Using the exercise files

- [Instructor] If you have access to the Exercise Files that I provided with the course, then go ahead and download those and extract them to a convenient location. I placed them here on my Desktop. If you don't have access to the Exercise Files, you can still learn Arnold 5 in Maya using your own assets. If you don't have access to Maya, if you're on a mobile device or you're just not simply in front of Maya at the moment, then you can still learn by observation.

Let's take a look at the Exercise Files I provided. It's a standard Maya project folder structure. I've also added one folder which is a Photoshop folder with one example in it. In the scenes folder, we've got, Maya has a scene file for almost every movie. Sometimes there are two scenes files for the movie. If there's a finish example, then that's the end state of what the scene should look like at the end of that particular movie.

If there isn't a finished example for that particular movie, then the end state of that movie will be found as the begin state of the following movie. Additionally, I've got a folder for xrefs or external references. Go in there. These are scene files that are referenced into the main scene files here. In the sourceimages folder, we have some texture maps, a various formats. As you progress in this course, you'll also start to see this fill up with .TX documents which are automatically created by Arnold for the purposes of bitmapping.

We'll talk about that more later. Also in the images folder, there are some rendered examples. I've placed these files in an Examples folder so that when you render your own images, you don't have name conflicts with existing files. That includes these AOV documents here. If we go into that folder, these are render passes for Arnold. In one of the exercises, you will load in your own rendered AOVs into Photoshop.

But, if you actually don't have those, then you can find them here in the examples. Okay, so those are the Exercise Files. Let's now talk about setting up Maya for the project folder. If you don't have the Exercise Files, then you want to create a Maya project somewhere on your hard drive. So go ahead and launch up Maya. Then in Maya we need to set the project folder. Go into the File menu, to the Project Window.

If you don't have the Exercise Files, you only need to create your own project for the course. Click on the New button and give it a name. Maybe call it Arnold project or something similar. Press Enter. Then browse for a location. This is just pointing at the current Users, Documents/maya/projects, but of course, I can browse. Then we go to the Desktop and choose that as the location for my new Maya project.

So just choose Desktop and then select. Then when I click Accept, the new project folder is created and it's here on my Desktop. If I go to the File menu and choose Open Scene, then I'm taken to Desktop/Arnold_Project/scenes. Again, this if you don't have the Exercise Files and you need to start fresh. But if you do have the Exercise Files, then you simply need to set the project to that folder. So go back to the File menu and choose Set Project.

Then select Exercise Files, just the top level, and click Set. Now we're pointing at the Exercise Files folder. If we go to the File menu and choose Open Scene, we're taking all the Exercise Files for the course. All right, those are the Exercise Files. That's how to manage project folders in Maya.