Digital-tutors releases Mantra tutorials in DVD and download format:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/product.php?productid=3557 [digitaltutors.com]

Lesson Outline:

1. Introduction and Project Overview 1:45
2. Working with project files 4:02
3. CRendering basics 8:02
4. Rendering image sequences 7:41
5. Using Mplay 7:07
6. Using mcp 4:48
7. Rendering extra channels 8:51
8. Rendering planes to separate files 3:50
9. Compositing deep/shallow outputs 7:20
10. Rendering in passes 9:47
11. Compositing and matte shading 6:10
12. Rendering with Takes 4:41
13. Adding shadows and creating a shadow pass 5:34
14. Completing and rendering a shadow pass 10:02
15. Depth of Field effects 7:17
16. Motion Blur: Transformation 6:37
17. Motion Blur: Deformation 5:50
18. Motion Blur: Velocity 5:06
19. Velocity Blur Tricks 7:14
20. Micropolygon Rendering engine 9:17
21. Raytrace engine 5:34
22. Physically Based Rendering engines 8:40
23. Converting to RAT files 4:48
24. Ambient Occlusion 9:25
25. Image-Based Lighting 5:07
26. GI Path-tracing 5:07
27. GI Cache and Final Gather 6:29
28. Adding Caustic effects to the render 7:04
29. Editing shaders and lighting for a better Caustic pass 8:11
30. Outline rendering 3:01
31. Building and rendering clouds using volumetric system 6:17
32. Converting the geometry into a volume using Metaballs 8:10
33. Mantra archiving 3:51

oh yeah this is awesome

I was just talking this morning with a friend saying mantra need it good training, and here is a start

great, cheers to DT

It is awesome indeed. Mantra feels like a film-production secret.

This will end up in my tutorial shelf indeed.

Excellent. It looked like there was more to mantra than meets the eye, I just had no idea what it was.

has anyone in production gone through this? Is it good?

Andrew,

there are some comments on odforce that may be of help to you:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=7943 [forums.odforce.net]

hmmm, ok .. now I have more questions than before :?. Would those who have purchased it summarize it as a features overview; or a “how to use in production” guide; or somewhere inbetween.

andrewlowell
hmmm, ok .. now I have more questions than before :?. Would those who have purchased it summarize it as a features overview; or a “how to use in production” guide; or somewhere inbetween.

I thought it was well done and would recommend it to anyone. For those just starting out, it can easily be followed. And for us with a bit more experience, you may pick up a tip or two (I found the PBR & GI lessons useful).

Definitely not a hit-you-over-the-head demo of Houdini features. The exposure to the features comes out of the lessons. The entire tutorial falls somewhere inbetween “feature-based” and “how-to” … favouring the latter.

My 2 cents,

Rob

ah cool that's what I was wondering about thanks!

This DVD has absolutely nothing to do with a “production”. More like a “Mantra for VRay users”.

imagine if SESI had done a video version of the documentation and the standard example files…that's what this DVD is…
this, for $60 is good or bad depending on your level of experience with mantra.

thx for the info guys! i'd like to get this just for the PBR stuff

jason

I didn't like it at all you learn almost the same thing at cardanFX.net for half of the price and time.

I though it was going to be something more complex.

Note: I'm not saying that it's bad.