Research Tools and Services Discovery

Are you interested in taking your productions to the next level? In this course, join instructor Evan Sutton as he shares tips, workarounds, and time-saving techniques that can help music producers work smarter in the studio and enhance their final productions. Evan dives into drum programming and processing, and discusses synth programming, including how to get from MIDI to audio. Plus, he shares practical tips that can help audio engineers as they work with vocals and get their mixes ready for mastering.

Photoshop turns 25 in 2015. In honor of the occasion, movie poster designer Tomasz Opasinski creates a unique 3D birthday card for Photoshop. He uses an amazing piece of 3D graffiti he created in CINEMA 4D and uses Photoshop to reimagine it: changing the lighting and shadows, introducing some storytelling elements, wrapping type onto the balloon, and making the whole look more organic with filters. Follow along as Tomasz explains how he took his poster-size love letter to Photoshop from start to finish.

Marketing is tricky business. Relationships need to be managed with clients, salespeople, and customers. Prices and contracts must be negotiated. The business must grow. Drew Boyd has been in marketing for over 30 years, and he has worked with the best marketing minds in the world. In this course, he covers the 10 most challenging situations you might face in a marketing role, and offers solutions for overcoming them. These tips are under 5 minutes each—even the busiest marketing professional can watch them, and reap the rewards down the line.

Get the top tips for improving your reading speed and comprehension, whether you read for school, work, or fun. Author Paul Nowak introduces five strategies for getting the most value from what you read, and freeing up more time to apply and practice your knowledge.

"What's in a name?" The truth is, the name you choose for your brand impacts the way your product or service is perceived. With these five simple tips from marketing expert Drew Boyd, you can learn how to choose a name that reflects your brand's core values, distinguishes you from the competition, and is both simple and memorable.

As brands, studios, and performers look to make a statement in a media-saturated world, a range of multi-faceted design firms are creating fascinating work beyond the constraints of traditional screens and linear timelines. In this course, learn how to fuse multiple disciplines using real-time graphics software to create engaging content for deployment beyond the traditional screen.

This course focuses on using interactive hardware controllers to drive real-time 3D scenes in TouchDesigner and Unreal Engine. In TouchDesigner, look at a MIDI controller with sliders that you can use to drive the creation of effects in a real-time rendering system. Next, learn about using TouchOSC to build a custom UI that you can transfer to an iPad that sends OSC messages to TouchDesigner. Then, learn how to use those messages to move particles and objects around on screen. To wrap up, learn how to get data off of a Kinect sensor into TouchDesigner so you can control that same particle and object movement. The course also covers MIDI, OSC, and Kinect as they apply to Unreal Engine.

Whether you're a corporate trainer or a teacher, Chris Mattia can help you make enhancements to your instructional materials, and connect with your learners in a more meaningful way. Each week, Chris offers a new and actionable tip for creating high-quality instructional materials on any budget. He discusses designing effective lessons, creating assets for those lessons, leveraging mobile devices for instructional design, tackling instructional video production, and more. Tune in every Monday for a new tip.

If your organization is looking to realize the time, quality, and cost benefits of agile project management, this course is for you. Agile expert Kelley O'Connell helps those interested in experimenting with agile understand the difference between traditional waterfall and agile methodologies and what is required for a successful transition between the two. She provides advice on garnering support for a pilot project: by identifying supporters early on and keeping them engaged, while also responding to detractors. She then leads you through the process of choosing the pilot project, selecting the right team, and setting the vision, and provides a short overview of agile basics to you get started. Finally, learn how to perform a retrospective review of the pilot and identify the drivers to continue an agile rollout.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Transitioning from being a sales professional to managing other sales professionals involves developing a whole new set of competencies. You need to learn how to coach others, effectively communicate your expectations, and anticipate market changes so you can set up your salespeople for success. In this course, sales trainer and coach Lisa Earle McLeod explains why many salespeople find this transition difficult, and shows how to overcome the challenges that come with tackling this new role. She outlines the basics of sales management, focusing specifically on issues where new sales managers can get stuck, such as sales pipeline management, sales skills coaching, helping direct reports with their accounts, and attracting and retaining talent. Lisa provides guidance on how to hold effective sales meetings and work with other departments—such as marketing, accounting, and product—who are critical to your success. She also shares how to deal with failure and grapple with a challenging market.

Efficient project management and team communication are the keys to meeting the ever-shrinking deadlines of post-production. Trello is the perfect tool to coordinate editors, assistant editors, producers, vendors, and entire creative teams, whether located in the same physical space or scattered across the globe.

Trello for Video Post-Production is a hands-on learning experience in using Trello, Google Drive, and Slack to build your post-production project management system from the ground up—all the way from planning to the delivery of your final masters. This system can apply to scripted projects, unscripted, documentary, reality, and almost any other kind of project imaginable. Filmmaker and professional editor Zack Arnold shows how to create boards and add new cards, attach documents, share media, assign due dates, and link to several different cloud-based storage solutions like Google Drive and Dropbox. Each step of the process is broken down in detail so you understand how to use Trello to its fullest potential. With these tips, you can finally achieve the dream of a post-production workflow that minimizes busywork, paperwork, and email and maximizes your time to be creative.

Having the skills to create believable smoke and fire is crucial for any aspiring VFX artist. In this course Ben Watts shows how to use TurbulenceFD, an incredibly powerful fluid simulator that plugs right into CINEMA 4D, to create realistic smoke, fire, and explosions.

Want to jump right in? Check out the "Quick Start" chapter for short lessons on creating containers and emitters and rendering your simulation. From there, the course explores every aspect of TurbulenceFD in depth, including its solver and timing settings, forces, channels, and emitter options. Along the way, Ben includes some practical and fun examples. By the end of this course you'll be confident using Turbulence FD and creating your own awesome smoke and fire effects.

Simply put, grids are an essential design tool for containing and organizing type and images. But they do so much more. Grids give compositions strength and structure. Grids help break space into units. And grids streamline the visual design process.

Designer Ina Saltz walks you through how to use grids effectively in both print and screen-based projects, offering examples from websites, books, magazines, and even comic strips. Ina touches on using grids to solve issues with hierarchy, proportion, and variation, and points out occasions that might warrant breaking away from the grid, to give your compositions more visual tension and interest. Start here and learn how to add this powerful tool to your typographic arsenal.

Validating web forms is a critical skill for any web developer, ensuring that the data that's submitted is complete, accurate, and nonmalicious before it's sent off to the server. Join author Ray Villalobos in this course as he shows how to validate input from site visitors with HTML5, JavaScript, and jQuery and then process the data with PHP. Plus, learn how to email form data and save it in a MySQL database so that it's ready for other applications.

Do you have to manage, work with, or recruit information architects? If so—or if you're considering a career in the field of information architecture (IA)—then this course is for you. Instructor Chris Nodder provides a high-level overview of the work that information architects do and the terminology they use. Plus, he shares how IA fits into an organization, how to attract suitable candidates for IA positions, and how to effectively manage the information architects you hire. To wrap up the course, Chris discusses where the field of IA is headed.

Your trademark is your brand. Learn how to protect it! In this course, lawyer and author Dana Robinson provides a comprehensive overview of trademark law, explaining the difference between trademarks and other kinds of intellectual property. He demonstrates how to register and renew a trademark, and what to do if your registration is refused. He also explains how to deal with others using your trademark, and how to respond to a demand letter stating that you are allegedly infringing on someone's trademark.

DISCLAIMER: This course is taught by an attorney and addresses US law concepts that may not apply in all countries. Neither LinkedIn nor the attorney teaching the course represents you and they are not giving legal advice. The information conveyed through this course is akin to a college or law school course; it is not intended to give legal advice, but instead to communicate basic information to help viewers understand the basics of intellectual property.

Unity is a powerful interactive development tool for mobile and desktop games and real-time simulations and visualizations. In this course, Craig Barr reviews techniques used in Unity visualizations and game development and introduces the basics of level design, lighting, materials, and animation. Craig shows how to set up a project, and reviews the Unity user interface. He demonstrates how to apply materials, add animation to bring your game to life, add postprocessing effects, and more. To wrap up, he covers how to package and build a playable game.

This course is designed to provide new users with a strong design foundation in Unity 3D 3.5—a game engine for mobile and desktop games and real-time simulations—as well as an introduction to scripting and game functionality. Author Sue Blackman explores the major features in Unity and applies them in actual game situations. She shows how to add lights, texture, multiple views, and effects like fire and smoke to each scene and employ reusable assets. The end result is a sample game with a lush environment, fully animated characters, and some basic interactive gameplay.

Interested in game making? Start in Unity—a game engine for mobile and desktop games and real-time simulations. Author Adam Crespi shows techniques used in game development with Unity and introduces the basics of scripting and game functionality. First, learn how to import models and textures, organize your project and hierarchies, and add terrain, water, and foliage. Next, Adam explores how to use lighting to bring the game to life, and add rendering, particles, and interactivity. The end result is a sample game with a lush environment, fully animated characters, and some basic interactive gameplay.

Many of the games hitting app stores are 2D games. Unity is the perfect engine for designing them. Why? Unity 2D has a drag-and-drop sprite importer, built-in texture atlasing, a sprite animation editor, a dedicated 2D renderer with features like layers/depth and parallax scrolling, and the open-source Box2D physics engine. (If you've played games like Angry Birds, you've seen Box2D in action!) Here Jesse Freeman shows you how to take advantage of these features and build reusable components that you can use in your own games. He'll show you how to import artwork, create and link animations, build and control a player, create formidable enemies, add obstacles, build out different levels, and accept touch and controller input from players. The last chapter shows how to publish your finished game on a variety of platforms: iOS, Android, desktop computers, and the web. Watch now and start building the next blockbuster.

Unity 5.4 has arrived. Find out what's new in the latest version of this powerful, ever-evolving game development platform, as you progress through a series of lessons focused on building a simple 3D scene. Craig Barr introduces the new cinematic visual effects, improvements in the way Unity handles textures imported from other applications, particle performance enhancements like multithreading and LPPV, in-app purchase improvements, and support for virtual reality and high-resolution displays.

Learn how to move a player on a tile-based 2D map and use that movement to trigger events—creating a gaming experience similar to classic RPGs. In this course, Jesse Freeman builds upon the lessons learned in the Unity 5 2D: Random Map Generation: adding a player, moving the player from tile to tile, and making the camera follow the movement, as well as triggering events on the map. Jesse also shows how to add a "fog of war" effect that reveals parts of the map as the player moves around and explores, and how to detect and update the artwork for visited tiles.

Learn how to move characters and objects from point A to B with this introduction to pathfinding in Unity 5. This training focuses on pathfinding in the 2D world: programming simple ways to connect different locations in 2D games. Jesse Freeman starts by explaining the data structures (graphs and nodes) and the A* pathfinding algorithm: the technology that makes traversal of 2D games possible. Then he shows you how to connect paths in a 2D map, and find the fastest path between two points. You'll also build a simple demo map to illustrate and test the pathfinding logic.

Realistic materials make for better game worlds. Learn how to craft materials like wood, bronze, and glass, and then light your scene inside the Unity 3D game engine. Author Adam Crespi starts out with simple materials and gradually introduces more complex shaders: diffuse surfaces like plaster, as well as metal and reflections. Then you'll delve into the magic of bringing a level to life with lighting, including point, spot, and directional lights. Finally, explore light baking with the Beast lightmapping engine.

A dependable backend is a must-have for today's games. Giving users the ability to log in and save and retrieve player data can make or break a community-oriented game. The goal of this course is to build a flexible and scalable networking solution, which can be reused in any of your future games, using Unity and Google Firebase. Instructor Harrison Ferrone starts with an overview of the Firebase Authentication and Realtime Database modules and the Firebase SDK. He shows how to script some basic functionality for logging in and registering users, and progresses to more complex functions like saving and fetching data, waiting for responses while providing good visual feedback, and displaying real-time data in the Unity GUI. By following along, you will understand how to integrate Firebase with Unity, save and fetch user data in a game scene, and bundle your work in asset packages that can be used in many other Unity projects.

Unreal Engine is a complete suite of game development tools made by game developers for game developers. From 2D mobile games to console blockbusters, indie experiments, and virtual reality, Unreal Engine can power it all. In this course, Craig Barr covers the essentials of level design, lighting, effects, Visual Scripting, cinematics, and game packaging with Unreal. He covers creating your first project, building a base landscape, blocking out levels, and exporting and importing assets for use in the design. Want to find out how to craft a unique look? Learn about applying materials and creating special effects with Unreal's particle systems. Plus, get a thorough introduction to Blueprints, the visual scripting language, and optimizing performance for great gameplay with Unreal.