Goodies! Enjoy some of my nifty handouts, presentations, and downloads.

Klik & Play FAQ

This file originally resided at Maxis's old website before Electronic Arts gutted the company. Hopefully it'll contain some useful hints for you. I do apologize for the poor formatting; this was converted from old HTML 3-style mark-up. read more→

Emacs visual cheat sheet

Emacs presents a mighty challenge for those visual learners accustomed to Microsoft Word's comprehensive toolbar, so to help alleviate the keyboard navigation blues, I present to you the Emacs Visual Cheat Sheet. Print it out to access the most common keyboard shortcuts.

The cheat sheet includes navigation commands, the most common commands for Open/Save/Close, working with buffers, searching, and Copy/Cut/Paste edit functionality.

Facing Ratio shader node in Maya

I originally presented this in Fall 2004 as part of the UCBUGG Masterclass series. It was previously published on ucbugg.berkeley.edu.

It’s often important to know what’s behind the scenes. That’s why, with Maya, you should always demand the truth. If you’re in a relationship, for example, it’s always good to know what’s going on in your significant other’s life. That way, there won’t be any unpleasant surprises. And just like relationships, knowing how Maya works under the hood helps. ;)

Maya is a node-based system. When you tell Maya, “I want a sphere,” it’ll create several nodes holding different characteristics that altogether combine to form the sphere you see in the viewport. You can manipulate the attributes of each node; these attributes affect how the sphere looks in the end.

In this tutorial, we’ll play with nodes hands-on in the Hypershade, a window in which shaders are constructed. In a later Masterclass, Ben will show you how to do shaders in Renderman. read more→

Motion Design in Maya

I originally presented this in Fall 2004 as part of the UCBUGG Masterclass series. It was previously published on ucbugg.berkeley.edu.

In this tutorial, you will create a 3D animated logo. You will learn how to:

  • use Maya’s project system.
  • import curves from vector art files.
  • use the Loft and Planar surface modeling tools.
  • use Maya’s Bevel Plus to expand it.
  • set keyframes to make the logo spin.

Animated logos are fairly simple creations that are used in a variety of places: corporate presentations, broadcast design for television, motion design for DVD’s, and intros for motion pictures. In fact, design firms like Troika and Cinemagic exist to create motion designs. For example, Troika crafted ESPN SportsCenter's latest Revolution theme: read more→

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