Maya Course Outline

Breakdown of the 4 week course

Day 1

• An introduction to the Maya Interface
• Beginning a Project
• Importing, Exporting and referencing
• Summary of days work

Day 3

• Creating Primitives and Text
• About NURBS Primitives
• About Polygon Primitives
• About Subdivision Primitives
• About Text
• Naming Objects
• Construction History

Day 4

• Transforming Objects and Components
• About Pivot Points
• Duplication Options
• Mirroring and Instancing Objects
• Soft-Modyfing Objects

Day 5

• Selection Modes, Hiding and Templating
• Selecting Objects
• Selection Modes and Masks
• Using Quick Select Sets

Day 6

• Grouping, Parenting and Aligning Objects
• Grouping
• Parenting
• Grouping Vs Parenting
• Aligning and Snapping Objects
• The Snap Align Tools

Day 7

• NURBS Curves and Surfaces
• About NURBS Objects
• About NURBS Curves
• Creating NURBS Curves
• Editing NURBS Curves
• Opening, Closing and Attaching Curves
• Altering Whole Curves
• Interactions Between Curves
• Creating Surfaces from Curves
• Surface Curves and Trims
• Modyfing and Matching NURBS Surfaces

Day 8

• Polygons
• Modelling Polygons
• Creating and Deleting Polygon Components
• Splitting and Merging Polygon Components
• Subdividing and Merging
• Refining Polygons
• Surface Normals and Display Options

Day 9

• Subdivision Surfaces
• Subdivision Surface Components
• Refining Subdivision Surfaces
• Creasing Subdivision Surfaces
• Mirroring and Subdivisions
• Subdivision Hierarchies
• Working in Polygon Mode
• Sculpting Subdivisions

Day 10

• Skeletons and Rigging
• About Joints
• Adjusting Hierarchies
• About IK Handles and Solvers
• About Spline IK
• About Constraints
• The Connection Editor
• Basic Rigging
• About Full Body IK

Day 11

• Parenting and Binding to a Skeleton
• Parenting to a Skeleton
• Using Rigid Bind
• Using Smooth Bind

Day 12

• Animation
• Animation Controls
• About Setting Keyframes
• Setting Animation Preferences
• Importing a Sound File
• About the Graph Editor
• About the Dope Sheet
• Muting Animation Channels
• Ghosting
• Path Animation
• About the Trax Editor
• Previewing an Animation

Day 13

• Deformers
• Nonlinear Deformers
• Blend Shapes
• Lattices
• Clusters
• Sculpt Deformers
• Jiggle Deformers
• Wire Deformers
• Wrinkle Deformers
• Wrap Deformers
• About Deformer Weights
• About the Deformation Order
• Hiding, Showing and Deleting Deformers

Day 14

• Shaders, Materials and Mapping
• About Hypershade
• About IPR Rendering
• About Materials
• About Texture Mapping NURBS Surfaces
• Combining Materials
• About Projection Maps
• About Texturing Polygons
• Editing UVs
• Swimming Textures
• Texturing using Painting Tools

Day 15

• Creating Lights
• Setting up Lighting
• About Maya Lights
• Mapping Images to Lights
• Looking Through a Light
• Light Linking
• About Shadows

Day 16

• Cameras and Rendering
• About Cameras
• About Rendering
• About Maya Software Renderer
• About Maya Hardware Renderer
• About Maya Vector Renderer
• About Mental ray
• About Render Layers

Day 17

• Mental Ray Continued
• Rendering Global Illumination
• Rendering Reflective Caustics
• Rendering Refractive Caustics
• About Final Gather
• About Mental Ray Motion Blur
• About Mental Ray Depth of Field
• Mental Ray rendering Algorithms

Day 18

• MEL and Expressions
• About the Scripting Editor
• About MEL Commands
• About Python Commands
• About Variables
• About Loops and If Statements
• About Procedures
• Using MEL Scripts
• Using Expressions

Day 19

• Dynamics
• Particles
• Emitters
• Render Types
• Fields
• Collisions
• Rigid-Body Dynamics
• Soft-Body Dynamics
• Effects
• The Dynamic Relationship Editor

Day 20

• Industry Speaker
• Where do you go from here
• About the CG Industry
• Career advice

For further information on the course and to book a place, please call +44 (0) 20 7636 7855 or email: info@xtfx.co.uk