'll use mental ray's render passes, contribution maps, custom framebuffers, and render layers to create the necessary render passes for our scene. In the second portion of this course we will begin with some quick compositing similar to our Multi-Channel Compositing in NUKE course, but we will quickly get into more advanced topics such as Depth-of-Field, Depth-based compositing, working with HDR data, painting fixes and chromatic aberration.

Popular highlights include: Composition and Layout; Working from Sketch; Creating ZSphere Base; Adaptive Skins; Character Posing; Re-working Topology; Quick Shaping the Model; Character Interaction; Adding Multiple Pieces with ZSpheres; Appending Subtools; Adding Temporary Materials; Custom Alphas and Textures; Exaggerating Features for Appeal; Creating UVs in ZBrush; Polypainting; Converting Polypaints to Texture Maps; Exporting Displacement Maps; Exporting Normal Maps; Exporting Geometry from ZBrush; Importing Geometry into Maya; 3-point Lighting Setup; Camera Placement; Subsurface Scattering Effects; Approximations for High-quality Displacement; Using Final Gather with Subsurface Scattering; Adjusting Render Stats of Objects; Rendering Scenes in Multiple Passes; Outputting Color, Occlusion, and Depth Passes; Compositing Multiple Passes with Photoshop; Depth-of-field Effects to Final Render.

Popular highlights include: Shaping Facial Features; Shaping with Move Brush; Utilizing 3D Layers; Creating Expression Libraries; Adding Normal Maps in Maya; Setting up Blendshapes in Maya; Key Framing Blendshapes; Creating In-betweens; Isolating Geometry with Masks; Manipulating Subtools with Polygroups; Exporting Geometry from ZBrush; Blending Shapes using Morph Targets; Sculpting Facial Expressions; Isolating Areas of Face; Moving the Teeth and Gums; Smoothing Geometry; Working with Subdivision Levels; Creating Phonemes; Creating Distinct Emotions.

Popular highlights include: Modeling Exaggerated Features; Using Reference Art; Building Deformable Topology; Building Initial Edge-flow; Extruding Geometry Along Curves; Bridging Geometry; Modeling Eyes; Modeling Symmetrically; Building Large Wrinkles; Modeling Ears; Adding Mouth Interior; Connecting Edges with Split Polygon Tool; Importing/Exporting Geometry; Assembling Subtools in ZBrush; Filling Portions of Subtools with Color; Modifying Head with Move Brush; Sub-dividing Geometry; Sculpting Facial Features; Adding Small Wrinkles; Adding Irregularities; Adding Detail with Alpha Maps and Strokes; Creating a UV Layout; Integrating UV Changes into ZBrush Sculpt; Creating Normal Maps in ZBrush; Applying and Viewing Normal Maps in Maya.

Popular highlights include: Review of Flash Application; Review of Maya Application; Creating 3D Turntables; ActionScript 1.0 & 3.0; Using Maya Vector Renderer; Working with Fills and Edges; Rendering Wireframes; Shadows, Reflections and Highlights; Alternate Edge Workflow; Working with Multiple Frames; Repeated Tracing with Flash JavaScript; Using Papervision 3D; Export Collada Files for Papervision 3D; Updating Builds with SVN; Coding 3D Actions; Various Tips and Tricks.

Popular highlights include: HDRI Overview; Understanding Properties of HDR Images; Using 32-bit Color Space; 32-bit Image vs. 8-bit Image; Shooting Multiple Exposures with Camera; Bracketed Camera Exposures; Using Mirrored Ball for Environments; Naming and Organization of Exposure Sequences; Assembling Multiple Exposures into one HDR Image; Assembling Panoramic HDR Images; Removing Unwanted Subjects from Images; Color Correcting and Image Enhancement; Adjustment Layers for Image Alterations; Tone Mapping HDR Image for Low Dynamic Range Output; Setting up Image-based Lighting in Maya; Final Gathering in Maya; Reducing Animation Flickering; Rendering HDR Images from mental ray.

Popular highlights include: ZBrush Sculpting Workflow; Maya and ZBrush Pipeline Overview; Form Development in Maya; Maintaining Mesh Integrity; Sculpting Across Multiple Levels; Incorporating 3D Layers for Variation; Working with Subtools; Extracting Geometry; Low Poly Modeling in Maya; Creating Clean Topology; Geometry Preparation for ZBrush; Importing Geometry into ZBrush; Using Alphas and Strokes; Using Custom Alphas; Creating Displacement Maps in ZBrush; Applying Displacement Maps in Maya; Setting up Render-time Subdivisions; Adjusting Displacement Settings; Using Projection Master; Using Lazy Mouse for Hair Detail.

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.