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.

Classroom Spy lets you see what everyone's doing - without leaving your desk. You can monitor the activity of all the
PCs in your classroom remotely. Plus, you can share your screen with your students' PCs, making demos and presentations much easier.

In this DVD, Scott Patton continues from 3D Character Design Volume 1 to show the processes he uses to create finished character designs for feature films. This DVD explores Patton's fast and efficient methods for creating a final color rendering using ZBrush® and Photoshop®. Patton shows how he squeezes the most from ZBrush’s powerful renderer, side-stepping the often complex renderers of standard 3D packages. In creating both a wide and close-up shot of the character, he shares creative Photoshop tips and tricks to quickly get to a finished piece of concept art from the ZBrush renders, covering topics such as adding and refining skin texture, hair, eyes, shadows and scars. Patton also discusses how to quickly create backgrounds that enhance the character and overall composition.

This DVD plunges into the basics of Maya’s Paint Effects. Ethan Summers gives you a feature-by-feature examination of this powerful package, teaching you to control the density of your polygon mesh, to manage your pressure and control curves and to establish an effective workflow process. Ethan will explain various types of animation and illustrate basic ways Paint Effects can connect to dynamics within Maya.

BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) is a new and exciting DVD series developed to showcase the creation of a game cinematic sequence. The series follows a team of artists as they demonstrate their production techniques from concept phase to final rendered animation. In this first chapter, concept artist Peter Han designs the lead character Geo, a seasoned veteran of numerous infiltration missions. Peter demonstrates his process for quick sketching, character exploration, prop design, gathering reference and producing orthographics and final illustrations for the 3D modelers. This DVD features production meetings with Art Director Mark Goerner, as he provides design direction for Geo.

In this tutorial, Joe takes you through his process for modeling a Colt 1911. Using an image plane for reference, he creates the low polygon slide, handle, trigger guard, trigger, barrel, hammer, and sights. He then creates the Sub-D and high poly slide, handle and barrel models. Joe shows how he optimizes the geometry for rendering normal maps and lays out the UVs of the slide, handle and barrel. He discusses trouble shooting normal maps, common errors and things to look for and demonstrates how to create a grayscale 2D normal map, and composite it over the high poly normal map. Finally Joe completes the final model in Maya with textures applied.

From creating simple animation to integrating Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash files, After Effects CS3 Professional Essential Training explores the possibilities available using the motion graphics and animation features in After Effects. Adobe Certified Instructor Chad Perkins teaches the fundamentals of managing the timeline, working with 3D layers, creating projects for iPods and mobile devices, and more.

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.