Training Discovery

Need to learn Maya? Start here. This course covers the latest features in Maya 2016, while giving you a strong foundation in all the core tools, including 3D modeling, texturing, rendering, animation, and more. It starts with the basics of selecting and manipulating objects and organizing scenes, as you learn the interface and explore Maya's features. Author George Maestri then takes you through polygonal modeling, creating and refining meshes, sculpting, and NURBS modeling. After you begin to understand modeling, George will show you how to create and apply materials to surfaces—adding color, texture, and reflectivity. He'll then integrate cameras, lighting and depth-of-field effects in the rendering process, and finally, show how to add movement and life to your work with Maya's animation tools.

Get the essential training you need to create high-quality 3D models and animations in Maya 2017. This course covers the core Maya skills—modeling, texturing, rendering, and animation—within a real-world project-based workflow that translates equally well to film, motion graphics, and game design.

It starts with the basics of selecting and manipulating objects and organizing scenes, as you learn the interface and explore Maya's features. Author George Maestri then takes you through polygonal modeling, creating and refining meshes, sculpting, and NURBS modeling. Once you understand modeling, George will show how to create and apply materials to surfaces—adding color, texture, and reflectivity. He'll then integrate cameras, lighting, and depth-of-field effects into the rendering process, using the built-in software renderer, mental ray, and the new Arnold for Maya renderer. Last but not least, he'll show how to add movement and life to your work with Maya's animation tools.

3D printing allows your digital creations to emerge in the real world, but you don't need a 3D printer to bring them to life. Learn how to prepare your models in Maya and then send them for 3D printing on Shapeways, an online service that ships reproductions straight to your door. Author Ryan Kittleson shows how to hollow out models, define an object's thickness, and work with texture maps for full-color prints. He shows you how to export the model, upload it to Shapeways, and view the finished result. Once you have mastered the basics, Ryan invites you to test your skills in a series of challenge videos.

Using simple Maya shaders in advanced ways can help you create more realistic and interesting materials for your 3D models. Watch this Maya training course to learn how to create and control advanced materials (including mental ray materials) in Maya.

Andy Beane includes two methods for creating advanced Maya materials. He starts with smaller, easier materials that can be composited together. He then shows how to combine these same materials in an all-in-one-method for rendering, and evaluate the pros and cons of both techniques. Chapter 3 demonstrates the subsurface scattering (SSS) material in mental ray, which will strengthen your material toolbox, and shows how to composite the results in After Effects.

Explore the world of modeling and texturing 3D game props and assets in Autodesk Maya. Author Adam Crespi provides strong technical modeling techniques, from blocking basic forms and leveraging simple parts and reusable textures, to simulating real-world detail like dirt, wear, and grain with UV maps and ambient occlusion. The course includes workflow and integration considerations such as planning UV space for projection, and also steps into Mudbox and Unity for further refinement.

Light has more qualities than you think: temperature, brightness, and diffusion, just to name three. When it comes to replicating it in the digital world, you need strong materials and lighting tools, and Maya offers both. Learn how to replicate three unique lighting setups in interior scenes, starting with direct daylight. After you produce the daylight renderings, Adam Crespi shows how to light the scene with interior lights suitable for night or dusk shots, and then use sky portals to create soft indirect light that blooms through the windows. He follows up with rendering specular, mask, and ambient occlusion passes, and then shows how to composite the renderings in both Adobe After Effects and The Foundry Nuke.

Arnold is the new high-quality rendering engine in Maya. Realistic rendering in Maya is easier than ever with this brute force Monte Carlo ray tracer. Arnold's physically based rendering accurately simulates light in the real world, but allows breaking physical laws to achieve artistic styles. This course is an overview of essential features for lighting, materials, and rendering in Maya using Arnold core version 5.

Businesses run on email—and 80% of on-premise email runs on Microsoft Exchange. Despite the popularity of cloud-based solutions, email server administration is still a critical skill for any system admin. Learn how to maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot an Exchange Server 2016 environment in this course with networking consultant Robert McMillen. Robert concentrates on core skills and day-to-day activities, such as configuring mailboxes, delegates, and distribution lists; setting permissions; managing and troubleshooting transport (aka mail flow); designing a service-level agreement for downtime, RPO/RTO, and delivery; and backing up and recovering mailbox databases and roles. Plus, learn how to use clustering and database availability groups (DAGs) to promote high availability and troubleshoot common Exchange issues.

Need to set up Exchange Server for the first time? Check out Robert's previous course, Deploying Exchange Server 2016.

Note: This course maps to the certification exam for Exchange Server 2016. Review the course and exam blueprint for the Exchange Server 13 exam here and here.

Follow along with author Bonnie Biafore as she shows you how to better manage your project's deadlines, tasks, and resources with Microsoft® Project 2013. This course covers setting up project files, creating tasks, assigning resources, working with views, and using baseline calculations to track progress. Plus, learn how to report project information and share it with others.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

SQL Server supports mission-critical applications and big data solutions—without having to buy expensive add-ons or high-end appliances. Learn the essentials of Microsoft's latest release, SQL Server 2016. Use tools like SQL Management Studio and the Configuration Monitor to deploy and manage databases both on premises and in the cloud. Learn how to create new databases, build tables, define relationships, write queries, and use stored procedures and built-in functions. Instructor Martin Guidry—a SQL Server veteran—also shows how to manipulate XML and JSON data, and perform crucial database administration tasks, such as backups and restores, security enhancements, and performance monitoring. Plus, find out how to extend SQL Server by integrating it with cloud services like Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager is used to centrally manage one's datacenter, user devices, and infrastructure. In this course, learn how to get started with System Center Configuration Manager. Discover how to deploy Configuration Manager in a central site, and then deploy a multisite environment including secondary sites. Explore content management, replicating data stores, resource discovery, and how to assign clients. To wrap up, learn how to integrate Configuration Manager with Microsoft Intune and provide advanced security features, how to maintain and monitor Configuration Manager using various tools, and how to upgrade to a more current branch.

Migrate your animation workflow from Flash to Toon Boom Harmony. While these 2D animation programs are similar, the differences can really prevent an experienced Flash animator from making a smooth transition. Having a concise, go-to guide for comparison, as Dermot O' Connor provides here, is an enormous time saver. Join Dermot as he introduces the Flash tools and their Toon Boom equivalents and shows how to complete common drawing and animation tasks in Harmony, including onion skinning, pivoting and scaling, shape optimization, bitmap tracing, easing, tweening, IK rigging, facial animation, effects, and more. At the end of the course, he'll teach you how to edit audio and export your Toon Boom work as still images and movies.

You don't have to start over if you want to switch from Gmail to Outlook. This course shows you how to migrate your data, including how to add email accounts, import calendar entries, and import your contacts. While learning how to make the switch, you'll also learn how to use Outlook features, including adding signatures to email, setting up an automatic respond for when you are on vacation, sharing calendars with others, and more.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Making the switch from Google Docs to Microsoft Word can sometimes be a bit disorienting—particularly when you've grown accustomed to the locations of features and tools in Docs. In this course, Garrick Chow helps you get up to speed quickly with Microsoft Word by providing a quick overview of the popular word processing application, and helping you understand the differences and similarities with related apps. He walks through the Word user interface, and explains how to create and format documents in Word. He also covers saving and sharing documents, and using Word Online and the Word Mobile app.

LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Upgrade your office infrastructure. Learn how to migrate from Exchange Server 2010 to 2013 and take advantage of the newest features and productivity enhancements, while minimizing the impact on users. David Elfassy discusses how to prep for migration, deploy Exchange Server 2013, redirect client connections to 2013, move mailboxes and public folders, and, finally, decommission your 2010 server. Follow along with each phase to make sure you're on track for a smooth migration.

Enhance your Microsoft Azure solution design skills by exploring Azure networking and infrastructure. In this intermediate-level course, learn how to design virtual machines and virtual networks, as well as design for availability. As this is an intermediate-level course, an existing understanding of the Azure platform is required. This course can also serve to deepen the skills of IT professionals wishing to prepare for Azure certification.

Ensure that your business is able to overcome unexpected or challenging events by using options in Microsoft Azure for your business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plans. This course provides network administrators instructions for how to use Azure Backup Server and Site Recovery to keep data safe and recoverable. Instructor Matt Hester demonstrates how to implement a BCDR strategy, regardless of whether your infrastructure is on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid setup. He shows how to configure your systems to remain continuously available during planned or unplanned downtime.

Build upon your existing Azure implementation knowledge and broaden your skills by learning how to create, scale, and monitor virtual machines. This course is designed to teach IT professionals the skills needed to implement ARM (Azure Resource Manager) virtual machines, including deploying workloads, configuring networks, and implementing storage. The course can also be used to prepare for the 70-533 exam, Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions. The instructor, cloud platform and infrastructure expert Sharon Bennett, also covers how to automate your configuration using extensions, how to use the new VM Scale Set feature, and how to secure your virtual machine while keeping it available.

Native Instruments, makers of MASCHINE and the KOMPLETE suite of virtual instruments, have tightly integrated these two products. In this course, author JK Swopes will demonstrate how to use the pair for songwriting and music production, and configure your plugin preferences so you can browse, load, and use KOMPLETE sounds easily within MASCHINE. He also demonstrates how to create melodic elements, build beats, add effects, and build a song within MASCHINE using scene and pattern variations—all based on sounds from the KOMPLETE library.

Preparing for an interview can be daunting. Learn how to master the top 10 most common interview questions you'll encounter when looking for a new job. The tips provided in this course will help you craft authentic answers that showcase your experience and your enthusiasm for an organization. For each question, career coach Valerie Sutton explains why the interviewer is asking it and then provides you with the best response. She also provides advice for tailoring your answer to entry-level or midcareer roles. In each chapter, we provide role-playing scenarios to illustrate the questions—and answers—in action.

Discover how to work with Xamarin.Forms to create native apps on iOS, Android, and Windows from a single shared code base. In this course—the fourth installment in the nine-part Mastering Xamarin.Forms Development series—explore binding, command, and converter concepts. Scott Peterson discusses various techniques for binding data and resources to different element properties in Xamarin.Forms, and shares common binding scenarios. He also covers how to separate actions from events using the command logic, discusses value converters and how they can simplify binding scenarios, and more.

Dependency services allow Xamarin.Forms developers to include platform-specific functionality in their apps. In this installment of the nine-part Mastering Xamarin.Forms Development series, Scott Peterson takes a deep dive into dependency services. He discusses essential interface and registration concepts, and explains how to call and create a dependency service. Plus, he demonstrates how to use dependency services to add platform-specific features to the news reader app he's been working on throughout the series.

Maxwell Render—the 3D rendering software for designers and architects—boasts a suite of tools that can help you create stunningly realistic 3D renders. It's also a recognized standard in product design, architectural visualization, film production, and other high-end rendering markets. In this beginner's course, learn how to get up and running with Maxwell Render.

Instructor Leon van den Heever provides an overview of the functions, capabilities, and material system of this powerful, physically-based renderer. He covers how to navigate the user interface and work with objects and the Material Assistant, primarily focusing on Maxwell Studio as the staging interface of the Maxwell suite, and on tackling actual rendering in Maxwell Render. Plus, he goes into the different types of emitters or lights that you can use to light your scenes, how to create and position the camera, and how to set render options.

Materials define how the surface of 3D objects appear and lend them color, transparency, and texture that allow you to view the characteristics of a surface. This course introduces the basics of creating materials in Maya. Author George Maestri presents the basic material types as well as how to apply and align bitmap textures. He also discusses the concepts behind transparency, specularity, and reflectivity, which impact the appearance and light receptiveness of materials.

Need to get a strong foundation in Maya? Start here. This Essential Training course covers all the latest features in Maya 2015, while giving you a background in the basics of 3D modeling, texturing, animating, and rendering. Need a quick overview? Check out the first chapter of the course, which covers the interface and basic object manipulation tools. Author George Maestri then takes you deeper into polygonal modeling, editing and refining meshes, and NURBS modeling—for sculpting curves and organic surfaces in Maya. After that, learn how to create and apply materials to give the surface of your models color, texture, reflectivity, and more. Next, create realistic images (with lighting and depth-of-field effects) in the final rendering process, and finally, add movement and life to your characters with Maya's animation tools.