Jeffrey V.'s Profile

1 Review

Hello Smartflixers,

I had the pleasure of watching the first 4 CD's in this 8 CD collection from Digital Tutors - 3 of which I will review here. These CD's covered the body dynamics and animation involved with the movement of heavy objects.

Although the tutorial is done in Maya 8, the main concepts covered, posing and movement and transitions, are universal to all of the 3D packages and animation in general.

These CD's are NOT for beginners, I would say you have to be an intermediate to advanced Maya (or 3D software of your choice) user. Many steps are taken with the assumption that the viewer is comfortable with the Maya interface and especially custom marking menus. I would also advise that these discs are not for the faint of heart. They are not thumbnail quick animation studies, they show the frame by frame, pose to pose process of animation. These discs take you thoroughly through the scene and preference set up process in Maya, which is key to the ultimate goal of getting a good animation.

The discs are well paced and well timed so as not to get to far ahead if you are following along and fast paced enough so as not to get boring. Each stage in the animation process is covered - from storyboarding to final render.

If you really want a hard core, no BS example of what it takes to animate just a few seconds of film, these CD's give you an unvarnished look.

JR Vogel