Hi. i'm in rigging and motion studies right now, i'm about 5-6 months into the program (plus 3 months of mini-school...what a joke that was). The pacing of the school changes a lot from month to month and depending on what you are into. In my opinion, all the course directors i've had so far have a good understanding of what they are teaching. they've all been around 3d for a long time(20 yrs+ for Larry)
You can expect to spend about 20 hrs a week in class in most months and 20 to 28 hrs scheduled in lab.
If thats all the time you are spending in lab, you arent spending enough time in lab. I see too many kids here that leave at the end of 1st lab on one day, and they come in 2 days later and they haven't touched their project. Even if you have a computer at home with a learning copy of maya, there's something to be said for working in a room with 15 other people doing the same thing.
The classes are monthly, 2 at a time.
3df....intro to 3d- all the basics of 3d, kind of slow at first because its geared towards people w/o any experience at all, but it's a pretty good intro to polys.
Op....two month art survey course-again, real basic since its geared towards newbs, but very talented teachers (i was suprised how much i learned in 8 weeks)
MC...NURBS "boot-camp" a lot of nurbs techniques compressed into one month. *hint- name every node!
OP part 2...more of the same
S&L...shading and lighting for NURBS. Sink or Swim time, this is the month that more people fail than any other.
Storyboarding...originally, you storyboarded your idea for your final project, but they are changing that now and its going to be later on in the program. If you've ever wanted to watch Mulan frame by frame, this is the class for you.
FLA...intro to animation, 300 frame logo animation. this class feels rushed, although i took it around siggraph, so i think we had 1 or 2 less classes.
MS...media and society...total BS class (audio students are good for comic relief though)
GCSD....poly modelling for games- this is the only game oriented class in the program. FS really needs more poly classes. great class though, Chad rocks.
CCD....nurbs character. you spend this month building the character that you rig next month. this month is pretty time consuming but if you like modelling, this is the best month so far.
MoStudies....animation concepts, basic (very) physics, some biomechanics coming up.
CCD part II...we're building a pretty advanced(in my limited experience anyway) rig for our characters. Chris is cool. He REALLY knows his sh*t about rigging, and he's putting up 5,000 dollars that says he knows more than yoouuu.
Thats as far as i am in the program, -dc- will have to tell you what the last 5 months are like.
Anyway, this post was a lot longer than i meant it to be, i guess that means i don't want to go back to writing expressions and SDKs for my rig. if you have any other questions feel free to e-mail me.
