Learning Maya

Alias (Toronto) is the company that produces Maya software and other applications for the entertainment and high-end design industries. Alias's Learning Tools division publishes its own books and DVDs. Alias's recognizable industry customers include CNN, Disney, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Pixar, Sega, GM, Honda, and more. The company was founded in 1995 when Alias Research (founded 1983) and Wavefront Technologies (founded 1984) merged under SGI. In July 2003, the company changed its name to Alias.

Create materials and textures. Set up lights and cameras. Work with shadows and raytracing. Learn to control your renders. Understand rendering for special effects and compositing. Explore hardware rendering and vector rendering. Create Caustics and Global Illumination effects. Understand Final Gather and HDRI techniques. Create Maya and mental ray Shaders. Create and animate Rigid Body objects. Create and animate particles using fields, goals, ramps and expressions. Render particles with hardware graphics and software techniques. Dynamically animate NURBs and polygonal surfaces using Soft Bodies. Utilize Artisan functionality in conjunction with Maya Dynamics tools. Instance geometry with particle motion. Use Dynamic Constraints including Rigid Body constraints and soft body springs. Optimize and troubleshoot dynamics scenes.