NURBS Modeling with Autodesk Maya

This 12 part course takes you through the process of learning to model all kinds of objects, mainly for industrial design. You don't have to have any expertise in Maya. I teach the user interface and the main commands as we go. In order to follow the class, please download the fully functional Student version of Maya.

The first lesson ends with the rendered image of a NURBS surface. Pretty early in the course you learn how to model elegant surfaces from just two or three curves. This leads us to modeling a bath tub, a pair of glasses, the fender of a car, The main purpose of this 12 part series, however, is to make you acquainted with basically all tools available – from classic curve modeling to the use of deformers with construction history, cutting and trimming surfaces, converting them to Polygons.

While NURBS are the industry standard for industrial design (no car or smart phone or coffee machine design without NURBS), Polygon objects are needed for game design and character animation. The bridges between these two worlds with their options and limitations are an important topic in this class. Just as rendering in order to see the beauty of the surfaces, with cool shaders and light sources.

I've taught computer animation at German universities. I've written several books on Maya. I have a flourishing Maya learning channel on Youtube which covers a whole range of topics. This class, however, concentrates on the beauty and elegance of NURBS only. No other full fledge animation package has these high class tools for NURBS modeling.