Jeff is a self-taught freelance digital artist and has been freelancing for the past six years. In that time he has worked on many projects, a lot of which have been mechanical illustrations for companies like Johnson Controls, Trane, Carrier, and Honeywell. More recently he has spent some time teaching on-site mental ray classes, which he enjoys as it has allowed him to travel around the country and meet a lot of really great people.
Rendering Techniques
Creating Clay Renders
A "Clay Render" refers to a basic shaded render where it's easy to read all the details in your meshes.

Continuing from his first DVD, Global Illumination: Exteriors, Christopher Nichols explains how interior global illumination differs from exterior GI. Christopher focuses on the concept of digital sets and explores issues of interior lighting for GI, including the variety of light sources that can be used, as well as how space plays an important role in lighting. Christopher demonstrates the differences between regular light sources, environment light, IES lighting, area lights, and even how geometry and shaders can affect the lighting of a scene. Additionally, since bouncing light plays an important role in interior GI, this lecture looks at some special techniques such as using V-Ray’s photon mapping and light cache. Christopher also explores the idea of baking lighting into textures, which is a useful technique for some situations. With Global Illumination: Interiors, you will see the rendering of an interior space in a wass* new light.

With the fundamentals of softbody effects understood, this lecture moves on to more specific applications. The first group of demonstrated techniques focus on a variety of ground plane effects including oceans, puddles, mud, sand and snow. Each of these are related, yet differ in how they react to external stimuli such as fields and collisions. Water reacts quickly yet the deformation is scale dependant: an ocean responds with large swells while a shallow puddle produces fast-moving, tight ripples. Mud, sand and snow effects are much slower reactions where the surface will gradually (if ever) return to smooth equilibrium. The lecture then moves on techniques for combining softbodies with rigid bodies, blendshape deformers and auxilliary spring effects for the creation of flags, saliva, and interconnected softbodies.

I spent over eight months and almost $30,000 producing this E-Learning workshop. This is not an amateur Power-Point recording but an advanced learning experience incorporating the latest in multimedia and accelerated learning techniques.

In Flash CS3 Professional Essential Training, instructor Rich Shupe delves into the key aspects of working with Flash CS3 to create professional animations, design interactive websites, and incorporate audio and video into self-contained presentations.

For over 5 years, our Windows Server 2003 courses have literally built Train Signal’s reputation as
an innovator in hands on computer based training.

BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) is an exciting DVD series developed to showcase the creation of a game cinematic sequence. In this chapter of the series Jared Simeth demonstrates the creation of two matte paintings.

In the nearly 4 hour long set of DVD's I go over philosophy, gear, exposure, modifiers, application of it all, how I compose images, what I'm looking for in a photo, what I like, what I don't like, how things go really well, how things start to suck very quickly, how to interact with clients, how to get kicked out of not just one location but two locations, and, most importantly, how to deal with a group of drunk girls out on the street.

In this DVD, David Finch reveals his step-by-step process for drawing hands and feet. He starts with simple block shapes, and moves on to more complex shapes before showing how to place fingers and toes correctly. David discusses common mistakes and how to avoid them. He covers fingers and toes in detail, demonstrating how to draw them flat and in foreshortened perspective from multiple angles. He demonstrates some easy shortcuts and tricks, including use of negative space and dynamic folding between the fingers and thumb. Lastly, he draws completed hands and feet from multiple angles, covering the differences between male and female hands and subjects such as drawing claws, fingernail details and shoes. This constructive drawing process teaches you to draw convincing hands and feet without the need for tracing or using reference.

In this DVD, David Finch reveals his step-by-step process for drawing the human head. He starts with a basic head shape and demonstrates the structural breakdown from multiple angles. He then focuses on the various features including eyes, noses, lips, ears, necks and hair. He discusses important landmarks, features and proportions. David brings it all together to draw a series of completed heads, from basic male and female heads to heroic examples. Lastly, he covers lighting on a simplified head shape to help you understand the rules governing placement of dark and light shapes. He includes a wide range of tips and tricks for making your faces, heads and hair more life-like and convincing without the need to rely upon reference material.

Well-fit drawers are the hallmark of the cabinetmaker's art. Rob's superb craftsmanship is evident in this detailed and thorough 2-hour plus demonstration of his method of fitting drawers into carcasses.
Featured are: Alan Peters method of drawer making Material selection and preparation Drawer materials, preparation, fitting and joint layout and more!

Scott PattonOpisanie: In this DVD, Scott Patton shows the processes he uses to create finished character designs for feature films. This DVD explores Patton's fast and efficient method for concept sculpting, skipping the 2D sketch phase all together and designing the character entirely within ZBrush. This method of design is more interactive and has allowed him to work with directors one-on-one directly in 3D. From basic form to final detail, Patton uses a combination of ZBrush's tools and straight forward explanations to show how a character can be created without the usual time restrictions and hassle of most 3D packages. He covers everything from blocking out the forms and fleshing out the muscles, to adding props, detailing with alphas and posing the character.