In Maya 2011 Essential Training, George Maestri demonstrates the tools and feature set in Maya, as well as the skills necessary to model, texture, animate, and render projects with this deep and robust piece of 3D animation software from Autodesk. This course takes an in-depth tour of Maya's interface, including navigating and manipulating objects in 3D and customizing the workspace. The course also covers object creation and modeling basics, shading and texturing, surface mapping techniques, character rigging, and lastly, rendering and final output. Exercise files accompany the course.

Topics include:

* Getting familiar with the Maya interface
* Organizing scenes
* Creating hierarchies
* NURBs modeling for solid objects
* Adding color to models
* Applying bitmap textures
* Working with mental ray materials
* Polygonal modeling for characters and organic objects
* Deforming with the Skin tool
* Setting up lights and cameras
* Creating realistic effects such as depth of field
* Working with the Timeline
* Creating animation cycles
* Batch rendering
* Rendering with the mental ray engine

Contains corrected versions of lessons 10.04 and 10.11 + some lessons and exercise files that were updated by lynda.com

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