The 10 day MAYA ADVANCED course is a step up from our Maya Basics course. It covers all the basics initially- then goes on to advanced topics including character animation, advanced deformers, lip-synch ,compositing layers of animation and soft and rigid bodies. This course is one-to-one with one tutor assigned to one student.

The 10 day MAYA ADVANCED course will cover the following topics:-

Day 1. Polygons. Every aspect of creating, cutting, shaping and extruding, using all the methods of shape creation (loft, extrude etc.)

Day 2. NURBs. All aspects of this type of geometry and why it is so useful to animators. In the afternoon we will do sub-division of surfaces for organic life forms.

Day 3. Deformers. Typically those used for shape creation and animation. They include lattices, non-linear, wires, blend shapes and bones. Animating with keyframes.

Day 4. Lighting and texturing. There are very different methods for texturing on polygons and NURBs. You will need to know how to attach a texture to a surface and position it precisely.

Day 5. Physics using soft and rigid bodies and how to animate with them. Basic hierarchical animation using a simple table lamp (and inspired by PIXAR's 'Luxo Junior'.)

Day 6. Cloth, hair, fur, fluids, oceans and ponds. These subjects are always interesting but be prepared for long waits while simulations are taking place. We will also discuss and implement the caching of data which is necessary when using Mental Ray or Pixar's RenderMan.

Day 7. 2D and 3D Paint Effects. Not so important but useful to know. We will also discuss texturing in PhotoShop, creating seamless textures. Also all aspects of lighting will covered in depth. More complex layered shaders.

Day 8. Creating a figure in smoothed polygons (sub-division), creating and skeleton 'rig' and animating it.

Day 9. Using advanced deformers for facial expression and lip-synch. (A continuation of the previous day.)

Day 10. Alpha channels and Z buffers and compositing layers.

Training starts at 10 in the morning and finishes at 6 in the evening. There is a one hour break for lunch.

Please be aware that there will be some inevitable timetable cross-over in the subjects taught over the 10 day period. Some topics may be covered earlier than scheduled and some later.