Blog

I created this month’s free tutorial with one thing in mind: How can I help improve artists’ workflow’s? This tutorial explores Maya’s ‘Transfer maps’ tool and is designed to do just that. I’ve made sure that we cover this tool in great detail, providing valuable insight into how it works, and how you can avoid common problems. It’s a very practical, hands-on demonstration of the ‘Transfer maps’ tool and with it, you will learn how to bake a diffuse texture from multiple pieces of geometry to one individual model. 

We have students from all over the world training with us - all from different walks of life and with different priorities and motivations. Whether they’re in full-time work or part time study, it’s our core aim to help them develop the skills required to progress their career as a VFX artist in a way that works for them. Our Online Mentored Training enables students to do just that – learning online, and working around day-to-day commitments.

We had an enquiry from one of our online students asking if she could view our online courseware on an iPad via the Skyfire app to view flash content... As we have not yet worked on mobile releases of our learning system (busy building fab courses), I thought I would take a look at it as I was kind of intrigued.

So I invest my £2.99 and loaded her up! I was amazed I could get in to our system and play the video content! Sadly my joy soon tempered when I could not make out the text in the 3DS Max interface. #disappointed!

The loading was also a little clunky to be honest, you would select a video to view and it would load a little window in the bottom left hand of the screen and find the video. Not elegant.

Not to be beaten I decided to look at some additional apps. Whilst I am sure there are others I came across iSwifter. It was also cheaper at £1.79 ;-)

So I was again a little disappointed, this time with the speed of scrolling in our system... However - once I played a video it was seamless, no drop outs excellent quality and I was really very happy with the results.

Whilst we do not 'officially support' the iPad or mobile devices, I now know at least I can grab iSwifter and load up a video with my iPad. If you do have an iPad and want to try this out iSwifter do allow you to take a peak so why not grab one of our free tutorials and give it a go?

Have a great weekend everyone.

The students on our Mentored Courses have been talking to us about their experiences through out their study with us and we thought we'd share their feedback with you. 

For those of you who are starting to learn ZBrush or want to improve their ZBrush skills, we have an exciting new review of our ZBrush for 3D Artist online course for you to read. CreativeBloke.com has been reviewing the courses and published the first part of his review diary on this course.

Want to know what it’s like to do one of our Mentored courses? Well we caught up with Escapee Ricardo Viana to find out how he got on – all the way from sunny Portugal.

A couple of weeks ago we asked our friends on Twitter and Facebook where they stood on online learning versus classroom courses. The range of opinions put forward was fantastic, with arguments from both sides no doubt strong enough to sway those who like their perch on the fence.

Having started at the beginning of October, the first batch of students from our Online Mentored Visual Effects Course are well under way and the initial results of their work has been great.

I find it really annoying when I find freebies that are ‘for a limited time only’, and it’s something we’ve been guilty of with our free tutorials. We’ve had some great feedback about them, and with that in mind we've decided to revamp the way our freebies work.

If you are a user of any software package you'll know that at least once a year software developers deliver an update. Autodesk's Maya 2011 was no exception. 3D users had become accustomed to Maya's UI over the last 10 years but Autodesk thought it was time for a change, enter Maya 2011. So this release brings all sorts of challenges for the diehard Maya user, it has a new interface... I hear the screams of "where did you put that" and "what on earth does this icon represent"!