If you take a look at our list of Maya courses, you’ll see six new Maya Essentials titles designed to introduce the basics of Maya in simple installments. Together, these six courses provide a more flexible approach to learning Maya.
In the series, I cover the nuts and bolts of Maya, from the interface, modeling, and materials, to rendering and animation. This modular series is divided into six courses, each no more than an hour or two long. Start at the first course and work your way to the end, or watch one course that interests you. The Maya Essentials courses are available to watch in any order at any time, so it’s your choice.
We’re also exploring the Essentials format for other large software packages, so let us know what you think of this new format. Your feedback is always appreciated.
We just released Unity 3D 3.5 Essential Training, our first 3D game engine course. Unity 3D is one of the top 3D gaming engines on the market, and is used for desktop, online, and mobile games. It’s a strong authoring and development environment for new users interested in creating 3D games.
Author Sue Blackman details how to use the major features in Unity to create engaging 3D gaming content, such as adding lights, texture, multiple views, fire and smoke effects, and employing reusable assets. She also covers interactivity, controllers, the basics of scripting, and some game and level design theory. The end result is a sample game with a lush environment, fully animated characters, and some basic interactive gameplay.
We’re very committed to games. Look for more gaming courses from us in the future.
If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been releasing a number of short AutoCAD courses lately. These AutoCAD series courses are part of a new series we’ve developed called AutoCAD Essentials, which is designed to break up a traditional Essential Training course into smaller, more modular chunks. Shorter, frequently posted courses allow us to be more flexible in how we present the essentials of a large software package like AutoCAD. It’s also a way for us to offer you a more flexible way of learning.
Throughout the AutoCAD Essentials series, Jeff Bartels walks you through a modular approach to the massive AutoCAD application, touching on everything from 2D and 3D CAD design, to architectural drawing and engineering projects. The learning path is broken up into six small courses, each with a duration lasting no longer than an hour or two. Those who want to learn everything can simply start at the first course and work their way through to the end. Those who are specifically interested in learning one small, or specific, part of AutoCAD, can choose to jump in at anytime and watch the course that matters to them the most.
We have three more AutoCAD Essentials courses on the way, and if the six course series is well received, we could easily add a few more modules and keep going. We hope you enjoy this new format and find it easy to use. We’re going to be exploring this format for other large software packages as well, so feedback is always appreciated. Let us know what you think in the comments section below, or by using the site feedback button at the bottom right of every single lynda.com page.
This month has shown the release of several lynda.com Revit Architecture related courses, further expanding our ever growing list.
Paul Aubin, our ever-reliable and popular Revit author, has just released Advanced Modeling in Revit Architecture. In Revit, simple objects, such as walls and floors, are reasonably easy to construct. Modeling more complex objects, however, can be a bit of a challenge. Paul Aubin helps you think both inside and outside the box to use Revit’s modeling tools to create sophisticated and detailed models. He also digs into some more specialized Revit features such as in-place Families, topography, and the Massing Environment. The Advanced Modeling in Revit Architecture course is great for anyone wanting to add more detail to their Revit projects.
In this video from chapter one of the Advanced Modeling in Revit Architecture course, Paul shows you how to build an in-place mass:
In our second new Revit course, Designing a House in Revit Architecture, new author Brian Myers takes you step by step through the process of designing a house from scratch in Revit Architecture. The course covers the design of a multi-level home, and the documentation process required to create multiple plans, sections, details, and schedules. This course is terrific for anyone wanting to understand the full design process within Revit Architecture.
This clip, from chapter two of Designing a House in Revit Architecture, walks you through the process of creating exterior walls for an American bungalow-style home, which is usually the first modeling step taken after you’ve reviewed all your project requirements, and entered your project information into Revit:
If you’re interested in architecture, stay tuned as we have more courses focused on architecture-related software in the works.
Do you have any Revit modeling tips or tricks worth sharing? Let us know in the comments section what you’ve been working on, or what you’ve discovered through trial and error.
Used for a wide variety of applications, including product design and manufacturing, SolidWorks is currently one of the most popular CAD packages on the market, and we’re very proud to have finished our first SolidWorks course this month.
In SolidWorks 2012 Essential Training, author Gabriel Corbett shows how to create manufacturing-ready parts and assemblies in SolidWorks 2012. Beginning with simple 2D sketching and the software’s sketch-editing tools, the course provides step-by-step instruction on building 3D geometry from 2D sketches. In addition, the course also covers creating complex 3D objects with the Extrude, Revolve, Sweep, and Loft tools, and shows the process of building complex assemblies by mating individual parts together into robust assemblies and structures.
Diving deeper into the course you’ll find tutorials that discuss generating manufacturing-ready drawings complete with an itemized Bill of Materials, cutting and revolving holes, and using the Hole Wizard tool to generate industry standard holes like counter bores, counter sinks, and taps. The course concludes with Gabriel showing you how to photo render a final design.
If you have any interest in SolidWorks, this course is a great way to start learning more about this popular CAD tool.
In this movie from chapter seven of the SolidWorks 2012 Essential Training course, Gabriel describes how to extrude your sketches and turn them into 3D solid objects using Solidworks 2012:
Animating characters in Maya can be a lot of fun. Fighting with a difficult character rig, however, can sap the joy out of animating. Character Rigging in Maya is a course designed to help you create character rigs that are both robust and easy to animate.
A deeper, more technical update to the Maya 8.5 Character Rigging course, Character Rigging in Maya covers the basics of Maya’s rigging tools, then goes deep into how these tools are used to create a complete character rig, including skeletons, forward and inverse kinematics switches, and the skinning of characters to skeletons.
Some of the more technical topics covered include expressions and scripts that help automate the rig and make it easier to animate, and the process of creating an advanced facial rig that shows a variety of ways to create sophisticated controls to manage complex facial expressions (which I find particularly useful.)
If you’ve seen the Character Animation Fundamentals with Maya course on lynda.com, you may notice Character Rigging in Maya creates its rig with the same character used in the animation course. It’s not the same old character, though—we’ve have thrown in a few updates to the rig to make the character rigging techniques even more interesting.
We’re very committed to character animation here at lynda.com, so if you’re into animation, stay tuned for more character courses in the coming months.
The three most recent installments of Chris and Trish Meyer’s After Effects Apprentice series have covered three different approaches to grouping layers in After Effects. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses; mastering all three means you can choose the right approach for a particular task—or combine them for the ultimate in power and flexibility. Here’s an overview from the third in the series, After Effects Apprentice 09: Expressions.
Expressions allow you tie an individual parameter of one layer either to the identical parameter of another layer, or to a different parameter of the same or different layers—even across compositions. This makes it the most targeted and most flexible approach to grouping in that you can target specific properties, and leave others untouched.
One of the biggest advantages of expressions includes the ability to keyframe just one property or layer and have others follow (and update) automatically. However, this is just one use of expressions; many other functions are possible, including the ability to automatically loop or randomize the animation of a layer.
The three most recent installments of Chris and Trish Meyer’s After Effects Apprentice series have covered three different approaches to grouping layers in After Effects. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses; mastering all three means you can choose the right approach for a particular task—or combine them for the ultimate in power and flexibility. Here’s an overview from the second in the series, After Effects Apprentice 08: Nesting and Precomposing.
Precomposing allows you to select one or more layers, and create a new composition for them to reside in. This new precomp is then automatically nested—in other words, it becomes a single layer—in the original composition. This technique is the most comprehensive approach to grouping, as anything you do to resulting nested layer—including changing its opacity or applying effects—will affect the grouped layers.
In addition to grouping layers, intelligent use of nesting and precomposing to build a hierarchy of comps allows you to rewire the rendering order (order of operations, such as transformations and effects) for After Effects, as well as reuse common elements in multiple compositions, which in turn makes it much easier to accommodate client changes.
