Week One: Basics of mechanics and python scripting
This week will go over some basic ideas for mechanical rigging, such as building shocks and suspension pieces, along with some non-dynamic pulleys. Also, as there are a lot of repetitive tasks in rigging, there will be an introduction to python scripting and we will script out a couple of the techniques presented in this week for use later on.

Week Two: Crab Droid - base rig and body setup
This week has the students looking over the crab droid and going over what is needed for the rig, as well as setting up the basic rig system and doing some of the body rigging.

Week Three: Crab Droid - leg setup
The leg setup for the crab droid is where most of the automation is done. This wil cover rigging the legs and duplicating it out to the others, as well as the basics for how the autowalk will work.

Week Four: Crab Droid - autowalk setup
Autowalk week. This class will cover in detail, the expressions and nodes used to create the autowalk setup for the crab droid and ways to speed up user interaction with it as well.

Week Five: Mustang - base rig
The first week of the mustang challenge will see the users learning how to break up the model, via a scripted system, and start out with building the base rig for it and some automation support.

Week Six: Mustang - suspension setup A
The first week of the suspension setup is getting all the suspension rigged up like is should be for manual use. This includes shocks, suspension coils, steering, and starting to setup the body roll system.

Week Seven: Mustang - suspension setup B
Week 2 of suspension goes into setting up additional nodes for the auto drive, pseudo dynamic body roll, and some fine tuning of tire spinning.

Week Eight: Mustang - auto drive setup
In this last week, students will be taken through building of the final autodrive components, connecting them all up, and making the first test animation.

Level of Ability
You will need a moderate understanding of Maya to participate in the workshop. This is not a class for beginner Maya users. A little more in depth understanding of the Hypergraph is also benificial.

Hardware and Software Requirements
Todd will be using Maya 2008 but students can still use Maya 7.0.1 +.

A broadband connection will be needed for downloading the weekly video lessons.

Some of the sample scenes are hardware heavy, so its recommended to have a minimum of 1 GB of RAM and a fast processor.

Other Requirements
Students need to be familiar with web navigation and browsing, as well as email.

Students need to be familiar with using a bulletin board system (such as CGTalk.com) as well as how to upload attachments to postings for review.