Learn C++API programing for Maya with Rigging Dojo

Welcome Mentor Trevor Van Hoof

We want to welcome our new C++ API mentor, Trevor who is a tech artist at Applied Intuition.
As an ex-Tool Programmer for the Advanced Technology Division SQUARE ENIX and ex-tech artist at Guerrilla Games, where he was responsible for custom Maya animation tools and the Cinematics pipeline (from content to game and back), Trevor brings years of solving AAA problems to his mentoring of the course. We are even more excited to have an alumni come back to lead the course that helped him grow and build his career in the industry.

About the course

This is our most popular course since we launched it with Marco years ago and continued to updated it with ever run of the class.

Outline of the class 

• Week1 – Setup and Basic Node: Cover the basic structure and write our first node.
• Week2 – Stretch Ik Node First approach in converting a setup like a stretchy Ik into a single Node.
• Week3 – Aim constraint : Fun with Vectors.
• Week4 – OpenGL locators : Create custom locators and display custom shapes.
• Week5 – Deformers : The basics.
• Week6 – Stress map – Writing a stress map we can use to drive deformations.
• Week7 – Using stress – Create a push and relax deformer. Use the stress map to drive the the influenced area.
• Week8- test case : Let’s grab a rig and collapse part of it into a single Node … FTW!

So if you are someone that opens up the API docs and thinks “man I want to understand this stuff and make my dream node, but don’t know how” then sign up with a bunch of other people just like you and get to creating.

Apply Now!

* Application subject to approval, not everyone will make it in but don’t despair, you might need to start with our ondemand  python course instead.

Suggested prerequisites

Do I need to know C++?

“Regarding C++, If you have knowledge of Maya Python and MEL you will be fine, of course if you know already a bit of C++ life is easier but with the lecture videos and actively answering questions during the course it will be all good :)”

If you want to compile plugins take a look at this to start.

Free Maya API training eBook

Here you can see a bit of Marcos past work.

Maya interactive transformation debugging with python API from Marco Giordano on Vimeo.

About the course creator Marco Giordano

I am a character TD at Double Negative. My adventure in computer graphics started back in the first year of high-school when I started making silly videos with windows movie maker, just cutting and matching to music, but then soon started being so limited and I wanted to do more and that s the time I put my hands on Adobe After effects. Soon I discovered some kind of 3D effects in AE and wanted to do more of that so I started using Maya. I started by making a base in many different fields, like modelling particles animation etc. Back in the days I decided I wanted to be an animator ( how silly of me) but at that time Animation Mentor actually required an high-school diploma which I did not have since I was a HS freshman, I had to wait and started learning animations by myself, not much time passed before a rig broke and no one was there to help me with that.

I had to make my hands dirty myself and started studying rigging. That was the time I started falling in love with rigging, I founded it somehow really artistic in a way, there has to be some creativity to find out how different solutions for the problems. I started rigging my own character in this way if it was going to break it was just my fault and “easy” for me to fix it. I also started to like scripting more and more; after a couple of years of self studying I decided to challenge myself and try to make some freelance, of course I was still in HS so I had it to do that at night. I kept doing that for a couple of years and I have to admit working at night is not ideal I fell asleep so many times in class but luckily I could keep my grade high anyway.

As soon as I graduated I got hired in the biggest Italian studio in Italy where I met some crazy geniuses that took me under their wing and started teaching me so much stuff about rigging and programming. There I started to see I had an hidden technical side I did not know, I started spending my nights studying coding and math, somehow I wanted to go deeper, to really understand what was going on under the maya hood. I started falling into the rigging dark side , the uber-technical part of it and most likely I will never come back, if you ever worked with me you know that my strong side is not the artistic one, like sculpting blendashape or making the perfect deformations and so on, but I make myself most useful when there are technical problems or find new solutions and such. I started liking this dark side so much I enrolled myself into university in order to learn even more math and programming