Autodesk kicked off SIGGRAPH 2006 in a big way, announcing the latest versions of both 3ds Max and Maya. This is the first time both computer animation software packages have been demonstrated under one roof at the annual computer graphics conference and expo, which is being held through Aug. 3 in Boston, Mass. Since Autodesk’s acquisition of Alias, Max and Maya are now being developed with a focus on interoperability between the two products via the FBX file format.
3ds Max 9 supports 64-bit technologies for artists working in next-generation games development, design visualizations, and film and television visual effects production. The company says rendering has also been greatly improved with the mental ray 3.5 rendering core. Other key features include a layered blending system that can be added to custom rigs and controllers; optimizations in wireframe and edge display; XAF files that can be saved and loaded onto bipeds for easy transfer of information to and from custom rigs; improved file referencing and tracking of work-in-progress assets; Enhanced hair and cloth, including the ability to style hair in the viewport; and Point cache 2, which allows artists to bake mesh deformations into a file for faster rendering.
“With Autodesk 3ds Max 9, we’ve focused on addressing the challenges our customers face when working with larger amounts of complex data, as well as scaling to bigger production teams,” says Marc Petit, Autodesk’s media & entertainment VP. “Digital artists using 3ds Max 9 will gain improvements in core performance, productivity and pipeline efficiency.”
Maya 8 offers a combination of 64-bit support, multithreading and algorithmic optimizations that enable artists to load massive datasets and interact with them more efficiently. Key areas such as skinning, draw tessellation and subdivided polygon proxy meshes have been multi-threaded to scale with the number of processors or cores available, accelerating formerly time-consuming tasks.
Other enhancements in Maya 8 include the ability to override viewports with a user-defined renderer such as a game engine; an optimized mental ray 3.5 core for better rendering performance and memory usage; Polygon Bridge and Transfer Polygon Attributes; support for high dynamic range (HDR) and floating-point images; support for interactive viewing of native and custom mental ray shaders and better integration with other Autodesk products including 3Ds Max and Toxik. A complete list of new features can be found at www.autodesk.com/maya.
Autodesk expects to have 3ds Max 9 available in English in October for the suggested retail price of $3,495. The English version of Maya 8 should be available this month fro around $1,999 for Maya Complete (standalone) and $6,999 for Maya Unlimited (standalone). The 64-bit version of Maya 8 will be supported on Windows and Linux, while the 32-bit version will be supported on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Inaddition to Max and Maya, Autodesk’s media and entertainment 3D product portfolio includes the VIZ 2007 animation, modeling and rendering software, and Autodesk MotionBuilder 7.5 character animation software. All products are being showcased at the Autodesk booth (#1706) at SIGGRAPH.
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