COURSES TAUGHT BY THE EXPERTS
CGWorkshop Instructors are the best in the business. They've worked on high-profile games and films, and can give you the skills to make an impact in the world of CG. Each CGWorkshop gives you a planned schedule of projects to complete, and the opportunity to get personal time with the instructor within your classroom.
Barry Gelderblom
Look development and Image based Lighting Fundamentals with Noah Vice
Matthew Rodgers
Photoreal Matte Painting Part 1 with David Luong
Maxime Cyr
Photoreal Matte Painting Part 1 with David Luong
Alexander Isaksson
Photoreal Matte Painting Part 1 with David Luong
Steve Horsfall
Photoreal Matte Painting Part 1 with David Luong
Jonathan Lam
Photoreal Matte Painting Part 1 with David Luong
Derek Jackson
Photoreal Matte Painting Part 1 with David Luong
Shane Marks
3D Environment Creation with Paul McWilliams
Pedro Cabeleira
Rapid Character Development for Online games with John DeRiggi
Phil Bartoszewicz - www.no6.com
3D Environment Creation with Paul McWilliams
Darren Williams
Creating and Styling CG hair with Becca Baldwin
Kevin Luo
Creating and Styling CG hair with Becca Baldwin
Max Obstbaum
Absolute Beginners with Anne Pogoda
Giulia Costanzo
Absolute Beginners with Anne Pogoda
Marcelo Prado
High-End Fantasy Game Art Creation with Katon Callaway
Brandon Reimchen
Environment Design For Games with Simon Scales
Stephen Macfarlane
Environment Design For Games with Simon Scales
Julian Lancaster
CGWorkshop: Environment Design For Games with Simon Scales
Peter Fiala
CGWorkshop: 3D Environment Design with Paul McWilliams
Tihomir Dimitrov
CGWorkshop: 3D Creature Sculpting with Bryan Wynia
Magid Hoff
CGWorkshop: 3D Creature Sculpting with Bryan Wynia
Franco De Rosa & Martin Punchev
CGWorkshop: Concept Sculpting and Maquettes with Bryan Wynia
Ruth Marco & Jonathan Kuo
CGWorkshop: Digital Painting - Finishing Touches with Don Seegmiller
Mike Ulloa
CGWorkshop: High-End Fantasy Game Art Creation with Katon Callaway.
Jimmy Brunet
CGWorkshop: Matte Painting with David Luong
David Demaret
CGWorkshop: Becoming a Better Artist with Rob Chang
Nele Klumpe
CGWorkshop: Becoming a Better Artist with Rob Chang
Del Melchionda
CGWorkshop: Becoming a Better Artist with Rob Chang
Mauro D'Elia Matheus
CGWorkshop: Concept Sculpting and Maquettes with Bryan Wynia
Kamil Durzynski
Environment Design For Games with Simon Scales
Massimo Porcella
Environment Design For Games with Simon Scales
CGWorkshop Courses
Current Courses
Introduction to PyQt in Maya
Malcolm Thomas - Gustave
Join ILM's Malcolm "Chocolossus" Thomas-Gustave as he shares his PyQt secrets and techniques with you. By the end of this 8 week workshop you should have a broad spectrum knowledge of PyQt that will allow you to tackle problems by knowing where to look for solutions. Along the way, you'll learn to setup PyQt properly, understand the structure of classes and subclassing and become familiar with PyQt's core syntax. Moving through the weeks, you'll explore Qt Designer and use it to create your own UI which will work both within May...
Starts / Ends
15th Jul 2013 - 9th Sep 2013
3D Creature Sculpting
Bryan Wynia
**Bryan will be running a free webinar session to talk about this workshop next Thursday 30th May at 9:00PM PST. Here is a timezone converter. Log in here up to an hour beforehand ** Sony Santa Monica's Bryan Wynia will take you through the full 3D character and creature development process, helping you create, refine, sculpt, paint and render until you have not one but two fully crafted maquettes for your portfolio - one bust and one completely fully-bodied. Bryan's experience creating characters for both games and film is an in...
Starts / Ends
8th Jul 2013 - 2nd Sep 2013
Rigging the Body
Mauro Giacomazzo
If you have a basic understanding of rigging in Maya, but you're looking for solid instruction on body rigging in a classroom environment with personal feedback from your instructor, this 8 week online workshop is for you.Dreamworks' Mauro Giacomazzo will take you thoroughly through the process of rigging a character body, right from the basics (how to approach a rig) through to rigging the various important body parts (spine, head, feet etc), through to the best ways of testing your final, completed rig. For more details on the c...
Starts / Ends
8th Jul 2013 - 2nd Sep 2013
Video Game Animation
Kyle Kenworthy
Compared to feature film, game animations need to be created quickly and sometimes without iteration. Kyle Kenworthy has been a game animator at Schell Games for 6 years, working on projects including Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Disney's Toontown & Mechatars. In this 3 week course Kyle will demonstrate techniques for rapidly creating video game based animations. You will learn tips and tricks that will help you be successful in a video game environment. Kyle will teach you many useful animation techniques including laye...
Starts / Ends
8th Jul 2013 - 29th Jul 2013
Creating and Styling CG Hair
Becca Baldwin
Blizzard's Becca Baldwin's 8 week, fully mentored workshop, "Creating and Styling CG Hair" is back in July 2013 - again featuring LIVE weekly webinar sessions for student feedback in addition to the regular video and forums! In this course you will learn how to dive in to CG hair for the first time or improve skills you already have. Any skill level is welcome! The course is flexible to work with you to improve your skills wherever they may be, in whichever hair package you choose to use. At the end of the course you will ha...
Starts / Ends
1st Jul 2013 - 26th Aug 2013
Physics for Animators
Michele Bousquet
Too many animators missed physics in school and lack an all-important understanding of how it works in relation to animation for both film and games. Take your animation skills to the next level by applying real-world physics to your own work in this brand new 8 week, online, fully mentored CGWorkshop. In her signature easy-to-follow style, industry veteran Michele Bousquet takes you through just the stuff you need to know without having to learn complex formulas. This course answers common questions about physics-based animatio...
Starts / Ends
25th Jun 2013 - 6th Aug 2013
Polysculpting
Ara Kermanikian
If you missed the free webinar Ara ran on his workshop, you can view it via the link here. Create and design any 3D form you can imagine, and unencumber your creativity. Polysculpting is the strategic workflow for creating 3D models by using a hybrid of polygonal modeling and digital sculpting. Learn the foundations of creating characters, vehicles, weapons, armor, sets and environments by starting with the alpha mesh and developing it into spectacular 3D sculpts used in today’s hottest games, films, TV and advertising. In this ...
Starts / Ends
24th Jun 2013 - 19th Aug 2013
Matchmoving in 3D Equalizer
Francis L Camacho
Many people start their careers in the film visual effects industry by working in tracking and matchmove. In this brand new, fully mentored 8 week CGWorkshop, 10 year matchmove veteran Francis Camacho will take you through the tracking process using 3D Equalizer. You'll start at the basics - walking through the 3DEqualizer UI, looking at setup-preferences, screen layouts and different modes. Francis will then work with you on a provided shot - on workflow setup and 2D and 3D solves for both auto and manual tracking. You'll learn h...
Starts / Ends
17th Jun 2013 - 12th Aug 2013
The Style and History of Manga
Anne Pogoda
This brand new workshop is designed for everyone who appreciates the style of Manga and loves drawing (traditionally as well as digitally). The course is split in two parts: One part teaches the history of Manga, talking about storytelling and page structures. The other part will teach you the differences in drawing style between western comics and Mangas and help you to find techniques for traditional and digital line drawing as well as coloring. This course is suitable for intermediate and advanced students alike. Anne's lesso...
Starts / Ends
17th Jun 2013 - 29th Jul 2013
Photoreal Matte Painting - Part 1
David Luong
Blizzard Entertainment's David Luong returns to CGWorkshops with a new and updated Matte Painting workshop. The workshop will be in two 8 week semesters (the first class prepares you for the second, but you don't need to take both.) In Part 1, David will work with you to prepare photoreal matte paintings. In Part 2, you will learn to setup 2.5D and 3D camera moves to your matte paintings and learn how to composite them. In Part 1, David says, "I'll be leading students through the process of creating a photo real matte painting...
Starts / Ends
10th Jun 2013 - 5th Aug 2013
Arnold For Production
Boaz Livny
Boaz is very excited to offer this new workshop that looks at modern rendering approaches with insight and techniques commonly used for CG lighting and lighting effects. The workshop demonstrates how you may adapt new techniques while still applying common workflows you may be used to from other rendering packages. The class also looks in detail at shooting HDR images for lighting with Arnold, alongside examples with other standalone tools that are available to support these workflows. This is an intermediate to advanced workshop ...
Starts / Ends
10th Jun 2013 - 5th Aug 2013
Look development and Image based Lighting Fundamentals
Noah Vice
This workshop is aimed at fast-tracking your learning process by studying the principles and techniques behind good look development and lighting. A sound understanding of these techniques not only provides the artist with a method to consistently achieve their desired look, but it also allows them to view the world around them in a new and exciting light. Noah Vice has worked on Avatar, Iron Man 1 & 2 films and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows among many others. His most recent credit is the box office hit "The Avenger...
Starts / Ends
10th Jun 2013 - 5th Aug 2013
Designing 3D Props and Environments for Film
Sunil Pant
In this course Sunil will first go over simple ways to block out your design in 3D using Google Sketchup. A quick block out of your design will help you evaluate the design in 3D form to get a better idea of proportional and scale issues as well as asses your design itself. To begin with we will start with designing a Military guard tower where we will get ourselves familiar with the tools available as well as cameras, materials and ways to render out your final designs. After you get a good foot hold on how to use these tools and ...
Starts / Ends
3rd Jun 2013 - 29th Jul 2013
Realistic Character Texture Painting in Mari 2.0
Justin Holt
What does it take to become a successful texture artist in the film industry today? Justin Holt answers this question as he works with you to create successful realistic character textures, and begin your own texture library. With a model provided by Ben Eoff a selection of silicon casted pore and wrinkle scans from Surface Mimic, and FREE Mari 2.0 time limited student licenses from The Foundry,Justin will take you through his Mari 2.0 workflow via streamed videos available weekly for you to watch in your own time, and several li...
Starts / Ends
3rd Jun 2013 - 29th Jul 2013
Introduction to FX using Houdini
Spencer Lueders
Spencer Lueders is currently a Senior FX Technical Director at Sony Pictures Imageworks in Los Angeles. He's now here to work with you at CGWorkshops in this 8 week online, fully-mentored Houdini training course. Spencer will cover a variety of material and get into many technical low level concepts, such as the maths, geometry, and trigonometry, etc involved in gaining complete control over an effect. When it comes to making great FX, there aren't any push-button solutions. This course helps to lay that groundwork to understa...
Starts / Ends
3rd Jun 2013 - 29th Jul 2013
Digital Figure Painting
Don Seegmiller
The human figure is one of the most challenging subjects that any artist can paint. There is no reason why it should be more difficult than any other subject matter. All painting, whether traditional or digital, is based on a set of standards that should be understood and generally adhered to. Some of these standards can be considered basic rules. This workshop will introduce you to some “rules” and “standards” that you can use to successfully paint the human figure. Interestingly enough, these rules and standards are prett...
Starts / Ends
3rd Jun 2013 - 29th Jul 2013
Becoming A Better Artist
Robert Chang
Robert Chang’s “Becoming a Better Artist” has been one of the most popular courses we’ve ever run at CGWorkshops. Why? Because no matter what area you specialize in as a visual artist (3D, 2D, film, animation, comic books, games, illustration, visualization), this course will teach you the most critical knowledge, techniques, and creative approaches that today's artists working in highly competitive industries must know in order to function as a confident and authoritative creative force. Have you been feeling fr...
Starts / Ends
20th May 2013 - 15th Jul 2013
Only 10 positions left - HURRY!
Rapid Character Development for Online Games
John DeRiggi
Online games like Diablo, DOTA, Torchlight, League of Legends, and many casual titles can have different character art needs than a first person shooter or third person action-adventure game. Compared to over-the-shoulder or full body cameras of PS3 or XBox titles, a wider camera in many online games promotes smaller characters on screen and more of them at the same time. It is therefore the character artist's job to help ensure that players still enjoy interacting with a smaller, less detailed character competing heavily for scr...
Starts / Ends
13th May 2013 - 3rd Jun 2013
Upcoming Courses
Animation made simple
Ruth Daly
Take your first steps towards producing feature quality animation with this easy to follow introduction to the basic building blocks of motion. Ruth will guide you through simple manageable assignments that will provide you with a comprehensive and detailed understanding of animation's underlying fundamentals. The program is perfect for beginners but also offers a little extra for those who are looking for a challenge. With her experienced eye Ruth can help you refine your work to the highest level or simply guide you in a clear an...
Open For Enrollment On:
05th Aug 2013 - Press the button to be notified prior.
Compositing for Feature Animation
Nick Deboar
Building from his experience on a number of animated feature films, Nick Deboar will cover how Nuke is used in modern feature animation pipelines. This course is aimed at compositors who want to know more about compositing 3D renders, and lighting artists wanting to composite their own shots. The course will cover common production tasks, such as dealing with multi-channel exrs, linear color, motion blur, depth of field and premultiplied images. It will then move on to more advanced topics; working with position passes, creating...
Open For Enrollment On:
10th Jun 2013 - Press the button to be notified prior.
Environment Modelling for Games
David Baldwin
David Baldwin has spent the last few years designing playable environments for titles like the Uncharted franchise at Naughty Dog. He joins us now to share his design and development process - starting in Maya and taking you all the through to a playable outcome in UDK. Along the way he'll explain his theories on game modelling, level layout and how to incorporate technical elements like LODS and collision. You'll be set weekly assignments and Dave will give personal feedback to you and your classmates. A wonderful insight into h...
Open For Enrollment On:
17th Jun 2013 - Press the button to be notified prior.
Concepting Vehicles and Mechs using Photoshop and SketchUp
Kemp Remillard
Massive Black's Kemp Remillard's passion for mech and vehicle design is apparent in his body of work, and in the number of high-profile studios who utilize the wide variety of concept types his workflow has been developed to create. He joins us at CGWorkshops to share this workflow with you, and to give you his personal tips and feedback on your own work. "This course is a basic yet thorough tutorial in how I approach vehicle/mech design for Games and Film," says Kemp. "Topics include thumbnail sketching, imaginary engineering, ...
Open For Enrollment On:
03rd Jun 2013 - Press the button to be notified prior.
Past Courses
3D Environment Creation
Paul McWilliams
If you missed Paul McWilliams' free 3D Environment Creation Webinar on 11th May, here is a recording. In this course you’ll learn how to create a digital building from photographic source material as well as all the techniques that go into creating digital environments. You will follow the same workflow that course leader Paul McWilliams used whilst working on films including Inception, Sweeney Todd and Deathly Hallows. This course is ideal for aspiring Environment artists (in Film, Television and Commercials) and for those wor...
Course Closed: Press the button to enter your details to be notified when it runs again
Hard Surface Character Modelling
Josh Herman
Did you miss the free webinar with Josh? Here's the link to the recording : http://ballistic.adobeconnect.com/p2j4rs6cyd2/ Robots, mechs and sci-fi suits of armour. These each provide their own unique challenges and are quite different, but they all share something in common. They are characters. Characters are not cars, props, or buildings and require a different type of attention and focus. However, they do share a lot of things in common with cars, weapons, and props and can become a balancing act to create an appeal...
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Absolute Beginners
Anne Pogoda
This workshop is for everyone who appreciates art and eventually surfs CGTalk for that reason, but feels they're too much of a beginner to enter the other workshops. Maybe you have a secret desire to study and learn digital art, but you haven't been able to find a suitable beginner class before. In the Absolute Beginners workshop we learn how to handle Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. The workshop is sensibly built around making you learn the software and handle the tablet alongside your first approaches in digital painting. The fou...
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Environmental Texturing
Leigh van der Byl
This texturing course takes students through the entire process of creating all the basic required textures for a street scene, starting from the process of gathering appropriate references, to creating rough concepts, to creating colour, bump, specular and reflection maps. Additionally, you will be taught about fundamental industry standards, such as deciding on appropriate sizes for texture maps, and optimising your work based on shots. You will be supplied with a prepped, UV-mapped scene, and with a particular focus on unders...
Course Closed: Press the button to enter your details to be notified when it runs again
Drawing for Comics
Tim Mcburnie
Tim Mcburnie has written and illustrated comic books for some of the top French publishing houses, such as Editions Delcourt, and Ankama Editions. His freelance career has lead to working in illustration and concept design with clients such as Blizzard Entertainment, Blur studios, Relic Entertainment, and Wizards of the Coast. Now there is a CGWorkshop specifically for lovers of line drawing and comic-book art. Learn advanced techniques for drawing and colouring a variety of comic-book styles in Photoshop. Covering everything...
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Creating Maya Plugins
Karl Stiefvater
Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of Maya is its ability to be modified and adapted to a variety of uses and media. In this new fully online 8 week CGWorkshop, The Matrix and Second Life veteran Karl Stiefvater shows you how to reach into the heart of Maya and change it to do YOUR bidding. Rendering, animation, modeling - we'll cover all the major subsystems in Maya and show how to implement the tools YOU want. We'll look at the major APIs for interfacing with Maya's engine, including custom commands, shader nodes, deformer ...
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Color for Digital Artists
Steve Wright
Color for Digital Artists is a unique workshop all about color that is specifically designed for digital artists. If you are a 3D animator, motion graphics artists, visual effects compositor, game developer, photographer, editor, Photoshop artist, or frankly any kind of artist today working with pictures your job depends on working with digital images. In this workshop you will learn what happens when color hits the computer. We all take classes and courses to learn how to use our software, but the topic of how digital color works...
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Environment Design for Games
Simon Scales
Video game environment designer, LEGO concept artist and matte painter Simon Scales takes you through the art of creating polished, game-ready environments in this 8 week online digital art training workshop. Simon will start with the basics - setting up an effective workspace to create a professional workflow. He'll then move into idea and reference gathering, and how to quickly generate interesting compositions that form the basis of worlds. You'll look at how to create custom shapes and brushes that can help speed up the painti...
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Python in Houdini
Robby Thomas
Experienced Houdini pipeline developer Robby Thomas joins the CGWorkshops teaching team with his inaugural 8 week, fully-mentored workshop, Python in Houdini. This is a course aimed at intermediate students, so if you have a beginner level understanding of Houdini and you want to learn how to get as much as you can out of it, this workshop is for you. Work with Robby as he takes you through the process of learning useful SOPs, expressions and functions and helps you put them into practice with weekly assignments and feedback. Yo...
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High-end Fantasy Game Art Creation
Katon Callaway
*** FINAL RUN ***** Katon is working on bringing us a new workshop later in 2013, so this is the LAST TIME we're running his incredibly popular Game Art Creation workshop. Don't miss this last chance. This class includes live weekly webinars with Katon where he gives demos and offers feedback. These sessions are recorded for those who can't make it. Games look amazing these days, and trying to create all the necessary assets at such a high standard can seem overwhelming. Often, we have a vision that we want to see come to li...
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Advanced Maya Dynamics - Breaking Ground
David Alexander
Creating photoreal effects has always been one of the hardest jobs in computer graphics. There’s a very fine balance between simulation and creative control. This is especially true in a fast paced post production world. In this 8 week course David Alexander will take you through the entire shot recently completed for a major TV series. You will learn production proven techniques on how to procedurally generate cracks, falling debris and dust, replicate objects along a surface, work with particle instances, expressions and dyn...
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Intermediate to Advanced Techniques in V-Ray for Softimage and Maya
Boaz Livny
Boaz Livny has blended and upgraded his two five week V-ray workshops into one bumper 10 week learning experience! In the first part, you'll learn the fundamentals of lighting and rendering along with some technical aspects of using a rendering software in production. This will include a basic tour around the V-Ray software in both Maya and SoftImage, a look at shading fundamentals and basic to advanced lighting techniques. Boaz will take you through various camera effects like lens distortion and depth of field, rayswitch tec...
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Writing Shaders for Renderman and Mental Ray
Karl Stiefvater
Sometimes, in the quest to create the perfect image, it is necessary to get one's hands dirty in the complicated business of writing shaders. Be it a new lighting equation or a neat trick from this year's SIGGRAPH, shader writing is the single most powerful way to customize your rendering and set it apart from the herd. In this 8 week online vfx training course we jump into the deep waters of shader creation for the two most popular rendering engines: Renderman and mental ray. We will see how many concepts transfer from one to...
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