Cinema 4D R11.5 Essential Training covers all the important steps to get up and running with this easy-to-use 3D application. Designer and author Ian Robinson covers the essentials of 3D design, including modeling, animation, and integration with other design tools. Ian explores how to build objects with Cinema 4Ds basic primitives, and how to use light, shadow, and texture to give depth to a scene. He shows the proper use of the powerful animation tools, including MoGraph, to push 3D designs to the limit. Finally, Ian covers how to combine Cinema 4D with other applications like After Effects and Motion, manipulating particles, and collecting and archiving a project.
Archive for the ‘Published Courses’ Category
New Cinema 4D R11.5 course covers the essentials of 3D design
Published by Crystal McCullough, executive editor | Monday, December 14th, 2009Premiere Pro CS4 course shows how to tell better stories with creative editing
Published by Megan O. Read, author relations manager | Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Several examples from Chapter 4, The Art of Video Editing. Clockwise from top, two clips from "House on Haunted Hill" with Vincent Price, Kuleshov's Effect, from "Amar el Cine," music video for the Zen Chemists, scene from "Ninja Death 3."
Premiere Pro CS4 Beyond the Basics with Chad Perkins is an exciting release for video editors, but I’d argue that there could be something for everyone in this course.
In Chapters 2 and 4 for instance, (Tips for Shooting Video, and The Art of Video Editing), Chad touches on key tips that anyone with a camera and a story to tell can use. From telling better stories through suggestive editing, to setting a mood using emotional cutaways, the importance of pacing, and thankfully, how to avoid bad edits.
A few other highlights that caught my eye were the chapter on Editing a Music Video, the advanced video concept of getting video to look like film (in Chapter 14), and the awesome creating a day-for-night shot in Chapter 7. (So that’s how they shoot all those night shots in movies!)
Chad also covers special effects, color correction, and keying and compositing, integrating all these concepts as he builds a music video project from scratch. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Focus on business and lynda.com Microsoft courses
Published by Crystal McCullough, executive editor | Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Many of you know lynda.com as a great place for creative training, but did you also know we are as good at business training? We’ve taken our successful approach with video instructional films and applied the same teaching approaches to Microsoft Office 2007, with the release of a number of courses for Excel 2007, including:
• Excel 2007 Power Shortcuts is filled with useful tips for anyone who uses Excel to track projects, create spreadsheets, or build forms.
• Excel 2007: Introduction to Formulas and Functions: This is a great course to take if you aren’t comfortable working with formulas, but want to expand what you can do in Excel.
• Excel 2007: Advanced Formulas and Functions (intro above): Demystifies some of the most challenging of the 300+ formulas and functions in Excel and shows how to put them to their best use.
• Excel 2007: Pivot Tables for Data Analysis: If Pivot Tables make you nervous, this course will help you conquer this fear quickly and painlessly.
We’ve got our Office 2008 for Mac users covered, too:
• Excel 2008 for Mac: Pivot Tables for Data Analysis: See how to create Pivot Table reports from internal Excel data and outside data sources.
• Office 2008 for Mac: Small Business Projects: Create documents that every business needs: business cards, letterhead, contact records, and invoices.
We hope these courses help you get your job done faster and better than before. And stay tuned for more – we have big plans to grow our business content. And as always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for courses!
Learn Lightroom 3 from Photographer Chris Orwig
Published by Jim Heid, associate content director/Photoshop and photography | Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
The computer industry is usually a secretive place. Companies keep their product plans to themselves, and all product discussions take place under the Cone of Silence from TV’s Get Smart.
That’s one reason why Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is a breath of fresh air. Adobe has made a prerelease version of its popular photo-management and photo-enhancement software available for free downloading. Curious to see what’s new? Grab the beta preview and try it.
But how do you learn it? By diving into Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta Preview, a new lynda.com course from Chris Orwig, photographer and instructor at the Brooks Institute. It’s more than two hours of detailed instruction on all the new features in Lightroom 3’s beta version, and it includes comparisons that illustrate what has changed from Lightroom 2.
Chris will also be doing courses on the final version of Lightroom 3 next year. But why wait? Download the free public beta and dive into the next version of Lightroom right now.
Branching out: Family tree and ancestry research and presentation
Published by Crystal McCullough, executive editor | Thursday, November 5th, 2009Growing and Sharing Your Family Tree shows how rewarding and informative building a family history can be. Genealogy instructor Jeff Sengstack teaches how to find lost ancestors, connect with living relatives, and collaborate with others to grow a family tree. He explains how to use the Family Tree Maker application along with Ancestry.com and other internet sites to track down census data, immigration records, and other important documents, and then organize family tree data. Jeff also presents tips on how to scan old photos, create video slideshows, and build family web sites.
New photo assignment: Using backlighting to your photographic advantage
Published by Megan O. Read, author relations manager | Monday, October 26th, 2009
Derrick Story and his model, Denise Crosby, show us how to best use backlight, reflection, spot metering, and fill flash for stunning professional-quality photographs.
Derrick Story is at it again! He is bound and determined to make us better photographers, and his new series of Photo Assignment courses really do give us all an opportunity to strut our stuff.
The latest in his series is the new course, Photo Assignment: Backlit Portraits, Derrick show us how to achieve really interesting effects in a typically unintuitive shooting style—backlit. Check out his new courses, and then join me in posting pictures to his latest Flickr group, where we can all learn from each other.
Have fun shooting and see you all on Flickr.
New OS, new training: Windows 7 Essential Training released today
Published by Crystal McCullough, executive editor | Thursday, October 22nd, 2009In Windows 7 Essential Training, David Rivers helps users of any level feel comfortable with the improvements and enhancements found in Microsoft’s operating system. From simple navigation through the updated graphic user interface, David shows how to install or upgrade and get the most out of Windows 7.
David also covers using the new Internet Explorer 8 and boosting a computer’s memory with the ReadyBoost tool. He also highlights hardware configuration options and explores the advances made connecting a home or work system with Windows Live, the cloud-computing environment made available for Windows 7 users. The video above is just a small taste of the 6.5 hour course.
Your next photo assignment: Fill Flash Portraits with Derrick Story
Published by Megan O. Read, author relations manager | Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Derrick Story has just released another photo-assignment course on lynda.com with a show-and-tell Flickr component. This course, Photo Assignment: Fill Flash Portraits, explains the benefits of using flash photography outdoors in bright light in order to achieve great looking portraits in otherwise tricky bright light.
This technique will help you build off of what you learned in Derrick’s first Photo Assignment course, but is also a terrific stand-alone course to help you brush up on your photography when you are at daytime, outdoor events.
There is also a new Flickr group set up and ready for you. So get outside, grab your camera, and take some fill flash photography with us. Looking forward to seeing your work on the Fill Flash Portrait Photo Assignment Flickr group.
Ruby Essential Training covers control structures to object-oriented features (and everything in between)
Published by Crystal McCullough, executive editor | Thursday, October 15th, 2009In Ruby Essential Training, instructor Kevin Skoglund teaches the fundamentals of Ruby, the popular object-oriented open-source programming language. Kevin begins by walking through the basic data types, demonstrating Ruby’s control structures (loops, iterators, conditionals, and code blocks) and showcasing the elegant syntax structure of the language.
Kevin explains variable scope and shows how to use methods, arguments, and return values to write efficient code. After covering the fundamentals, Kevin focuses on Ruby’s object-oriented features. He shows how to define classes and explores OOP concepts, including instances, attributes, access control, and inheritance.
This week’s lynda.com podcast: Pixel Bender Toolkit in Flash Player 10
Published by Crystal McCullough, executive editor | Friday, October 9th, 2009In this week’s lynda.com video training podcast, learn to create a filter in Flash Player using the Pixel Bender Toolkit with a video from Flash Player 10 New Features with Lee Brimelow.




















































