This new Maya course is specifically designed for artist looking to move from Mental Ray to Arnold. Mental Ray was first bundled free with Maya 4.5 back in 2002, but over the years other renderers such as Arnold have become faster and easier to use. With the release of Maya 2016, Autodesk removed Mental Ray and replaced it with Arnold. The goal of this course is to help artists make the inevitable transition as smoothly as possible by comparing both renderers side by side and showing how to take the knowledge acquired over years of Mental Ray use and quickly transfer it to Arnold.
We have broken the course down into logical sections. The first class hits the ground running by quickly covering all the bases with one straightforward project. From there we slow down and focus on each of the major areas associated with a render engine. Firstly the renderer itself, then shaders, lighting, camera, render passes, AOV, and finally a mixed bag of various built-in utilities and other more technical features and tricks.
The course is taught by Matt Leonard who has been in the 3D and Visual Effects industry since 1990. He has been using Maya since its release in 1998 and Arnold since 2011. He works for Industrial Light and Magic as a Technical Trainer and before that he was the Lead Lighting and Rendering Trainer for MPC. He currently lives in Vancouver with his wife and three kids.
course syllabus
