About the Tutorials

These tutorials were designed to get you started using Gaffer's powerful features. They assume the plugin in question is installed and you have a basic working knowledge of Layout. We suggest you work through the tutorials in order.

If you downloaded the tutorial you will notice that all related files (objects, scenes and surfaces) are in a subdirectory named after the plugin, while the root directory is named "tutorials". "Tutorials" will act as your "content" directory. For the scene files to load properly you will need to set this directory as your content directory in Layout.

These tutorials are in no way replacements for the official manual for each plugin. They are just examples of actually using the software. Ideally, you should read the plugin's manual first, follow the tutorial, then re-read the manual after you've gotten a feel for the way the controls work. This may seem a bit redundant, but the 30 minutes you spend on each tutorial will give you considerably more understanding of each of the plugin's features. This will immediately pay off in better results!

A final note. It's good to read through the tutorials, but no matter how expert you are, and how well you think you understand the tools, it's a good idea to do the tutorial anyway! Actually following the steps, not just reading about them, will teach you much more than you expect! If you're an old pro, then you can probably breeze though each tutorial in 15 minutes anyway, but even then you'll gain more experience than you expect.

Surprisingly, this is especially true of the tutorials that don't interest you. These are the tutorials that force you to experiment with features you wouldn't explore by yourself, and in following the steps you may gain a larger appreciation of that topic you didn't think you cared about.

In any case, we offer these tutorials to help you use our tools better. We hope they expand your abilities, and help you create even more exiciting images!

Gaffer Tutorials
#1	Selective Lighting: Exclusion of lights on any surface, negative lights, and new falloff options.
#2	Advanced Specularity Control: Multiple specular reflections, with independent intensity and color control.
#3	Anisotropic Specularity: Non-uniform specularity from brushed metals, hair, and threads.
#4	Advanced Shadowing Options: True photoreal area light shadows.
#5	Shadow Compositing Modes: Seamless integration of shadows into background plates.
#6	Specular Bloom: Automatic glows around the very brightest reflections.

Tutorials for the James K. Polk Collection coming soon!