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.

Throughout these lessons we will discover ways of troubleshooting problem topology and learn how to reproduce a 3D model from a perspective reference illustration. By the end of this tutorial you will have learned efficient modeling workflows in 3ds Max.

We'll start by looking at the preparation that is needed in order to get the best results when creating the hair. From there, we'll look at the actual hair creation using the Hair Farm plug-in. We will learn how to generate the hair mesh and then convert it into actual hairs using Hair Farm modifiers. By the end of this tutorial we will have looked at how to create different hair effects using different hair objects as well as adding materials and lighting for our hair.

In this series of lessons we will learn how to rig quadrupeds in 3ds Max. We'll work our way from the ground up, learning techniques for creating robust and flexible vertebrae systems, efficient and animator-friendly controls, and learn how to dynamically link and blend between spaces. We'll also cover helpful weight painting techniques and learn how to set up and automate the triggering of corrective targets. By the end of this course, you will have the skills needed to rig your very own quadruped.

We will be using tricks and optimizing techniques so that we can keep our banner within “Standard Flash” specifications: Under 40kb, 18fps, and under 15 seconds in length. Along the way we'll look at workflow and file organization tips and tricks.

Throughout the lessons we will model, pose, texture and shade a 3D character. We will use lot of different techniques within ZBrush and Softimage to bring to life a bio-mechanical concept. Along the way we will learn creative ways to use a wide set of tools to build details in a quick and effective way. All the techniques shown can be translated in different kinds of pipelines and can bring up a huge speed up to your usual modeling and texturing workflow.

Until now hair inside of ZBrush has primarily been sculpted. Using the new FiberMesh system inside of ZBrush 4R3 we can take a simple base mesh and apply fibers to the model to create more realistic long hair. With the power of ZBrush these fibers can be quickly groomed to achieve a wide array of hair styles. This tutorial will cover some tips and tricks to help speed up usage with FiberMesh to get your models hair that salon look.

Throughout these lessons we will cover the foundations of modeling a high resolution female that will deform properly when animated. Along the way we will learn how we can avoid many common beginner mistakes and develop a workflow that is efficient and effective. We will also learn a lot of basic and advanced female anatomy, and how to capture high resolution realism with simple geometry. By the end of this course you will have a great foundation for building your own female characters for film, broadcast and video games.

We will start off by learning the basic approach to rendering anything in Maxwell Render, and some important concepts to be aware of whenever starting out with Maxwell. We will then learn how to control the amount of render time that goes into our scenes, we will discuss the Maxwell camera attributes, which play a critical role in the appearance of our rendered images, we will learn how to begin using the physically-correct Maxwell materials to help push our renders to deeper levels of realism, we will discuss the process of creating and controlling light sources, as well as many additional topics and workflows that will help you to get started with Maxwell Render.

We’ll get started by taking a look at each of the features on a face and learning about how they can be drawn to communicate a variety of different expressions. Next we will start slow and remove the problems of perspective from the equation by learning how to draw our expressions on a profile of our character. From here, we’ll move on and learn how to draw the same expressions on a 3/4 view of the character. Lastly, we will spend some time learning how a character’s body language can be used in conjunction with their facial expression to really help communicate their emotions. After completing this course, you’ll have a good idea how to further develop your characters by exploring how their expressions might change depending on the situation.

Through this set of tutorials you will learn how to use the Character Object to auto-rig creatures and how to adjust the control rig to match its exact proportions! We'll then explore some of the features built into the Character Object that allow us to auto-weight geometry, filter what gets displayed in the scene, and take a look at a system that generates automatic animation cycles. We'll also cover how to integrate custom systems of our own into the auto-rig, weight painting and weight mirroring techniques, as well as how to collapse the rig in order to export it for use in an older version of CINEMA 4D. In the end, you will learn how the Character Object can be used to make your rigging workflow far more efficient!

Creating a good UV layout is important when texturing your models. But many times, trying to optimize your model to include everything on one map can create problems with low resolution and the inability to get an appropriate amount of detail on every area of the model. Breaking apart our UVs and textures into multiple texture tiles helps to alleviate this issue. In this course we'll take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of using a multi-tile workflow. We'll also explore the ways that different applications including ZBrush, Maya, 3ds Max, Mudbox, and MARI deal with multiple texture tiles. We'll also talk a lot about the naming conventions of each application and how those names correspond to the placement of the tiles. Once we're done, you'll have a good understanding of what multi-tile texturing is and how you can start to use it in your own projects.

We’ll begin this project by learning the basics of using trackers to speed up the rotoscoping process by removing camera jitter, translation, rotation and scaling. We’ll then dive into our main project where we will use a combination of trackers, roto nodes and animation to create a clean mask for our foreground actor's face and hand. We’ll learn many techniques to speed up our rotoscoping workflow and how we can use animation principles to create solid movement.

We'll start out by talking about what polygons are and what the advantages and disadvantages are of using them. Then, using a dinosaur as an example, we'll use CINEMA 4D's procedural, hierarchy-based workflow in combination with traditional polygon techniques to build an organic model from scratch. We'll cover polygon tools that will allow you to extrude, cut, or subdivide your geometry as well as generators that will allow you to work symmetrically and to see a smoothed version of your model as you work. In the end you'll have a great idea of the power and flexibility CINEMA 4D offers when building polygonal models.

For many designers, Adobe Illustrator is a program they use daily for tasks such as building logos. While it’s tools and vector results make it perfect for these type of projects, as you might have guessed, it’s also a powerful painting program. In this course we will focus on painting our image, utilizing several of the tools inside Illustrator to make it feel less like a vector image. Along the way, we’ll learn about tools like the brush tool, blob brush and eraser tool and how we can use them to help us get to our end result. Throughout this course, we will focus on removing the software from the equation so we can focus on the art. After completing this course, you’ll be familiar with the tools, techniques and process used to create this comic book inspired zombie image.

We'll begin by learning how to navigate through Vue's viewports and identifying the major parts of the interface. We'll then begin exploring many critical aspects of Vue, such as creating and modifying atmospheres, working with terrain, creating procedural materials, generating Eco Systems, creating and editing water, exploring the fundamentals of lights, and many other concepts that will provide you with a solid foundational understanding of Vue and its capabilities.

We'll learn everything from setting up adjustment handles to match our rig to a character's unique size and proportions. We'll learn how to mirror components to save a ton of time, and also cover how to modify our rigging templates to make them robust and efficient. In the end, you'll learn how to take advantage of this very powerful and intuitive character tool in order to increase your productivity.

Through out these lessons, we'll learn how to utilize Unity's Pathfinding system to create quick and efficient AI. Then we'll move on by discussing the new particle system interface called Shuriken where we'll create a pillar of fire. After that, we'll get into working with the HDR capabilities and create a stunning composition in real time. Then we'll finish this course up by discussing light probes and occlusion culling. Both are great ways to create a beautiful game but also keep our performance costs low.

We'll begin with the exploratory sketching phase, which is a stage where the concept artist produces loose grayscale sketches to communicate ideas to the team. We'll then take that sketch from a rough idea into a fully realized piece of concept art. From there, we'll take the design into a key part of video game character concept art: the orthographic. By the end of this tutorial we will have taken a look at a typical video game studio pipeline and learned numerous tips and techniques for how to be efficient in a video game production environment.