Appendix B
Autodesk Maya 2016 Certification
Autodesk® certifications are industry-recognized credentials that can help you succeed in your career, providing benefits to both you and your employer. Getting certified is a reliable validation of skills and knowledge, and it can lead to accelerated professional development, improved productivity, and enhanced credibility.
This Autodesk Official Press book can be an effective component of your exam preparation for the Autodesk Maya 2016 Certified Professional exam or the Autodesk Maya 2016 Certified User exam. Autodesk highly recommends (and we agree!) that you schedule regular time to prepare; review the most current exam preparation roadmap available at www.autodesk.com/certification; use this book; take a class at an Authorized Training Center (find ATCs near you here: www.autodesk.com/atc); and use a variety of resources to prepare for your certification, including plenty of actual hands-on experience.
To help you focus your studies on the skills that you’ll need for each of these exams, Tables B.1 and B.2 show the objectives that could appear on an exam and in what chapter you can find information on that topic—and when you go to that chapter, you’ll find certification icons like the one in the margin here.
These Autodesk exam objectives were accurate at press time; please refer to www.autodesk.com/certification for the most current exam roadmap and objectives.
Good luck preparing for your certification!
Table B.1 Autodesk Maya 2016 Certified Professional Exam Topics and Objectives
| TOPIC | LEARNING OBJECTIVE | CHAPTER |
| Animation | Create a path animation and evaluate an object along the path | 2 |
| Edit animation curves using the Graph Editor | 2 | |
| List constraint types | 2 | |
| Identify a custom attribute added to a controller | 5 | |
| Locate the value of an animated attribute | 1 | |
| Cameras | Differentiate camera types | 16 |
| Identifying a camera’s angle of view | 16 | |
| Explain the Film Aspect ratio for your camera | 16 | |
| Identify camera attribute names or values | 16 | |
| Data Management/ Interoperability | Use the import feature to import model data | 4 |
| Dynamics/Simulation | Identify and describe the behavior of a Soft Body | 13 |
| Differentiate active and passive rigid bodies | 13 | |
| Describe a soft or rigid body | 13 | |
| Identify rigid body settings or properties | 13 | |
| Effects | Identify and use physical fields | 13 |
| Lighting | Differentiate light types | 7 |
| Identify the specular component of a light | 7 | |
| Differentiate types of light or lighting | 7 | |
| Identify the value of Raytrace shadow attributes | 7 | |
| Describe useful methods for placing lights in a scene | 7 | |
| Materials/Shading | Identify the type of material assigned to geometry | 8 |
| Identify the specified shading component in a render | 11 | |
| Modeling | Identify the typical workflow for Subdivision surface modeling | 3 |
| Identify the type of Boolean operation performed on the objects | 3 | |
| Use polygon modeling tools | 3 | |
| Identify the typical work flow when smoothing meshes | 3 | |
| Rendering | Describe Raytrace/Scanline quality settings | 7 |
| List and differentiate renderers | 7, 10, 12 | |
| Rigging/Setup | Identify Bones | 2 |
| Identify IK Handle bones or controls | 2, 5 | |
| Scene Assembly/Pipeline Integration | Describe how to improve scene organization by using Search and Rename operations | 5 |
| Describe the FBX translator/file format | 4 | |
| UI/Object Management | Identify the purpose and benefits of freezing transformation data on objects | 2 |
| Describe camera gates or regions | 16 | |
| Identify object details and Outliner features | 1 |
Table B.2 Autodesk Maya 2016 Certified User Exam Topics and Objectives
| TOPIC | LEARNING OBJECTIVE | CHAPTER |
| Animation | Keyframing Basics | 2 |
| Creating Animation: Keyframing | 2 | |
| Editing Animation: Keyframing | 2 | |
| Editing Animation: Graph Editor | 2 | |
| Creating Animation: Motion Paths | 2 | |
| Camera | Camera Types | 16 |
| Camera Attributes | 16 | |
| Camera Settings | 16 | |
| Lighting | Light Types | 7 |
| Shadows | 7 | |
| Materials / Shading | Shading UI | 1 |
| Shading Components | 1 | |
| Material Attributes | 8 | |
| UV Texture Editor | 9 | |
| Modeling | Scene Setup/Layout | 1 |
| 2D NURBS Curve Tools | 3 | |
| Object Cloning | 3 | |
| Polygon Tools | 3, 4 | |
| Modeling Tools | 3, 4 | |
| Polygon Modeling Tools | 3, 4 | |
| Polygon Information | 3, 4 | |
| Polygon Surface Editing | 3, 4 | |
| Smooth Mesh in the Attribute Editor for Polygons | 3, 4 | |
| Polygon Components | 3, 4 | |
| Modeling Aids | 3, 4 | |
| Rendering | Render Settings | 8, 16 |
| Renderer | 7, 10, 12 | |
| Rigging | Skeleton | 2, 5 |
| UI/Object Management | UI Elements | 1 |
| Viewport Display Types | 1 | |
| Object Selection | 1 | |
| Pivots | 1 | |
| Object Organization | 1, 16 |