TD-College is proud to announce the release of yet another in-depth technical course: The RenderMan Specification in Depth.

We thrive on cranking out talented and motivated people who innovate, create and invent new methods and technologies. Our individual courses are for folks who are looking to expand their skills in specific areas or for artists looking to build up some technical chops in CG production. To succeed in this industry, one needs to be self-motivated to learn new techniques and skills. With that in mind, TD-College pairs you up with the big names in the industry to walk you through and polish your craft.

In the pursuit to expand our courses, TD-College is proud to announce the release of our The RenderMan Specification in Depth course authored by Chris Armsden.

Chris Armsden

Chris is a Lighting Technical Director based in Los Angeles. His tireless determination and extensive skill-set enable him to save the sanity of TD's on a daily basis. While he currently focuses his attention on all things lighting and rendering, his interests cover all aspects of the CG industry.


The RenderMan Specification in Depth


TD-College founders believe that Renderman is one of the ultimate creative tools. It's the most flexible and proven way to develop something visually amazing from the initial spark of an idea. Pixar's Renderman renderer is fast, efficient, and able to handle the astonishing amount of geometric complexity needed to create today's cutting-edge effects. The VFX and animation industries have chosen Renderman to produce the highest quality special effects - it is used everywhere by studios large and small to create spectacular graphics for feature films and broadcast television. We're thrilled to offer Renderman training to our growing curriculum of courses.

In addition to this exciting Renderman course, we're proud to announce the upcoming release of a pillar in our character set-up discipline: Character Set-up 1: The low-res animation rig authored by Stewart Jones. Stewart comes from a background of sketching and making animated flipbooks. In his younger years, he realized that his obsession with making and watching cartoons could actually lead to a career.As his career progressed, he started to rig his own characters more and more, and from there he moved into setting up and rigging almost exclusively. Stu is currently working at Animal Logic as both a Character Technical Director and an Animator.


Stewart Jones

Character Set-up 1: The low-res animation rig centers around the in-depth knowledge riggers need to set up scalable and procedural characters for high-end projects, relying heavily on MEL and a bit of math. This course will teach you everything you need to know about coming up with solutions for complex characters that need to be rigged for animation. You'll learn all the fundamentals necessary to make production proven rigs that can be used for any project. This course will show you how to rig everything from humans to creatures, and one off characters, and show you all of the steps along the way. Aimed at mid to senior level riggers looking to improve their skillset, this course will help you excel at any rigging task and push your skills to a higher level.

At TD-College we offer technical training for aspiring TD's of the highest possible standard. TDC's curriculum is being developed by the cream of the crop of the VFX world, directly based on the feature film pipleine of major film studios in Hollywood and London.

About TD-College

TD-College was founded by 3 experienced professional Technical Directors. Rudy Cortes, Sr. Cinematics Rendering TD at Blizzard Entertainment Cinematics in Irvine, CA. Kevin Mannens, an effects TD at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Arthur Shek, Software Manager at Walt Disney Animation Studios. TD-College's goal is to provide the best training for technical directors to a world wide market by providing an exclusive one-on-one mentor system, as well as a collaborative community where TD'ism can flourish.