Maya Advanced
Push the limits of 3D modeling and effects with Autodesk Maya
Maya opens up a world of limitless 3D possibilities for video game artists. This course takes your basic modeling and animation skills to an advanced level, helping you add professional-quality pieces to your game portfolio and reel.
You'll get hands-on practice with modeling with NURBS and subdivision surfaces, and that's just the start of this six-lesson course. Also covered are the essentials of creating a character skeleton and rig, looped animation cycles, characters interacting with their environments, special effects using textures and dynamics, important lighting and rendering techniques, and strategies for putting it all together.
Course developer Nathaniel Stein, an expert Maya user and educator, guides you through creative and technically challenging projects that are sure to stretch your Maya skills to the max.
Tuition: $600 US
Course Instructor(s):
Requirements:
- Computer with Internet connection (broadband recommended).
- Autodesk Maya and experience in Maya.
- Adobe Photoshop and basic experience in Photoshop.
- Computer that meets the Autodesk Maya system requirements.
- Three button mouse required for PC users, recommended for Mac users.
Prerequisites:
Course Objectives:
- Create objects using NURBS and subdivision surfaces and choose the appropriate geometry type for a 3D model.
- Use a range of methods for creating NURBS surfaces including revolves, lofts, birails, and trims.
- Create a skeleton of joints for a character that allow for accurate motion.
- Bind a character to a skeleton and weight it for accurate deformation.
- Develop constraints and connections on objects and learn how to manage forward and inverse kinematics.
- Apply straightforward animation and non-linear animation techniques using character sets and the Trax Editor.
- Create animations in which characters interact with environmental objects realistically.
- Use animation and textures to create complex special effects including glows and lasers.
- Apply Maya Dynamics to create particle emission effects, fire and fluid effects, and other complex environmental effects.
- Use light types, light linking, raytracing, and depth maps to create lighting and shadows.
- Create advanced renders, layered renders, and post-processing effects to complete a scene.
Course Outline
LESSON 1 More Modeling Mojo
Polygons are great, but there's much more to modeling than this basic geometry. Your first lesson begins with a look at NURBS, the perfect choice for smooth, precision objects. You'll learn a variety of methods for creating NURBS curves and surfaces, including revolves, lofts, birails, and trims. Subdivision surfaces, a cousin of polygons, are also explored to help you get extra detail in your models. An additional focus is strategies for quality, efficient modeling. In the exercise, you'll model a character using all three geometry types.
LESSON 2 Bones, Deformations, Skinning, and Other Unpleasant Things
Without bones, a character can't move... and without motion, you don't have much of a game. This lesson introduces you to the concept of rigging a character, beginning with giving it a skeleton of joints. You'll learn to bind the skeleton to a character model, and how to apply weight to your mesh for proper deformation when the character moves. Your character from Exercise One reappears in Exercise Two to get his skeleton and weighting.
LESSON 3 Constraints, Connections, and Rigging
Our bodies have certain rules for how we can bend and move, but at this stage, our 3D characters don't. Lesson Three introduces constraints and connections as ways to limit a character's movement to a realistic range of motion. You'll learn how to use the Connection Editor and other Maya features to make this happen, and explore the concepts of forward and inverse kinematics. The lesson wraps up with a look at creating a usable rig interface that makes the animator's job easy. For the exercise, you'll finish up your character by adding constraints, connections, and a quality rig.
LESSON 4 Animation and Cycles
All the character rigging done in previous lessons leads up to the important task of animating. Lesson Four is all about animating a character, going beyond basic keyframing to explore the concepts of straightforward animation and non-linear animation. You'll learn to create character sets to enable efficient straightforward animation and use the Trax Editor to make cycles and loops for non-linear animation. Most importantly, you'll explore methods for making your character interact with objects in the environment: picking up things, dropping things, and more. Your skills will be put to the test in the exercise as you animate a character.
LESSON 5 Bells and Whistles - Special FX
Special effects can be the hallmark of a fun game, and are fun to produce too. Many effects start with textures, so this lesson begins with some texturing tricks you can use to create lasers, swirling effects, glows, and much more. You'll learn how to produce these using layered and combined textures as well as animated textures. Then you'll turn your attention to Dynamics—highly technical tools you can use to create smoke, fire, and other advanced effects using particles, emitters, and fields. The exercise is your special effects playground where you'll work with both texture and Dynamics effects.
LESSON 6 Rendering, Lighting, and Putting It All Together
By Lesson Six, you've learned a great deal about the modeling, character building, and animation components that make for solid, professional work. The final lesson focuses on finalizing your work with high quality lighting, shadows, and renders. You'll learn about light linking, light effects, raytraced shadows, depth map shadows, and a workflow for dealing with your scene's lighting needs. Then you'll go beyond the basic renders you've used up to this point, using special render options and layered renders for more complex output. You'll finish the course with a project that puts these to the test and demonstrates your advanced Maya knowledge.
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