Top Articles On The Web Design Billboard In December’09

A per­fect lay­out, A Good Design and Nice Resource can pro­duce a cre­ative out­put. Lay­out, tex­tures, typog­ra­phy and pat­terns are used more often than one may think but the out­come of dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion can result ver­ity of excel­lent designs. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism is built upon knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence. How­ever, When it comes to selec­tion of right resources you need to be very care­ful and spe­cific about needs.

In this round-​​up, you’ll find num­ber of top resources, tuto­ri­als, free­bies which left deep impres­sion on web design com­mu­nity, as the month of Decem­ber had a lot of inter­est­ing arti­cles pro­duces by dif­fer­ent sources.

The more time and effort you ded­i­cate for use­ful and cre­ative resources, the higher are your chances for get­ting bet­ter results.

You may be inter­ested in the fol­low­ing related arti­cles as well.

• Top Arti­cles On The Web Design Bill­board In November’09
• Top Arti­cles On The Web Design Bill­board In October’09
• Top Arti­cles On The Web Design Bill­board In September’09
• Top Arti­cles On The Web Design Bill­board In August’09
• Top Arti­cles On The Web Design Bill­board In July’09
• Cor­po­rate Web­site Designs For Design Inspi­ra­tion – Part I, Part II

Please feel free to join us and you are always wel­come to share your thoughts even if you have more ref­er­ence links that our read­ers may like.

Don’t for­get to sub­scribe to our RSS-​​feed and fol­low us on Twit­ter — for recent updates.

Posted in Design, Graphic Design, Photoshop, Tutorials, Web Design | Comments Off

22 Latest Exceptional WordPress Hacks

Word­Press needs no intro­duc­tion among design­ers and writ­ers. It’s usu­ally known as a syn­onym for blog­ging. Now days every other Word­Press blogs look more or less sim­i­lar, to stand uniquely out from the rest, you need to tweak it a lit­tle bit by using qual­ity hacks.

As you all known that the new ver­sion v2.8 is arrived and most of you already updated your Word­Press to v2.8. So, now there is a need of new work­ing hacks which is com­pat­i­ble with lat­est version.

Of Course, Word­Press Codex is always the best place to learn about Word­Press and its tweaks. But unfor­tu­nately, it’s too much for a sim­ple Word­Press user. This the only rea­son we com­piled this fairly com­pre­hen­sive list of the Excep­tional Word­Press Hacks to unleash the power of your favorite blog­ging engine.

One of the great­est things about blog­ging is the imme­di­ate feed­back a blog­ger can get from his or her read­ers. Still it’s often pos­si­ble that your read­ers don’t give you a wink about their likes and dis­likes. Unfor­tu­nately, there is no way for you to find out about vis­i­tors think­ing towards your blog or its design. It’s always essen­tial to play safe and give oth­ers what they like. Out of many solu­tions the inspi­ra­tional one is only promis­ing and opti­mistic way to achieve desired changes. This arti­cle focuses on orga­nized col­lec­tion of some of the Most Wanted Word­Press Hacks which will def­i­nitely make your blog­ging life easier.

You may be inter­ested in the fol­low­ing tips and tricks related arti­cles as well.

• 22 Mixed Excep­tional Word­Press Hacks
• 10 Twit­ter Hacks For Your Word­Press Blog
• 30 Most Wanted Word­Press Com­ments Page Hacks
• 11 Tips to Reduce Server Load and Save Bandwidth
• How to Increase Web Traf­fic through Search Engines!
• 21 Rea­sons Why Read­ers Don’t Like Your Blog

Please feel free to join us and you are always wel­come to share your thoughts even if you have more ref­er­ence links related to other tips and tricks that our read­ers may like.

Don’t for­get to sub­scribe to our RSS-​​feed and fol­low us on Twit­ter — for recent updates.

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

<?php
  ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'On');
  ini_set('zlib.output_compression_level', '1');
?>

$response = wp_remote_get($url, array('timeout' => 60));

$response = wp_remote_get($url, array('timeout' => 120));

function all_my_customs($id = 0){
  //if we want to run this function on a page of our choosing them the next section is skipped.
  //if not it grabs the ID of the current page and uses it from now on.
  if ($id == 0) :
    global $wp_query;
    $content_array = $wp_query->get_queried_object();
    $id = $content_array->ID;
  endif;

  //knocks the first 3 elements off the array as they are WP entries and i dont want them.
  $first_array = array_slice(get_post_custom_keys($id), 3);

  //first loop puts everything into an array, but its badly composed
  foreach ($first_array as $key => $value) :
    $second_array[$value] =  get_post_meta($id, $value, FALSE);

    //so the second loop puts the data into a associative array
    foreach($second_array as $second_key => $second_value) :
      $result[$second_key] = $second_value[0];
    endforeach;
  endforeach;

  //and returns the array.
  return $result;
}

$result = all_my_customs();
echo $result['my_meta_key'];

<?php
if($post->post_parent) {
  $parent_title = get_the_title($post->post_parent);
  echo $parent_title;
} else {
  wp_title('');
}
?>

<?php the_time(’M j, Y’) ?>

<?php if ( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'guest_author_name', true) ) { ?>
// check to see if custom field guest author name exists
<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "guest_author_name", $single = true); ?>
<?php } ?>

function my_multi_col($content){
  $columns = explode('<h2>', $content);

  $i = 0;

    foreach ($columns as $column){
    if (($i % 2) == 0){
      $return .= '<div class="content_left">' . "\n";
      if ($i > 1){
        $return .= "<h2>";
      } else{
        $return .= '<div class="content_right">' . "\n <h2>";
      }
      $return .= $column;
      $return .= '</h2></div>';
      $i++;
    }

    if(isset($columns[1])){
      $content = wpautop($return);
    }else{
      $content = wpautop($content);
    }
  echo $content;
  }
}
add_filter('the_content', 'my_multi_col');
</h2>
</div>
</h2>

.content_right, .content_left{
  float:left;
  width:45%;
}

.content_left{
  padding-right:5%;
}

$args = array(
  'post_type' => 'attachment',
  'numberposts' => null,
  'post_status' => null,
  'post_parent' => $post->ID
);
$attachments = get_posts($args);
if ($attachments) {
  foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
    echo apply_filters('the_title', $attachment->post_title);
    the_attachment_link($attachment->ID, false);
  }
}

<?php
if (have_posts()) :
  while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    $expirationtime = get_post_custom_values('expiration');
    if (is_array($expirationtime)) {
      $expirestring = implode($expirationtime);
    }

    $secondsbetween = strtotime($expirestring)-time();
    if ( $secondsbetween > 0 ) {
      // For example...
      the_title();
      the_excerpt();
    }
  endwhile;
endif;
?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
<?php the_content(); ?>
</div>
<?php endwhile; else: ?>
<?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

#post-876{
	background:#ccc;
}

function member_check_shortcode($atts, $content = null) {
  if (is_user_logged_in() && !is_null($content) && !is_feed()) {
    return $content;
  } else {
    return 'Sorry, this part is only available to our members. Click here to become a member!';
  }

add_shortcode('member', 'member_check_shortcode');

[member]
This text will be displayed only to registered users.
[/member]

<?php
function close_comments( $posts ) {
  if ( !is_single() ) { return $posts; }
  if ( time() - strtotime( $posts[0]->post_date_gmt ) > ( 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 ) ) {
    $posts[0]->comment_status = 'closed';
    $posts[0]->ping_status    = 'closed';
  }
  return $posts;
}
add_filter( 'the_posts', 'close_comments' );
?>

<?php
global $wpdb;
$where = 'WHERE comment_approved = 1 AND user_id <> 0';
$comment_counts = (array) $wpdb->get_results("
    SELECT user_id, COUNT( * ) AS total
    FROM {$wpdb->comments}
    {$where}
    GROUP BY user_id
  ", object);
foreach ( $comment_counts as $count ) {
  $user = get_userdata($count->user_id);
  echo 'User ' . $user->display_name . ' comment count is ' . $count->total . '';
}
?>

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>

<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type == 'comment') { ?>

<?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

<?php } /* End of is_comment statement */ ?>

<?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>

<h3>Trackbacks</h3>
<ol>
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type != 'comment') { ?>
<li><?php comment_author_link() ?></li>
<?php } ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

<ol>
<?php wp_list_comments('type=pings'); ?>
</ol>

<ol>
<?php wp_list_comments('type=pings&callback=list_pings'); ?>
</ol>

<?php
function list_pings($comment, $args, $depth) {
  $GLOBALS['comment'] = $comment;
?>
<li id="comment-<?php comment_ID(); ?>"><?php comment_author_link(); ?>
<?php } ?>
</li>

<?php
add_filter('get_comments_number', 'comment_count', 0);
function comment_count( $count ) {
  if ( ! is_admin() ) {
    global $id;
    $comments_by_type = &separate_comments(get_comments('status=approve&post_id=' . $id));
    return count($comments_by_type['comment']);
  } else {
    return $count;
  }
}
?>

function imageresizer( $atts, $content = null ) {
  return '<img src="/timthumb/timthumb.php?src='.$content.'&w=590" alt="" />';
}

add_shortcode('img', 'imageresizer');

[img]http://www.yoursite.com/yourimage.jpg[/img]

function tweetmeme(){
  return '<div class="tweetmeme"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script></div>';
}
add_shortcode('tweet', 'tweetmeme');

[tweet]

function direct_email($text="Send by email"){
  global $post;
  $title = htmlspecialchars($post->post_title);
  $subject = 'Sur '.htmlspecialchars(get_bloginfo('name')).' : '.$title;
  $body = 'I recommend this page : '.$title.'. You can read it on : '.get_permalink($post->ID);
  $link = '<a rel="nofollow" href="mailto:?subject='.rawurlencode($subject).'&body='.rawurlencode($body).'" title="'.$text.' : '.$title.'">'.$text.'</a>';
  return $link;
}

function get_author_bio ($content=''){
  global $post;

  $post_author_name=get_the_author_meta("display_name");
  $post_author_description=get_the_author_meta("description");
  $html="<div class='clearfix' id='about_author'>\n";
  $html.="<img width='80' height='80' class='avatar' src='http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=".md5(get_the_author_email()). "&default=".urlencode($GLOBALS['defaultgravatar'])."&size=80&r=PG' alt='PG'/>\n";
  $html.="<div class='author_text'>\n";
  $html.="<h4>Author: <span>".$post_author_name."</span></h4>\n";
  $html.= $post_author_description."\n";
  $html.="</div>\n";
  $html.="<div class='clear'></div>\n";
  $content .= $html;
  }

  return $content;
}

add_filter('the_content', 'get_author_bio');

<?php if(function_exists('fetch_feed')) {

  include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.'/feed.php');
  $feed = fetch_feed('http://feeds.feedburner.com/catswhoblog');

  $limit = $feed->get_item_quantity(7); // specify number of items
  $items = $feed->get_items(0, $limit); // create an array of items

}
if ($limit == 0) echo '<div>The feed is either empty or unavailable.</div>';
else foreach ($items as $item) : ?>

  <div>
    <a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php echo $item->get_date('j F Y @ g:i a'); ?>">
      <?php echo $item->get_title(); ?>
    </a>
  </div>
  <div>
    <?php echo substr($item->get_description(), 0, 200); ?>
    <span>[...]</span>
  </div>

<?php endforeach; ?>

add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');
function my_excerpt_length($length) {
  if(in_category(14)) {
    return 13;
  } else {
    return 60;
  }
}

function get_category_tags($args) {
  global $wpdb;
  $tags = $wpdb->get_results
  ("
    SELECT DISTINCT terms2.term_id as tag_id, terms2.name as tag_name, null as tag_link
    FROM
      wp_posts as p1
      LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships as r1 ON p1.ID = r1.object_ID
      LEFT JOIN wp_term_taxonomy as t1 ON r1.term_taxonomy_id = t1.term_taxonomy_id
      LEFT JOIN wp_terms as terms1 ON t1.term_id = terms1.term_id,
      wp_posts as p2
      LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships as r2 ON p2.ID = r2.object_ID
      LEFT JOIN wp_term_taxonomy as t2 ON r2.term_taxonomy_id = t2.term_taxonomy_id
      LEFT JOIN wp_terms as terms2 ON t2.term_id = terms2.term_id
    WHERE
      t1.taxonomy = 'category' AND p1.post_status = 'publish' AND terms1.term_id IN (".$args['categories'].") AND
      t2.taxonomy = 'post_tag' AND p2.post_status = 'publish'
      AND p1.ID = p2.ID
    ORDER by tag_name
  ");
  $count = 0;
  foreach ($tags as $tag) {
    $tags[$count]->tag_link = get_tag_link($tag->tag_id);
    $count++;
  }
  return $tags;
}

$args = array('categories' => '12,13,14');
$tags = get_category_tags($args);

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Serve Default to IE6
Plugin URI: http://www.nathanrice.net/blog/serve-ie6-visitors-the-default-wordpress-theme
Description: This plugin will serve the default theme to any visitors using IE6.
Author: Nathan Rice
Author URI: http://www.nathanrice.net/
Version: 1.0
*/

add_filter('template', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
add_filter('option_template', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
add_filter('option_stylesheet', 'serve_default_to_iesix');
function serve_default_to_iesix($theme) {
  if(strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE 6') !== false)
    $theme = 'default';
  return $theme;
}
?>

<?php
if (is_plugin_active('plugin-directory/plugin-file.php')) {
	//plugin is activated
}
?>

Posted in Graphic Design, Tutorials, Web Design | Comments Off

66 Excellent Photoshop Web Design Layout Tutorials

When it comes to Image edit­ing or photo enhance­ment, Adobe Pho­to­shop is usu­ally the pri­mary option to con­sider. How­ever, the soft­ware pack­age itself is a quite hard to learn — and extremely hard to master.

Dis­play beau­ti­ful images is a potent ele­ment in web and graphic design, where there is less con­cern for read­abil­ity and more poten­tial for using images in an artis­tic man­ner. Pho­to­shop is use­ful for both cre­at­ing and edit­ing images to be used in print or online. Not too easy to use, but full of high-​​quality fea­tures, Pho­to­shop is the best choice for any image manip­u­la­tion job.

Below, you’ll find some of the Best Adobe Pho­to­shop Web Design Lay­out Tuto­ri­als which might help you to get inspired and learned a tip or two by the end of this pre­sen­ta­tion.

For those, who don’t know what is Adobe Pho­to­shop? And what it can do? Then fol­low the link below for detail introduction.

• Adobe Pho­to­shop | Adobe​.com
• Adobe Pho­to­shop | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The next gen­er­a­tion, rep­re­sent­ing two decades of excel­lence. This appli­ca­tion con­tains every­thing you need to cre­ate high-​​end images and graph­ics. For those artists whose work demands more than the basic appli­ca­tion, There is a Pho­to­shop to sat­isfy their every needs that uti­lizes Image edit­ing & photo manipulation.

You may be inter­ested in the fol­low­ing tuto­ri­als related arti­cles as well.

• Ulti­mate Round-​​Up Of 60 Excel­lent Gimp Tutorials
• 77 Excel­lent Pho­to­shop Tuto­ri­als For Design­ing Posters
• 145 Ulti­mate Round-​​Up Of Pho­to­shop Tuto­ri­als and Resources
• 65+ Smok­ing Pho­to­shop Text Effect Tutorials
• 125+ Ulti­mate Round-​​Up of Illus­tra­tor Tutorials
• 77 Ulti­mate Round-​​Up of Adobe After Effects Tutorials

Please feel free to join us and you are always wel­come to share your thoughts even if you have more ref­er­ence links related to more tuto­ri­als that our read­ers may like.

Don’t for­get to sub­scribe to our RSS-​​feed and fol­low us on Twit­ter — for recent updates.

Posted in Design, Graphic Design, Photoshop, Tutorials, Web Design | Comments Off

Ultimate Round-​​Up Of 60 Excellent Gimp Tutorials

When it comes to Image edit­ing or photo enhance­ment, Adobe Pho­to­shop is usu­ally the pri­mary option to con­sider. How­ever the only pron­lem is, the soft­ware pack­age itself is a quite expen­sive for a gen­ral free­lancer designers.

So what about you!!, Gives much sleep lately or lower open Pho­to­shop, and some do not con­sider eth­i­cal pirate down­load, so many free soft­ware sup­port­ers choose to use a large soft­ware GNU image manip­u­la­tion, if you guessed right, we talk­ing about GIMP, a free soft­ware raster graph­ics editor.

Below, you’ll find some of the Best Gimp Tuto­ri­als and Resources Around for your Image edit­ing & photo enhance­ment related needs which might help you to get inspired and learned a tip or two by the end of this pre­sen­ta­tion.

For those, who don’t know what is GIMP? And what it can do? Then fol­low the link below for detail introduction.

• GIMP | gimp​.org
• GIMP | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Short, GIMP (The GNU Image Manip­u­la­tion Pro­gram) is a free soft­ware raster graph­ics edi­tor. It is pri­mar­ily employed as an image retouch­ing and edit­ing tool, in addi­tion to offer­ing freeform draw­ing and retouch­ing tools, the GIMP can accom­plish essen­tial image work­flow steps such as resiz­ing, edit­ing, and crop­ping pho­tos, com­bin­ing mul­ti­ple images, and con­vert­ing between dif­fer­ent image for­mats. GIMP can also be used to cre­ate basic ani­mated images in the GIF format.

The next gen­er­a­tion, rep­re­sent­ing two decades of excel­lence. This appli­ca­tion con­tains every­thing you need to cre­ate high-​​end images and graph­ics. For those artists whose work demands more than the basic appli­ca­tion, There is a GIMP avail­able freely to sat­isfy their every needs that uti­lizes Image edit­ing & photo manipulation.

You may be inter­ested in the fol­low­ing tuto­ri­als related arti­cles as well.

• 145 Ulti­mate Round-​​Up Of Pho­to­shop Tuto­ri­als and Resources
• 65+ Smok­ing Pho­to­shop Text Effect Tutorials
• 125+ Ulti­mate Round-​​Up of Illus­tra­tor Tutorials
• 77 Ulti­mate Round-​​Up of Adobe After Effects Tutorials
• 115+ Ulti­mate Round-​​Up of 3D Stu­dio Max Tutorials
• 45+ Incred­i­ble Maya Tuto­ri­als Around

Please feel free to join us and you are always wel­come to share your thoughts even if you have more ref­er­ence links related to more tuto­ri­als that our read­ers may like.

Don’t for­get to sub­scribe to our RSS-​​feed and fol­low us on Twit­ter — for recent updates.

Posted in Graphic Design, Photoshop, Tutorials, Web Design | Comments Off

40+ CodeIgniter Framework Tutorials for Kick-​​Ass PHP Application

CodeIgniter is an Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment Frame­work – a toolkit – for peo­ple who build web sites using PHP. Its goal is to enable you to develop projects much faster than you could if you were writ­ing code from scratch, by pro­vid­ing a rich set of libraries for com­monly needed tasks, as well as a sim­ple inter­face and log­i­cal struc­ture to access these libraries. CodeIgniter lets you cre­atively focus on your project by min­i­miz­ing the amount of code needed for a given task.

Here is the list of 40+ Excel­lent And Use­ful CodeIgniter Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment Frame­work Tuto­ri­als & Resources that includes some use­ful tuto­ri­als and few great resources that has been devel­oped for pro­gramer and design­ers. We are hop­ing that you will learn fur­ther on CodeIgniter Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment Frame­work after read­ing out this post.

Do you want to be the first one to know the lat­est hap­pen­ings at 2Ex​perts​De​sign​.com just sub­scribe to our rss feed and you can fol­low us on twit­ter as well.

1. CodeIgniter Tuto­r­ial: [Cre­at­ing Account­ing Appli­ca­tion] Part 1 Set­ting Up the Environment

2. CodeIgniter: Cre­at­ing First Appli­ca­tion at CodeIgniter

3. Build­ing a basic PHP E-​​Commerce Appli­ca­tion using CodeIgniter Frame­work – Part 1

4. CodeIgniter Advent: Day 1

5. How to make CodeIgniter file upload class accept all extensions?

6. An Intro­duc­tion to CodeIgniter

7. 9 Ways to Inte­grate Ajax with CodeIgniter

8. Debug­ging a CodeIgniter appli­ca­tion with FirePHP

9. Get­ting Started with CodeIgniter

10. CodeIgniter From Scratch: Day 1

11. Build­ing An Appli­ca­tion Using CodIg­niter Part 1/​3

12. FreakAuth_​light USERGUIDE

13. Dis­play­ing User Com­ments in a Code Igniter Blog Application

14. Build­ing a Com­plete CodeIgniter Appli­ca­tion: Part 1

15. The Best Way to Make CodeIgniter Web­site Multi-​​Lang

16. Codeigniter for Joomla

17. A Guide to Using Template

18. CodeIgniter and jQuery – Real Live Search with Pagination

19. Opti­miz­ing and Scal­ing your CodeIgniter Appli­ca­tion – with Benchmarks!

20. Smarty as a tem­plate engine in Code Igniter

21. Speed Up your Web Appli­ca­tion by CodeIgniter

22. Archive for the ‘CodeIgniter’ Category

23. Build­ing with CodeIgniter: Begin­ning your Tumblelog

24. Tem­plate Library for Ext.CodeIgniter

25. Codeigniter: Set­ting up mul­ti­ple sites on one install

26. How to use CodeIgniter’s OpenID library to inte­grate OpenID in your exist­ing user system

27. CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment Table of Contents

28. Review: CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Appli­ca­tion Development

29. Book Review: Code Igniter for Rapid PHP Appli­ca­tion Development

30. Ama­zon Book Review: CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Appli­ca­tion Development

31. Code Igniter ExtJs Inte­gra­tion – 3

32. Imple­ment­ing the Zend Frame­work with CodeIgniter

33. PHP Appli­ca­tion Frame­work Bat­tle Royale: CodeIgniter vs. Symfony

34. A Quick Code Igniter and JQuery Ajax Tutorial

35. Build Your Port­fo­lio With CodeIgniter

36. How to make a link using Codeigniter

37. Dynam­i­cally Drop­down Value On Code Igniter

38. CodeIgniter Resources Useful

39. Rapid Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment with CodeIgniter

40. SlideShow: CodeIgniter PHP MVC Framework

41. Every­thing You Need to Get Started With CodeIgniter

42. Run CodeIgniter from the Com­mand Line /​ SSH

43. PHP Tuto­ri­als : Build­ing a basic PHP E-​​Commerce Appli­ca­tion using CodeIgniter Frame­work – Part 1

If you enjoyed this post, please con­sider to sub­scribe to the feed and get future arti­cles deliv­ered to your feed reader.

Posted in Graphic Design, PHP, Resources, Tutorials, Web Design | Comments Off

50 Clever Tutorials and Techniques on Traditional Drawing

Tra­di­tional draw­ing is cer­tainly way harder than dig­i­tal and it is true that peo­ple are able to progress much faster dig­i­tally, but one should learn the tra­di­tional type of draw­ing and paint­ing before start­ing dig­i­tal draw­ing, since it often lays out the foun­da­tion for screen design.

This arti­cle con­tains a mix­ture of tra­di­tional draw­ing tuto­ri­als, draw­ing tech­niques and some meth­ods for trans­form­ing and prepar­ing your cre­ations for screen design. Some are inter­me­di­ate level and some are advanced tuto­ri­als that include gen­eral the­ory, use­ful tips, comic inspired art, sketch a pen­cil draw­ing, col­or­ing pro­cess­ing, char­ac­ter sketch­ing, shapes, pro­por­tional, per­spec­tive and much more. We hope that draw­ing tuto­ri­als and tech­niques in this post will be a great help to you.

Tra­di­tional Draw­ing Tutorials

Mar­i­lyn Por­trait Tuto­r­ial
A truly fan­tas­tic draw­ing tuto­r­ial to learn how to draw a por­trait of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe with pen­cil. Each step of the por­trait is per­fectly well explained and com­mented. This tuto­r­ial is very detailed, and requires a lot of patience.

Por­trait tuto­r­ial
This is a step by step tuto­r­ial on how to draw a real­is­tic por­trait. The artist assumes that you have a basic under­stand­ing of draw­ing and shad­ing before attempt­ing to draw a seri­ous por­trait. For this les­son he is draw­ing on 11″x14″ Fab­ri­ano Hot­pressed Water­color Paper. He is using Der­went Graphic Pen­cils rang­ing from 2H to 7B. For more infor­ma­tion on any of the draw­ing tools that he men­tion in this tuto­r­ial, visit the draw­ing mate­ri­als page.

How to draw lips
In this tuto­r­ial artist will explain how to draw the struc­ture of the human lips.

How to Draw a Car
For this tuto­r­ial the artist will show the dif­fer­ent steps he takes in draw­ing a real­is­tic look­ing car. He chose to draw an amer­i­can clas­sic, the Corvette. This tuto­r­ial will apply to any car though because for the most part, they are all the same. The key to draw­ing a car that will pop off the page is hav­ing a good bal­ance of lights, mid­tones, and darks along with clean, sharp edges. He is using Der­went Graphic Pen­cils and Fab­ri­ano Artis­tico Bright White Water­color Paper, he is also using mechan­i­cal pen­cils for small details.

How to Draw Opti­mus Prime From Trans­form­ers
In this tuto­r­ial you will be learn­ing how to draw one of the most pop­u­lar of the Auto­bots, Opti­mus Prime. This draw­ing tuto­r­ial will show you in detail how to sketch, draw, and shade in this char­ac­ter that is pop­u­lar around the world

Pet Por­trait
A very good tuto­r­ial about how to draw pet por­traits with col­ored pen­cils. Basic process and tips. Medium : Pris­ma­color Col­ored Pencils.

How to Draw a Ninja
This tuto­r­ial will show you how to draw a ninja step by step. This tuto­r­ial has easy to fol­low direc­tions and steps mak­ing it that much more pos­si­ble for any­body to tackle

Por­trait tuto­r­ial
Artist is going to show sev­eral step pho­tos along the way on this one. Artist chose this photo because of it’s RICH con­tent, and it’s HIGH amount of TONAL VALUES, CONTRAST as well as it being a high res­o­lu­tion file, Find­ing just the right photo is half the bat­tle to a good draw­ing. NEVER EVER work with a low qual­ity photo.

Hair draw­ing tuto­r­ial
Draw­ing hair is def­i­nitely one of the trick­i­est part of almost every por­trait. How­ever, you will def­i­nitely like it if you acquire tech­nique and skill in it. There­fore Artist intro­duce some easy and effec­tive ways to draw wavy or straight hair or hair blow­ing in the wind. No mat­ter how much chaotic the hair is, you’ll be able to draw it.
This tuto­r­ial explains two tech­niques of draw­ing hair on four portraits.

Eye-​​drawing tuto­r­ial by Sarah
A great and very detailed tuto­r­ial, to learn how to draw an eye in 30 steps

How to Draw a Real­is­tic Eye
Artist made this tuto­r­ial to show the dif­fer­ent steps that he take in draw­ing a real­is­tic eye.

How to Draw a mouth and teeth
Artist made this tuto­r­ial to show the dif­fer­ent steps that he take in draw­ing a real­is­tic mouth, lips, and teeth.

TRADITIONAL SKETCH RENDERING
At most design schools they teach you how to use a sin­gle wooden pen­cil to cre­ate an entire ren­der­ing, some­times referred to as a “Prisma-​​rendering” due to the type of pen­cil usu­ally used (Pris­ma­color wood pen­cils). These are fast and very pretty look­ing tech­niques, and they are fairly easy to mas­ter. This will be more of a walk­through then a tuto­r­ial in the sense that artist won’t describe every pen stroke, more the basic steps and thoughts behind. Ok, let’s go!

Draw­ing Hands and Feet
Some use­ful explaina­tions and tips about how to draw hands and feet.

Draw­ing a Rose
An excel­lent tuto­r­ial offered by Rachel, to learn how to draw a pink rose.

A Pseudo-​​Sugar Skull: From Start to Fin­ish.
Cre­ate a highly detailed sugar skull illus­tra­tion by fol­low­ing this expert tuto­r­ial, with details on the process from sketch to final dig­i­tal design.

Hair Amanda Tap­ping
A step by step draw­ing show­ing amaz­ing hair on a por­trait of actress Amanda Tap­ping. The result is impres­sive real­ism. A must see!

From Sketch to Vec­tor Illus­tra­tion
Cre­ate inspir­ing dig­i­tal cre­ations from hand drawn sketch using these help­ful tips.

Manga Mak­ing Tuto­r­ial
In this tuto­r­ial artist will show you the process of cre­at­ing a com­plete Manga comic strip using tra­di­tional tools.

How to draw a fash­ion fig­ure
In this video tuto­r­ial you will learn how to use exist­ing ref­er­ence photo to trace a fash­ion inspired sketch.

The Dragon Tuto­r­ial
In this great dragon inspired tuto­r­ial artist will teach you some tech­niques and use­ful tips, you can also use this tech­niques in you other fan­tasy realted drawings.

Leather Wings
In this tuto­r­ial you can get ideas and tech­niques for draw­ing real­is­tic wings strac­ture, Artist focuses at draw­ing wings.

Pen­cil Sketch­ing by Max MaxBert Bertuzzi
very com­pre­hen­sive the­o­rit­i­cal tuto­r­ial, this arti­cle will increase knowl­edge and power of your draw­ing skill

Draw­ing Hair in Pen­cil
Some very use­ful tips for you on how to cre­ate extremely inspir­ing and real­is­tic draw­ing hair in pen­cil work

Draw­ing Hands
Fol­low these sim­ple and easy tips to avoid the dif­fi­culty of recre­ation of hands in pen­cil draw­ing and to learn some great tips and tech­niques of draw­ing hands.

Cloth­ing Tuto­r­ial
An excel­lent roundup with plenty of tips and cloth­ing tuto­ri­als. So, dress your char­ac­ters in the best way by prac­tic­ing these tips.

Comic Story Step by Step
If you are look­ing for a comic story guide­line, here is a per­fect step by step guide for you that will guide you start­ing with sketch­ing and mov­ing on through the ink­ing and dig­i­tal processes.

How to draw Mar­lon Brando step by step
It is now time to show you “how to draw Mar­lon Brando step by step” All the steps and instruc­tions are laid out in the sim­plest for­mat pos­si­ble to help make this tuto­r­ial a breeze.

Face draw­ing: the heroic male
In this tuto­r­ial we’ll draw a char­ac­ter face of a hero-​​like char­ac­ter. In the process we’ll review an opti­mal place­ment of the facial fea­tures and the best ways to empha­size the fea­tures of the face that will make our char­ac­ter look manly and heroic.

Evil skull draw­ing
Look­ing for a ter­ri­fy­ing evil skull draw­ing tuto­r­ial? Just fol­low the steps and you should be able to walk away with a scary skull to use in your scary projects (what­ever they might be).
Let’s start with the evil skull draw­ing tutorial!

How to draw a female anime Dark Angel
The video demon­strates how to quickly cre­ate an effi­cient con­cept design from con­cept idea into visual. How to put rough idea onto the paper sketch and cre­ate fan­tasy or sci-​​fi char­ac­ter con­cept art online les­son for comics car­toon illus­tra­tion, manga, and anime.

Lone Wolf Pen­cil Draw­ing
Here is a new minia­ture speed pen­cil draw­ing. Artist wanted to make this one dif­fer­ent from my other ones. He com­bined two draw­ings in one to make a sin­gle image. The sun­set and the sin­gle wolf. It gives the final image a dif­fer­ent look and feeling.

How I mak­ing manga part 2
A step by step com­pre­hen­sive and detailed tuto­r­ial about mak­ing manga.

Graphite Por­trait
This tuto­r­ial explains all steps to cre­ate a por­trait of Zine­dine Zidane in graphite pen­cil. Time to com­plete: 10 hours.

Dance of Spring Tuto­r­ial
A step by step detailed tuto­r­ial that will help you with your Col­ored pencil.

Tra­di­tional Draw­ing Tips & Techniques

How to Draw what you See: Tech­niques and Tips to Improve your Draw­ing Skills
This arti­cle con­tains step-​​by-​​step images of the process Artist uses to cre­ate real­is­tic look­ing draw­ings, as well as tips he have picked up over the years which any­one can use to improve their draw­ing skills.

Shad­ing and Blend­ing
This bril­liant tuto­r­ial is all about shad­ing and blendng, so let start and get lot of tips and amaz­ing techniques.

Tips for draw­ing hands
In this tuto­r­ial Artist will include many tips about draw­ing hands he has picked up which are use­ful for get­ting bet­ter at draw­ing hands, includ­ing fore­short­en­ing, nails, and fin­ger shapes.

Cir­culism Tech­nique
Cir­culism is a very inter­est­ing tech­nique to cre­ate skin tex­ture with pen­cil. With this great tuto­r­ial, learn how to acheive a real­is­tic skin tex­ture with circulism.

3 Dimen­sional Draw­ing Tech­niques
To learn the basics of shape, per­spec­tive and shad­ing in order to cre­ate depth in your work.

9 Steps to Cre­at­ing Bet­ter Com­po­si­tions
Great com­po­si­tions don’t just hap­pen by acci­dent. They take plan­ning, patience, and a knowl­edge of all the visual ele­ments at your dis­posal. The great thing is, no mat­ter how much or how lit­tle tal­ent you have, you’ll always be able to improve your art by sketch­ing out a good com­po­si­tion before you begin.

Draw­ing clothes tech­niques
A less gen­eral point that the por­trait seems to pose few prob­lems is the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of cloth­ing. In this tuto­r­ial, cloth­ing can be sum­ma­rized in two points: the folds and textures.

Edit­ing Draw­ings
Edit­ing Draw­ings by Cataclysm-​​X offers valu­able tips for bring­ing out the best in your tra­di­tional draw­ings after they have lost their depth and lus­ter due to scanning.I am sure this tech­nique will help many tra­di­tional artists in the pre­sen­ta­tion of their work.

Sketch­ing Tips and tech­niques
Learn inter­est­ing tips and tech­niques of sketch­ing art and learn how you can focus on cre­at­ing a great look­ing char­ac­ter with the help of these tips.

Detailed Hair
This arti­cle con­tains high qual­ity tuto­ri­als that will guide you how to cre­ate highly real­is­tic and inspir­ing hair on your subjects.

Hair Per­spec­tive & Light­ing Tuto­r­ial
A very help­ful and step by step com­pre­hen­sive and detailed tuto­r­ial about Hair Per­spec­tive & Lighting

Por­trai­ture les­son
To study draw a por­trait using the ‘inside-​​out’ method.

Pro­por­tions
Pro­por­tions in any draw­ing assign­ment hold great value; there­fore we have come up with these five most help­ful tech­niques that will help you get­ting grips with pro­por­tions in your drawings.

How to Draw Car­i­ca­tures: The 5 Shapes
This is a great col­lec­tion of tips and tech­niques you can use to draw car­i­ca­tures and learn the basic the­ory and 5 shapes of car­i­ca­ture design.

How to Draw Car­i­ca­tures: Head Shapes
Head shape is the most impor­tant part of a car­i­ca­ture and in this tuto­r­ial you will learn great tech­niques about it.

© Aquil Akhter for Smash­ing Mag­a­zine, 2009. |
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The Ultimate Collection Of Maya 3D Tutorials

Ever won­der how ani­mated films like Ice Age are made? Maya is the answer. Maya (or Autodesk Maya, hav­ing recently been acquired by Autodesk) is pow­er­ful 3D mod­el­ing, ani­ma­tion, tex­tur­ing, ren­der­ing and visual effects software.

Maya was devel­oped for the film indus­try and is now being used for design, visual effects, games, film, ani­ma­tion, visu­al­iza­tion and sim­u­la­tion. The most sig­nif­i­cant thing that sets it apart from other 3D pack­ages — and the rea­son it is used so widely in these major indus­tries — is that it is highly cus­tomiz­able. Big stu­dios can write cus­tom code to suit their pro­duc­tions using the software’s devel­op­ment kit. This makes Maya highly adapt­able to any workflow.

Below, we fea­ture tuto­ri­als that address most Maya-​​related top­ics for begin­ners and advanced users. These tuto­ri­als cover almost every­thing Maya has to offer, from mod­el­ing to the final ren­der­ing process.

For Begin­ners

Poly Head Modeling

Box Mod­el­ing a Male
Brief tuto­r­ial on the box-​​modeling technique.

Low Poly Char­ac­ter
In this tuto­r­ial, you will see how to cre­ate a low poly char­ac­ter in 3D.

Real-​​Time Char­ac­ter Mod­el­ing
Mod­el­ing a real-​​time character.

Sub­di­vi­sion Sur­faces
Use sub­di­vi­sion sur­faces to model a char­ac­ter in Maya.

Face
This video tuto­r­ial teaches you how to model a face in Maya using polygons.

Tex­ture Map NURBS Dragon
This tuto­r­ial teaches you how to paint 3D tex­ture maps onto a NURBS dragon model.

Lay­ered Tex­ture
In this tuto­r­ial, you learn how to use the alpha chan­nel of your pro­jected image to “sten­cil” your image over or under other images in your geom­e­try using a lay­ered shader.

Fur
Basic tuto­r­ial on Maya fur.

Tree
Cre­ate a real­is­tic tree in Maya.

Grass
Cre­at­ing sim­ple grass in Maya.

CG Nature
This tuto­r­ial shows you how to make ter­rain, trees and grass using Maya.

Real­is­tic Ear
This tuto­r­ial shows you how to model a real­is­tic human ear.

Human Anatomy UV Coor­di­nates Setup for Tex­tur­ing
Learn how to cre­ate your UV tex­ture maps cor­rectly so that they don’t blur or stretch.

Coin
This tuto­r­ial shows you how to cre­ate a very real­is­tic coin using Maya.

Keroro Gunso
In this Maya tuto­r­ial, you learn how to model Keroro Gunso.

Cof­fee cup
This tuto­r­ial shows you how to cre­ate a cof­fee cup in Maya.

Screw­driver
This is a basic mod­el­ing tuto­r­ial that teaches you how to cre­ate a screw-​​driver and then use Final Gather to ren­der global illu­mi­na­tion, HDRI and depth of field.

Onion
Cre­ate a realistic-​​looking onion in Maya.

Mud Effect
Tuto­r­ial on cre­at­ing a dynamic mud effect in Maya using soft body.

Wine Glass
This video tuto­r­ial teaches you how to model a wine glass in Maya.

LCD Mon­i­tor
In this tuto­r­ial, you learn the basic mod­el­ing of an LCD mon­i­tor in Maya.

Toi­let
Tuto­r­ial on mod­el­ing a sim­ple toi­let in Maya.

Cig­a­rette Box
In this tuto­r­ial, you learn basic mod­el­ing and UV map­ping for a cig­a­rette box.

Tea Cup
In this tuto­r­ial, you learn how to model and tex­ture a tea cup.

Space Ship
Learn how to model a space ship.

Air­plane
Video tuto­r­ial shows you how to model an air­plane in Maya.

Taran­tula
Tuto­r­ial shows you how to model a taran­tula in Maya.

Paint Geom­e­try Tool
The Paint Geom­e­try Tool can be very use­ful when adding any­thing that needs to be dupli­cated and ran­dom­ized across a given sur­face. In this tuto­r­ial, you learn all the basics of Maya‘s Geom­e­try Tool.

Using Bump Map to Sculpt Details

Ren­der­ing Wire­frame
This tuto­r­ial shows you how to ren­der wire­frames on top of 3D models.

Sub­sur­face Scat­ter­ing
Sim­u­lat­ing sub­sur­face scat­ter­ing with Men­tal Ray.

3D Cloud Shader
Cre­ate a real­is­tic cloud in Maya using fluids.

Light Lamp
Cre­at­ing a real­is­tic lamp light using Maya.

Men­tal Ray Stu­dio Light­ing
This tuto­r­ial teaches you how to achieve a basic stu­dio light­ing setup with Maya and Men­tal Ray, using a sin­gle HDR image and Final Gather.

Maya Optics
A brief expla­na­tion of how light­ing works in Maya and how it is dif­fer­ent from phys­i­cal real-​​world lighting.

Get­ting Started With Men­tal Ray‘s Final Gather
Basic guide teaches you how to use Men­tal Ray’s Final Gather to ren­der a model.

Light
A detailed tuto­r­ial on light­ing in Maya.

Stu­dio Light­ing in Autodesk Maya 2009
Tuto­r­ial gives brief expla­na­tion on stu­dio light­ing in Maya 2009.

Image-​​Based Light­ing
In this video tuto­r­ial, you learn how to cre­ate shad­ows under an object with a pho­to­re­al­is­tic image in the background.

HDRI in Men­tal Ray
This tuto­r­ial demon­strates how to use HDRI to achieve pho­to­re­al­is­tic ren­der­ing in Maya.

Real­is­tic Light­ing with LDRI Images

Chrome Car Rims
This tuto­r­ial guides you through the process of cre­at­ing realistic-​​looking chrome car rims.

MapCre­ation in Maya 2009
Video exam­ines how, using Maya 2009’s new ren­der pass fea­tures, we can eas­ily export a nor­mal map from high poly geometry.

Real­is­tic Glass
This tuto­r­ial explains three meth­ods of cre­at­ing real­is­tic glass in Maya.

Ten­nis Ball Fur

Tire Cover
This tuto­r­ial shows how to model dif­fi­cult rotat­ing objects.

Cable
In this tuto­r­ial, you learn how to make a sim­ple NURBS cylin­der behave like a real cable, affected by grav­ity, elas­tic­ity and other real-​​life phys­i­cal forces.

Hair styles with Maya fur
In this tuto­r­ial, you learn how to cre­ate var­i­ous hair­styles with the Maya fur plug-​​in.

Hair Dynam­ics

Dynamic Tele­phone Cord
This tuto­r­ial shows you how to cre­ate a dynamic tele­phone cord using Maya Hair.

Crowd
Cre­ate a sim­ple crowd in Maya with the help of the Crowd­Maker Ren­der­ing Engine.

Cob­ble­stone
This tuto­r­ial guides you through cre­at­ing a 3D mesh in Maya that will be used for repeat­ing mate­r­ial. It also includes instruc­tions on how to cre­ate the model and then obtain a color map and nor­mal map from the model.

Gear
This tuto­r­ial teaches you how to model and ren­der a gear in Maya.

Sport Car Nis­san 350-​​Z
Tuto­r­ial explains how to cre­ate 350Z’s body using polyg­o­nal mod­el­ing with blue­prints in Maya.

Bee
This basic tuto­r­ial cov­ers top­ics such as mod­el­ing, tex­tur­ing, rig­ging, ani­ma­tion, ren­der­ing and particles.

Using Sun and Sky in Men­tal Ray with Maya
This tuto­r­ial demon­strates Sun and Sky sys­tem options in the Men­tal Ray Maya ren­der­ing engine.

Tire
In this tuto­r­ial, you see how to cre­ate realistic-​​looking sports car tire in Maya.

Can­dle Flame
Cre­ate a real­is­tic can­dle flame in Maya.

Eye
Model and apply shaders to get real­is­tic eyes.

UV map­ping Tech­niques
This tuto­r­ial shows most of the UV map­ping tech­niques and tricks of Maya software.

Water from Par­ti­cle
Learn how to cre­ate real­is­tic water, with effects, from Par­ti­cle in Maya.

Pil­low with ncloth
Maya ncloth pro­vides excel­lent ways for CG artists to cre­ate real­is­tic cloth­ing. It sim­u­lates real-​​life fac­tors such as forces act­ing, fric­tion, rigid­ity, glue strength, pres­sure, tear­ing sur­faces, etc. This video tuto­r­ial teaches you how to use ncloth to cre­ate a pillow.

Con­trol­ling Fog Den­sity
Cre­ate and con­trol a fog effect in Maya.

Opti­mized Caus­tics in Maya Men­tal Ray
In this tuto­r­ial, you learn how to make fast and opti­mized caus­tics effect with Maya and Men­tal Ray.

Coca-​​Cola Bot­tle
Mod­el­ing a Coca-​​Cola bot­tle in Maya.

Shelves And Mel scripts
Mel is a script­ing lan­guage for Maya that is sim­i­lar to C. Using Maya’s Mel scripts, you can link objects, loop an action, sim­u­late real-​​world dynam­ics and do many other things. This tuto­r­ial teaches you how to make shelves and cre­ate Mel scripts to speed up repet­i­tive tasks.

Tank
This tuto­r­ial focuses on mak­ing tank treads using Mel scripts.

Mak­ing eye­lid rig with dri­ven keys and expres­sions
This tuto­r­ial teaches you how to cre­ate an eye­lid rig with dri­ven keys and expressions.

Grow­ing Flow­ers
In this tuto­r­ial, you see how to cre­ate a grow­ing flower animation.

Stormy Ocean
This ani­ma­tion tuto­r­ial teaches you how to cre­ate a real­is­tic ocean storm.

Clock Ani­ma­tion
Cre­ate a clock ani­ma­tion using Maya Expression.

Lava Effect
This tuto­r­ial explains how to make a shader for lava effects using Maya’s mate­r­ial edi­tor, called Hypershade.

Rocket
Model a rocket with a par­ti­cle trail in Maya.

Par­ti­cle Emis­sion When Objects Col­lide
Emit par­ti­cles at the exact loca­tion of the col­li­sion of objects.

Destroy­ing A Wall
Destroy a wall using rigid bod­ies and par­ti­cles in Maya.

Rigid Body Col­li­sion Detection

Space­ship Fleet
This ani­ma­tion tuto­r­ial shows you how to use the par­ti­cle instancer to cre­ate a fleet of space­ships fly­ing across a plain.

Bend Deformer
This Maya tuto­r­ial cov­ers the use of the Bend Deformer, which links one attribute to another, and the use of math in expres­sions to cre­ate animation.

Rotat­ing Wheels
Learn how to cre­ate an ani­ma­tion of a wheel that rotates in sync with the speed of the car. The final ani­ma­tion is more accu­rate and realistic.

Falling Leaves
Cre­ate a falling leaves ani­ma­tion in Maya using nCloth and Paint Effects.

Yoyo Ani­ma­tion
Tuto­r­ial on ani­mat­ing a yo-​​yo, with the string wrap­ping around the fin­gers of a deform­ing hand.

Mus­cle Rig­ging
Maya tuto­r­ial on cre­at­ing mus­cles that con­tract and expand a few frames before the limb moves.

Instanc­ing Ani­mated Geom­e­try To Par­ti­cles
Par­ti­cle Instanc­ing saves time when ani­mat­ing many iden­ti­cal objects in a scene.

Mechan­i­cal Stairs
This tuto­r­ial teaches you how to cre­ate a set of mechan­i­cal stairs.

Blend­Shapes
This Maya tuto­r­ial explains the process of using Blend­Shapes for facial animation.

Domino Effect
This tuto­r­ial teaches you how to set up the geom­e­try of a domino effect and apply a passive-​​to-​​active key switch.

Jel­ly­fish
This tuto­r­ial shows you how to cre­ate and ani­mate jel­ly­fish. It cov­ers many top­ics such as mod­el­ing, tex­tur­ing, ani­ma­tion and paint effects.

Walk
This com­plex tuto­r­ial uses Maya Expres­sion to add repeat­ing actions to a model.

Motion Blur
Add motion blur to your 3D ani­ma­tion in post-​​production by cre­at­ing 2-​​D motion vec­tors in Maya.

Maya Live
Maya Live is a set of motion-​​tracking tools for match­ing CG to clean plate footage. This basic tuto­r­ial teaches you how to use Maya Live.

Hot­box
Hot­box is a great fea­ture of Maya that will increase your speed and pro­duc­tiv­ity. It allows artists to access every tool in Maya with the key­board space bar, with­out hav­ing to waste time search­ing for tools and menu items all over the large Maya interface.

Irra­di­ance Par­ti­cles in Men­tal Ray
Learn how to use the pow­er­ful irra­di­ance par­ti­cle sys­tem in Men­tal Ray to lower your ren­der­ing times while bal­anc­ing the ren­der­ing qual­ity of your image using cus­tom tech­niques and settings.

For Advanced Users

The tuto­ri­als fea­tured below come from skilled pro­fes­sion­als who work in the CG indus­try and are intended for advanced users of Maya soft­ware. You can use these tech­niques in other 3D soft­ware pack­ages as well. Some of the tuto­ri­als use other pack­ages like ZBrush, Mud­box and Pho­to­shop in com­bi­na­tion with Maya for best results. Before you begin any of these tuto­ri­als, make sure you have enough pro­cess­ing power: most of these tuto­ri­als are resource hun­gry. If you per­fect the basic tech­niques cov­ered above, try to use your skills to work on some of the high-​​quality projects fea­tured below. Prac­tice is the key to suc­cess.

Mod­el­ing a Char­ac­ter
In this tuto­r­ial, you see how Carsten Lind cre­ates a char­ac­ter model in Maya.

Amer­i­can Alli­ga­tor
See how Mas­simo Righi cre­ates a sun­bathing Amer­i­can alligator.

Next-​​Gen Envi­ron­ment Tex­tures
A tuto­r­ial by Daniel Vijoi on cre­at­ing next-​​gen envi­ron­ment tex­tures in Maya. This tuto­r­ial focuses more on texturing.

Sohrab
Mak­ing Sohrab, by Farzad Dalvand.

Male Green Frog
Tuto­r­ial teaches you how to cre­ate a pho­to­re­al­is­tic ren­der and 3D model that can be used for animation.

Steam Mas­terNext
Mak­ing Steam Mas­ter: next-​​gen game head by Sorin Lupu.

Spit­fire War Plane
In this tuto­r­ial, you see how to model a Spit­fire war plane.

Swim­suit Babe
Make an attrac­tive woman, by Jimmy Chow.

Fruit Tarts
Make lovely fruit tarts, by Hau Ming.

Last ELF
Make the Last Elf in Maya. The author, Piotr Fox Wysocki, has done every­thing in detail to give it a real-​​life look.

Skull­head Mob­ster
Mak­ing Skull­head Mob­ster, by Harsh Borah.

Prince
Mak­ing Prince, by Robert Vari.

Tiger Zoo
Mak­ing Tiger Zoo, by Mas­simo Righi.

Pre­his­toric Ani­mals
A demon­stra­tion of how this artist ren­ders realistic-​​looking pre­his­toric animals.

Ingrid Bergman
Mak­ing Ingrid Bergman, by Max Edwin Wahyudi.

Mor­gane
Mod­el­ing Mor­gane in Maya, by Cousigne Adrien.

Break­ing Sub­sur­face Scat­ter­ing into Ren­der Lay­ers in Maya
This tuto­r­ial is about the process of break­ing the sub­sur­face into ren­der­ing lay­ers and com­posit­ing them in post.

Por­trait of a Troll
Jonas Pers­son cre­ates this Por­trait of a Troll.

Cheese Plat­ter
Detailed tuto­r­ial on mak­ing a cheese plat­ter, by Hau Ming.

Quiet Room
Mak­ing a quiet room, by Yan Chan.

Glad­i­a­tor
Mak­ing a glad­i­a­tor, by Christo­pher ADAJAR.

Joker
Mak­ing the Joker, by Moham­mad­taghi Aibaghi Esfe­hani. The detail­ing is done with ZBrush, tex­tur­ing and matte paint­ing and shave and hair­cut with Adobe Pho­to­shop, and the finaly ren­der­ing with Men­tal Ray.

Varga
Mak­ing Varga in Maya.

Old Farm
Cre­at­ing an old farm, by Daniel VIJOI.

Trapped
Mak­ing Trapped, by Mas­simo Righi.

Fatjon’s Per­for­mance
Mak­ing of Fatjon’s Per­for­mance, by Qu Yu Cheng.

High Poly­gon Real­is­tic Char­ac­ter Cre­ation
Cre­at­ing a real­is­tic high poly­gon char­ac­ter in Maya.

Gor­don Ramsay‘s Car­i­ca­ture
Mak­ing Gor­don Ram­say, car­i­ca­ture by Jason Edwards

Tur­tle
Maya tuto­r­ial on cre­at­ing a realistic-​​looking tur­tle. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Street Cop
Cre­at­ing a street cop, by Mashru Mishu.

Dr Julian
Maya tex­tur­ing tuto­r­ial by Julian Jeremy Johnson-​​Mortimer.

Char­ac­ter Walk Through
Maya tuto­r­ial on cre­at­ing a stun­ning character.

Meet You
Mak­ing of Meet You by Zhang Sheng.

Facial Ani­ma­tion Rig for Delgo
This tuto­r­ial from War­ren Grubb shows how he cre­ated a facial ani­ma­tion rig for this char­ac­ter, which is more pow­er­ful and flex­i­ble than stan­dard multi-​​targeted blend­shape rigs.

Char­ac­ter hair
This tuto­r­ial shows how to cre­ate low poly hair for game char­ac­ters using lots of images and some printscreens directly from the appli­ca­tion used ( Maya, Pho­to­shop, etc.)

Next-​​Gen Game Car
Model a game car with­out blue­prints. This tuto­r­ial cov­ers mod­el­ing, UV map­ping and texturing.

Mini Cooper
This Maya tuto­r­ial focuses on shad­ing and texturing.

Clas­si­cal Girl
Mak­ing a Clas­si­cal Girl by Wang Shiyong.

Foot
Mod­el­ing a foot in Maya, by Steven Stahlberg.

About the Author

Vailan­cio Rodrigues is a col­lege stu­dent, web­mas­ter and Web designer who likes to learn new things and share them with oth­ers. He likes to work in the cre­ative field and is con­stantly improv­ing his skills. His fields of inter­est are Web tech­nolo­gies, pho­tog­ra­phy, motion graph­ics, art and tech­nol­ogy. You can fol­low Vailan­cio on Twit­ter.

(al)

© vail­ro­drigues for Smash­ing Mag­a­zine, 2009. |
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50 Mind-​​Blowing Polaroids

I always start my day check­ing out the daily inspi­ra­tion here on Abduzeedo and now at http://​daily​.abduzeedo​.com. One day I while I was check­ing out some cool images I spot­ted a really cool polaroid pic­ture and I real­ized that most of us have already for­got­ten how cool these pic­tures are, the retro feel­ing in them. Polaroid for a long time was an icon to rep­re­sent pho­tog­ra­phy in icons for exam­ple. Because of that I decided to cre­ate a mas­sive col­lec­tion from polaroids.

You can check out the images below and if you have any sug­ges­tion or want to share your pho­tos do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us at abduzeedo@​abduzeedo.​com or via twit­ter that http://​twit​ter​.com/​a​b​d​u​zeedo. I hope you’ll like it!

Polaroid vs. digital

Finally, hears a great series for you as a bonus. The artist called ‘aimless-​​thing’ made it for a school project.

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The Seductive Images from Alexia Sinclair

Alexia Sin­clair is a very tal­ented art pho­tog­ra­pher and dig­i­tal artist based in Syd­ney — Aus­tralia. Her dis­tinct style is eas­ily rec­og­nized and highly original.

Using a visual nar­ra­tive to seduce her audi­ence with each pho­to­graphic feast, Sinclair’s art is dark and seduc­tive, baroque and sym­bolic. Her mul­ti­lay­ered pho­tographs sub­tly present con­tem­po­rary notions of fash­ion and beauty through inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal media, whilst restor­ing antique notions of clas­si­cism, ele­gance and luxury.

Sin­clair is an artist who skill­fully walks the tightrope that divides the worlds of Fine Art and Com­mer­cial Art. Moti­vated by her love and devo­tion for all things intri­cate and unusual, this ver­sa­tile cre­ative uniquely approaches her cre­ative pro­duc­tion by fill­ing all of the roles, from design­ing sets and props, to makeup and cos­tumes. Sin­clair trav­els the world pho­tograph­ing loca­tions and mod­els and works in post pro­duc­tion con­struct­ing imag­ined worlds through the com­bi­na­tion of her pho­tographs and hand illustrations.

I saw Alexia’s work on my daily researches online and her images got my atten­tion. I loved the col­ors, the atmos­phere, post pro­duc­tion and style. I’m pretty sure you will also like the images!

Find more about Alexia and her work online at:
Per­sonal Web­site
Flickr Page

Make sure to visit Alexia Sinclair’s port­fo­lio and enjoy the images…

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20 Super Cool T-​​shirt Designs

If you like to wear cool t-​​shirts that with pos­i­tive atti­tude you will def­i­nitely like this selec­tion. Alex Solis aka alexmdc is a great illus­tra­tor that has been noticed for his cool and laid back style of illus­tra­tions that fits per­fectly on t-​​shirts and put smiles on people’s faces. Check them out!

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For more from Alex visit http://​www​.odd​worx​.com

About the author

Hi! I’m Paulo Can­abarro and I’m here to post some really cool stuff for you, if you have any ideas or any requests please get @ me — paul0​v2​@​abduzeedo.​com you can also Fol­low me on twit­ter!

Spon­sored Links:

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