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View Full Version : TD-College "for technical directors, by technical directors" official soft launch

erickmiller
03-01-2009, 01:19 AM
TD-College (http://www.td-college.com/), the premier on-line CG and VFX school "for technical directors and by technical directors" - would like to announce it's official soft launch.

TD-College (http://www.td-college.com/) is the first and only school that truly prepares you for the realm of CG-production by personally pairing you up with the artists and Technical Directors behind movies like The Lord of The Rings, King Kong, The Matrix and many many more. TD-College's personalized mentor system puts each student 1-on-1 with mentors that have real production experience from major studios like ILM, Dreamworks, Weta Digital, Disney, Pixar, Animal Logic, Sony Imageworks, Tippett and Digital Domain. Mentors' credits include all blockbusters in recent memory.

We are currently offering MEL (http://www.td-college.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&classid=25), Python (http://www.td-college.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&classid=23) and Houdini courses and we have several advanced courses in development on the topics of Character Technical Direction, Effects, and Rendering, as well as, specifically, courses in RealFlow, RenderMan, Maya, Mathematics for TDs, C++, and Maya API development that will be available soon.

TD-College (http://www.td-college.com/) was designed specifically for educating and preparing students for Technical Direction in the visual effects, animation & game industries. We are the first school to entirely focus on in-depth training for the highly “technical & creative” mixture of concepts, knowledge & techniques needed for a truly successful career in professional cg animation and visual effects Technical Direction. With our school you will learn everything from scripting & plug-in writing; to creative production pipeline based work-flows, tools & techniques - all the real know-how for true success as a TD!

After much testing, and going unofficially live for a few months, we've tested our back end teaching system and taught several batches of live classes to pleased graduating students. Now, with three new courses developed, we've decided to officially soft launch.

We'd greatly appreciate it if you spread the news to anyone who would be interested in learning advanced VFX from VFX veterans, or anyone who may be interested in authoring more courses or mentoring passionate students.

Please have a look at our site for more information:
http://www.td-college.com/

Please send any questions you have for general information questions or inquiries to: info@td-college.com

(http://www.td-college.com/) TD-College: CG education with REAL production value. Get your brain in gear!
http://www.td-college.com/press/tdcollege_logo_1.jpg (http://www.td-college.com/)
Keithtron
03-03-2009, 06:22 PM
Cool stuff. I don't have the time or money for extra classes these days, but I'd be very interested in the Mathematics for TD's class. That could really come in handy. Maybe some time I'd be able to hit it up.
erickmiller
03-06-2009, 06:15 AM
Yeah, the Math for TDs course is going to be completely awesome. It will cover all the basics of vectors and matrices and stuff, but will also go into more complex stuff like Gaussian distribution and other really cool topics. I know math as a TD pretty well, but I want to take that course myself, for real!

Lemme see if I can get Arthur to post a sneak preview of the course outline for everyone.

Another cool slightly more advanced course coming up soon will be Writing Deformers for CG Characters - it will teach you from start to end all the stuff you need and want to know about how to write really cool creature and character deformers! It will be a big +1 from the api dev con course I taught a few years back also.
artshek
03-16-2009, 01:01 AM
Hey Keith,

I'm the General Course Director for TD College and I'm working on the Visual Math for TD's course with Saty Raghavachary, the head of digital training at Dreamworks. We're very excited about the course and the manner in which we are going to teach it, which includes 3D scenes to help visually illustrate the principles we're teaching.

I don't want to give away all our secret sauce right now, because it's still being written and subject to change, but here is a preview of the topics we're planning on covering:
Week 1: Basics I [useful for all TDs]
1.1 Quantities
1.2 Trigonometry
1.3 Analytical geometry
1.4 Discrete math

Week 2: Basics II [useful for all TDs]
2.1 Functions
2.2 Wave motion
2.3 Calculus
2.4 Vectors

Week 3: Transformations, Hierarchies [for Layout/Char/Animation TDs]
3.1 Matrices
3.2 Spaces, transformations
3.3 More transformations
3.4 Rotations revisited

Week 4: Geometry [for Modeling TDs]
4.1 Geometric primitives
4.2 Spatial queries
4.3 Spatial interpolation
4.4 Space partitioning

Week 5: Lighting, Shading [for Rendering/Lighting TDs]
5.1 Parameter interpolation
5.2 Lighting equations
5.3 Noise
5.4 Misc. shading topics

Week 6: Dynamics [for FX/CFX TDs]
6.1 Implicit surfaces
6.2 Vector calculus
6.3 Differential equations, solvers
6.4 Misc. FX topics
Cheers,
Arthur Shek
boomji
03-26-2009, 08:16 AM
It will be a big +1 from the api dev con course I taught a few years back also.

oh :drool: :drool:

3dmax sdk ???


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