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Gnomon Workshop Releases First Maya Cloth Training DVD

The Gnomon Workshop has released its first Maya Cloth DVD. The need for realistic clothing and fabric has become commonplace in today's effects films and feature animation. CLOTH 101: FUNDAMENTALS covers the process of modeling and animating cloth garments. Mark E.A. de Sousa, Cloth and Hair supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, shares his production-tested techniques as he discusses how to control garment characteristics and demonstrates how to integrate dynamic fields.

"Mark's many years of production experience in the field of visual effects and animation are an invaluable resource addition to the Gnomon Library," said Gustav Melich, senior td at Sony Pictures Imageworks. "His in-depth knowledge of Maya's Cloth Solver and his concise teaching style have helped to prepare people for various cloth teams here at Imageworks on numerous productions."

de Sousa is a CG supervisor for Special Projects: Cloth and Hair at Sony Pictures Imageworks. His screen credits include being the Cloth lead on both OPEN SEASON and the Academy Award-winning SPIDER-MAN 2. In the past ten years, he has worked on more than 13 feature films, including THE POLAR EXPRESS, STUART LITTLE 2, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE, THE HOLLOW MAN, STAR TREK: INSURRECTION, TITANIC and VOLCANO. He is also a part-time instructor at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, California.

The aim of this DVD is to introduce you to the fundamentals of working with Maya Cloth through a series of examples and walkthrough exercises. In this lecture de Sousa shows how to create garments by seaming panels together or with modeled geometry. He discusses how to manipulate cloth vertices through constraints and how to control garment characteristics through properties. He also shows how to work with collision objects in a cloth simulation and demonstrates how to integrate dynamic fields. Finally, Mark ties all of the basic skills and principles together by creating and animating a hooded robe on a character.

Since 2000, The Gnomon Workshop (www.thegnomonworkshop.com) has provided artists and students with the educational resources they need to succeed as artists in the entertainment industries. Whether they're interested in design, modeling, effects, animation, storytelling or matte painting, these DVDs provide a valuable educational resource for students around the world. The Gnomon Workshop is the sister company of The Gnomon School of Visual Effects, which provides professional caliber visual effects instruction to students and professionals in Los Angeles.

Bill Desowitz's picture

Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.

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