Training Discovery

Learn how to digitally extend a set with After Effects. Lee Lanier shows how to remove a tricky green screen with the KEYLIGHT plugin and a custom luma matte, motion track a new background with appropriate parallax, digitally dress a set with static artwork, fabricate shadows, and relight the footage to create a realistic result.

VFX Techniques introduces common yet critical visual effects techniques that are used in film and television shows on a regular basis. This installment shows how to simulate a large crowd by combining live-action footage of a small group of people, 3D renders, and Adobe Photoshop artwork—transforming an otherwise empty building into a rapt audience. Author Lee Lanier uses After Effects to set up image sequences, apply motion tracking to match the motion of the original camera, and key green-screen footage. Finally, you'll learn how to make all the elements cohesive with color correction and lighting techniques.

A default computing environment for each of your allocated resources is automatically set up for you when your XSEDE account is created. It provides access to the default compilers, directories, and software you will need to use XSEDE resources efficiently. Eventually, you may find that the default environment doesn't meet your specific usage requirements. When that happens, you may customize your environment by configuring various settings and creating shortcuts for accomplishing tasks you perform regularly.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to customize your XSEDE computing environment using UNIX commands and the Modules package.

Note: This course was previously offered on CI-Tutor.

Determine the ROI for learning. Discover how to evaluate whether learning objectives are being met in your organization. In this course, Jeff Toister explores several popular models for determining the effectiveness of a class or training course, and provides a framework for applying these models. This includes creating an evaluation strategy, collecting assessment data, and making recommendations for improvements. The Kirkpatrick Model, the Phillips ROI Methodology, and Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method are discussed in depth, as well as alternative approaches such as predictive analytics. These tools will give you the data to validate your current training strategy or recommend data-driven improvements that are tailored to the way your participants are actually learning.

Check the exercise files for sample evaluation plans, reports, checklists, and worksheets that you can use to evaluate your own employee development program.

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.

Create and share interactive reports and presentations on the fly with Sway, the new Microsoft Office app. Oliver Schinkten provides your first look at Sway. Learn what it is, where to access it, and how to start building your own Sways—presentations, tutorials, newsletters, stories, and more—from content you have stored locally or online. Plus, explore how to use Sway's unique interactive format to collaborate on projects and share them with others.

In this course, author Bill Weinman shows how to architect PostgreSQL databases and integrate them into web applications using PHP. The course covers the basics of creating tables, storing data with data types, and working with expressions, operators, and strings. The course also explores the differences between the PDO and pgsql interfaces and demonstrates managing a database in PHP.

Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) is a globally recognized certification that validates your ability to audit, control, and monitor information systems. In this course, Michael Lester provides a high-level overview of the CISA certification exam. This course kicks off the CISA Cert Prep series, which covers each exam domain in greater detail. Here, Michael introduces you to the exam, provides exam tips and practice questions, and shares what to do after you've taken the test.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is the platform of choice for Windows virtualization. RDS provides secure access to corporate data and applications as well as desktop access from the cloud. It's ideal for remote teams as well as companies that don't need computers on site. This course includes guidance for manually deploying RDS in Azure, the Microsoft cloud computing solution. Instructor Sharon Bennett reviews the deployment options—including session-based and virtual desktop deployments—and then reviews the basics of an RDS template deployment. She shows how to configure an environment complete with servers, users, and security. Finally, discover how to test your solution by creating client session collections to run remote apps or desktops.

Planning projects, assigning tasks, tracking progress, and releasing results can all be managed in Jira, the popular and collaborative software for development teams. In this course, Robert Anthony shares his expertise as he guides you through the fundamentals of using Jira. Robert shows you how to create tickets, locate issues assigned to you and others, use advanced search, customize dashboards, run reports, and set up workflow boards to organize work. In addition, he facilitates several challenges and solutions so you can practice what you learn as you follow along.

What do great companies have in common? Great customer service. Discover how to chart your team on a course that focuses on the customer, with three no-nonsense tips. Jeff Toister discusses how to set a direction, create mile markers, and course correct when things get off track.

Learn how to quit your job—the right way. Although it can be nerve-wracking to hand in your notice, it's important to leave on the best possible terms to keep your reputation and relationships intact. In this short training course, Aimee Bateman shows you how to prepare to resign, how to write a resignation letter, and how to conduct yourself during your last few weeks. She also reviews the dos and don'ts of quitting, and explains what happens during the exit interview. With these tips, you will be able to gracefully leave your current job and embark on the next stage of your career.

Veteran After Effects user Chris Meyer shares real-world production and workflow advice as he demonstrates the newest features in Adobe After Effects CC. Chris reviews the streamlined connection to MAXON CINEMA 4D and the Refine Edge tool for creating mattes around hair and other partially transparent areas, and reveals how to get more accurate tracks and stabilizations with Reverse Stabilization and ground planes. He also reviews the upgraded Warp Stabilizer and 3D Camera Tracker and important new usability features such as layer snapping.

The September 2013 update brought the new Rigid Mask Tracker, as well as additional ways to scale up footage cleanly, while the highlight of the December 2013 update was the ability to convert parametric shape layers to Bézier paths, and Bézier paths into shape layers. The NAB 2014 update shows off important new integration with Adobe Premiere Pro and Typekit, as well major updates to effects. Smaller yet still important new and enhanced features in each release are also touched on throughout. As always, Chris doesn't just show you where these new features are, but how to apply them to your own projects, along with preferred working practices and potential gotchas.

Note: This course was created and produced by Chris and Trish Meyer. We are honored to host this content in our library.

SQL (Structured Query Language) is a common tool for retrieving data from relational databases such as SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. This course provides an introduction to this core programming language. Learn how to request data from a server, limit and sort the responses, aggregate data from multiple tables with joins, and edit and delete data. Instructor Scott Simpson also shows how to perform simple math operations and transform data into different formats.

The handmade aesthetic isn't limited to little boutiques; even large businesses (including Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Whole Foods) understand when it's best to play the "handmade" card. Kick back in the LogoLounge and learn how imperfection, texture, and personality can help add a sense of authenticity to your client's brand. Design expert Bill Gardner shows how to decide when a human touch is appropriate, incorporate free-form and line-drawing illustration techniques, use color and texture to make surfaces seem more tactile, and use typography to express specific ideas. The good news? You don't have to relinquish your favorite digital tools. Bill shows how to create this "old world" look using "new world" shortcuts.

Successful companies value diversity and inclusion. Diverse workplaces increase innovation, retention, and market share. But what does an inclusive work environment look like? And what does it mean to manage diversity? Using real case studies and examples, HR consultant Catherine Mattice helps you create a strategic plan to support diversity and inclusion in your workplace and manage a diverse workforce.

She outlines a process for creating a strategic plan and benchmarks for success. To bring your plan to life, she provides tips for implementing a diversity policy, recruiting and hiring, and asking diversity-related questions during interviews. (Compliance issues are also discussed along the way.) Catherine also explains how to integrate diversity within the performance management processes, including measuring employees on their ability to work well with others and measuring managers on their ability to drive and implement diversity initiatives.

Last, she covers "people practices," such as improving communication through open-door policies and ensuring work-life balance accommodates employees' lives and family responsibilities. When you're faced with organizational challenges, such as resistance to change, prejudice, or fear, Catherine provides tools to address them head-on.

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.

Discover how to successfully manage multiple generations in the workplace with Christina Schlachter, PhD. Learn about each generation present in today's workforce, from Baby Boomers to Millennials, and figure out what each group wants and needs, and how they like to be managed, developed, and promoted.

Animation Tools is a focused course that covers the basics of animating in Autodesk Maya, including setting keyframes, working with animation editors, and automating animation with constraints and simple rigs. Author George Maestri also shows how to create motion trails and ghost objects and construct animation cycles, an alternative way to loop your animation with the Graph Editor and Curves.

In a world where nearly everyone uses data to inform their business methodologies, an emerging consensus is that more emphasis needs to be placed on validating data; verifying that data-driven conclusions are accurate; and minimizing the risk that your conclusions are incorrect. Although most researchers know what meta-analysis is, few understand how to calculate an effect size from popular metrics such as risk ratios, or how the distinction between fixed and random effects can lead the meta-analyst astray. This advanced-level course for data science and statistics practitioners and researchers covers raw mean differences—specifically for experimental and comparison groups—and how to convert useful outcome measures such as relative risk and odds ratios to commensurate measures of effect size. Plus, learn about how confidence intervals are created for binary outcome measures.

Learn to create content that is expandable with a single click. This technique is very popular for providing more on-demand information, such as FAQs, biographies, or additional product information. In this course, Chris Converse shows how to create the HTML, CSS, and jQuery code needed for an expandable content panel that hides and shows content at the user's request. Learn how to inject additional markup, style the different panel elements, set trigger states, and animate the panel to reveal the hidden content.

Lauren Bacon ran a successful web design and development firm for twelve years. Now she is working as a business coach, helping entrepreneurs get their own businesses up and running. In this course, she shares her insights on breaking into the industry: acquiring the right skills, thinking beyond the digital toolset, and specializing in areas that will make your firm in demand. Lauren also answers questions about navigating career transitions, from employee to manager, to freelancer (and maybe even back again), and what the future will look like for new web designers.

From humble beginnings in a small Texas town eight decades ago comes legendary typographer, logotype designer, author, and teacher Doyald Young. As elegant as his script fonts and as wise as his set of Oxford English dictionaries, Young set the standard for his craft. Friend and designer Stefan Bucher describes Young as "someone who could easily have done what he does in the Renaissance, and could easily do it 300 years from now." In this installment of Creative Inspirations, we enjoy a window into the life of this accomplished artisan as he works with joyous focus in his favorite spot, his drawing table. We follow Young to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where he shares his talents with tomorrow's designers. He recalls the hundreds of iterations he went through in creating the logo for Prudential, and he puts pencil to tissue creating the pages for his book about script lettering, Learning Curves. Young's story is compelling, captivating, and most of all, inspiring. lynda.com is honored to host this tribute to his work.

Join us in Bonus Features at a tribute event held at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where Doyald's friends and colleagues speak about their relationship with the gifted designer and Lynda introduces a scholarship fund set up specifically in his memory.

Protect your network from cyber attacks. Malcolm Shore shows how to use the latest tools to discourage and combat hackers, phishers, and snoops attempting to infiltrate your Windows and Linux systems. Learn what forms cyber attacks can take, and the two most common types of protection you can build into your system: antivirus protection and firewalls. Then learn how to scan your network for suspicious files, detect intruders with Netcat, and identify vulnerabilities at the host level with Nessus scans. Malcolm also shows how to avoid common security mistakes and monitor packet-level activity on your network.