Learning Paths

Maya: Dynamics Core Skills

10 courses
37 hours
Skill IQ
Expanded

This skill path is designed to take you from the end of the Maya: Core Skills skill path into a tightly focused study of building common visual effects elements for television and film using Autodesk’s Maya. This path will help build a strong foundation for working with the major dynamics systems of this extremely robust application.

Courses in this path

Beginner

The courses in this section will expose you to the fundamentals of Maya’s dynamics systems including particles, volumetric fluids, and Bifrost.

Maya nParticle Fundamentals

by Peter Gend
6h 47m
(51)

Maya Fluid Fundamentals

by Pankaj Malik
4h 52m
(38)

Introduction to Bifrost in Maya

by Dan LeFebvre
2h 12m
(21)

Intermediate

Once you have a solid understanding of the concepts covered in the first section, the courses at the intermediate level will help to push your skills even further by combining multiple solvers into one project, and exploring more complex uses for Maya’s dynamic systems.

Maya Dynamics: nParticles and Expressions

by Pankaj Malik
7h 33m
(22)

Maya Dynamics: Using Particles to Create Magical Smoke

by Pankaj Malik
2h 45m
(21)

Maya Dynamics: Bifrost for Small-scale Simulations

by Peter Gend
3h 6m
(14)

Maya Dynamics: nHair, Xgen, and Interactive Grooming

by Peter Gend
5h 18m
(34)

Advanced

In this section you will have the chance to explore Maya’s ocean system, learn about data management for a large scale volumetric fluid simulation, and get your first taste of character effects using Bifrost and XGen.

Maya Dynamics: BOSS Ocean Simulations

by Peter Gend
3h 29m
(12)

Simulating a Large Dust Storm in Maya

by Pankaj Malik
1h 43m

Maya Character and Environment FX with Bifrost and XGen

by Todd Palamar
2h 11m
(16)

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What you will learn

Fundamentals of nParticles
Fundamentals of Maya voxel based fluids
Fundamentals of nHair and xGen
Fundamentals of Bifrost and BOSS
Fundamentals of scripting MEL expressions for dynamics

Experience

A good understanding of Maya’s workflow is required. We recommend starting with the Maya: Core Skills path You’ll get the most out of this path when you’re familiar with Maya, but still need to enhance your skills in the areas of particles, fluids, and rigid bodies.

Learn with the best

Pankaj Malik

Pankaj Malik is a Senior Instructor of VFX. He has seven years experience teaching and training students. He loves to explore the ocean of Maya commands and recently updated to the world of Digital Sculpting. He is a modeler, texturing, and lighting artist and a self taught dynamics artist. He is an Autodesk Certified Professional of Maya and 3ds Max and Adobe Certified Associate in Photoshop. He has made five short 3D commercial films and two VFX movies. He believes in great knowledge sharing a... more

Dan LeFebvre

Dan is an author at Pluralsight with a passion for helping others. Long before Dan ever officially donned his recording headset, he was a dedicated forum moderator with Digital-Tutors (now a Pluralsight company), helping out members with problems they encountered across a wide variety of software. Since then, he joined our team and continues to help others every day with their CG challenges. From his extensive industry background, Dan has taken all of the troubleshooting knowledge that he's ... more

Peter Gend

Peter is a CGI artist with many years of experience in the Film, Animation, and Video Game Industries. Some highlights include Fox's The Simpsons, The Fantastic Four, Discovery Channel's Shark Week, Sex and the City, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and more! Peter has been working in higher education for the last 8 years teaching a variety of topics that include Digital Sculpture, Dynamic Simulation, Traditional Modeling, Character Rigging, MEL Scripting, Lighting, Texturing, and more. He also s... more

Todd Palamar

Todd Palamar has worked in the computer animation industry for 23-years. His career started at a young age doing traditional special effects work on several direct to video movies. He later transitioned from film to games, working on numerous video games, including Sega of Japan’s coin-operated title Behind Enemy Lines, as well as Dukes of Hazzard and Trophy Buck 2 for the Sony PlayStation console. Todd taught computer animation for 6 years at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida. During... more

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Learning Paths

Maya: Dynamics Core Skills