Pratt Institute
3D Animation Studio
The Animation Studio courses are designed to serve as a way for students to combine the skills learned in other courses to execute a semester-long animation production. Students are expected to develop their own script and storyboards, and carry that initial concept through to a fully-realized piece of work by semester end.
Students will each repeat this process three times (both semesters Sophomore year, first semester junior year) so that by the time they reach senior thesis projects they will have experienced the entire process of creating an animation several times.
3D Modeling II
Building off of the hard-surface polygon modeling concepts covered in 3D modeling I, this course focuses on the execution of animateable organic character models. Concepts covered include basic rigging, box modeling in Maya, Introduction to sculpting in Zbrush, and applying textures and materials to characters in preparation for rendering.
3D Lighting and Rendering
This course focuses on all facets of setting up beautiful, expressive renders in a CG environment. Topics include (but are not limited to): setting up 3D lights in a Maya scene, balancing accuracy vs. render time, managing materials, the physics of light, linear workflow and digital color, uv mapping and texture maps, building shader networks, and more.
This course makes heavy use of Maya and its associated Arnold renderer, with some work in Adobe Photoshop and Nuke.