MAYA - technical groups

You don't need to master everything. You should master the basics and be familiar with more advanced techniques in case you need them later.

Each member in the technical group should cover the entire area because that person will be the 'expert' within their project group.

The technical group will present an overview of their area, with examples, to the class when it's due.

• Modeling, including:
  • polygonal models
  • NURBS
  • Subdivision surfaces
  • splitting polygons, joining objects, extruding faces
  • extrude, loft, revolve, trim, fillet blend surfaces
  • grouping
  • textures & material properties
  • creating kinematic chains including IK handles
  • locators, deformers, manipulators
  • templates
  The Modeling group should:
  • give an overview of the techniques
  • identify situations where each technique is useful
  • present a variety of models that they generated with various techniques.

• Animating, including:
  • path animation
  • keys and the graph editor
  • driven keys
  • expressions
  • particle systems
  • animating FK & IK linkages, skinning
  • locators, deformers, manipulators
  • constraints
  The Animating group should:
  • give an overview of the techniques
  • identify situations where each technique is useful
  • present a variety of simple animations that they generated with various techniques.

• Rending, including:
  • playblast
  • controlling rendering quality
  • shading networks
  • shader and material types
  • digital cinematography
    • light source models
    • use of cameras
    • shadows
  • software v. hardware rendering
  • render output: image formats, channels, etc.
  • non-linear editing of video & soundtrack
  • layers
  The Rendering group should:
  • give an overview of the techniques
  • identify situations where each technique is useful
  • present a variety of simple images and animations that they generated with various rendering techniques.

• Project management, including (needs to be expanded)
  • level of detail
  The Project management group should:
  • give an overview of the techniques
  • identify how to organize multiple-member groups
  • identify how to update intermediate results

• Post-processing, including (needs to be expanded)
  • sound
  • compositing
  • output to datafile and playable DVD
  The Post-processing group should:
  • give an overview of the techniques
  • identify how the output impacts the project
  • present examples of output