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Welcome.

The purpose of this course is to gain a greater understanding of the distinction between tool users and tool makers, specifically to appreciate the role that software development plays in reshaping the digital tools used in sophisticated production studios. I will explore software development techniques that enable studios to attain advanced visual goals, unfettered by the limitations of graphical user interfaces. By the end of this course, I will have demonstrated a familiarity with: Pixar's shading language and design of a variety of shader types, Houdini's VEX shading language, simple anti-aliasing techniques, writing Pixar's SLIM shading nodes, and using mtor to integrate custom shaders with Maya.