In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the popular Maya modeling, animation and rendering software package, Autodesk announced Autodesk Maya 2009 at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, Calif. Maya 2009 includes a host of advancements in modeling, animation, rendering and effects application designed maximize productivity, optimize workflows and provide new creative possibilities. SIGGRAPH attendees can get a first look at the Autodesk booth (#501) this week.
‘We are celebrating the work done with Autodesk Maya over the past 10 years by many artists and creative visionaries in film, television production and games, as well as in industrial design and architecture,’ says Marc Petit, Autodesk’s Media & Entertainment senior vice president. ‘We designed Maya 2009 as a tribute to creative innovation and production efficiency. The new release will allow artists to raise the bar and deliver even more ground-breaking computer graphics work.’
Highlights of Autodesk Maya 2009 include a new Maya Assets toolset and other new tools for managing the complexity and size of scenes, a new Render Proxy feature in mental ray, additional multi-threading work and algorithmic speedups, accelerated modeling workflow and collaborative, iterative projects and pipelines. The software has a new animation layering paradigm that provides animators with increased non-destructive flexibility, as well as an updated Render Pass toolset that offers precise control over render output and optimizes integration with Autodesk Toxik procedural compositing software.
Maya 2009 also offers an innovative Maya nParticles dynamic simulation module and an extensive Maya Muscle feature set. nParticles is part of the Maya Nucleus Unified Simulation Framework, a new approach to creating complex physics simulations that interact directly with each other. Furthermore, to help studios capitalize on the growing popularity of stereoscopic 3-D films, the new version offers a flexible new stereo camera rig, complete with in-viewport stereo viewing.
Autodesk anticipates that Maya 2009 will be available in English in October. The release will be supported on the Windows and Linux operating systems (64-bit and 32-bit versions), as well as Mac OS X for Intel-based Macintosh and PowerPC computers (32-bit version only). The suggested retail price is $1,995 for Maya Complete 2009 (Standalone) and $4,995 for Maya Unlimited 2009 (Standalone). The upgrade price from Maya Complete 2008 to Maya Complete 2009 is $899, and the upgrade from Maya Unlimited 2008 to Maya Unlimited 2009 is $1,249. For a complete list of new features and enhancements in Maya 2009, visit www.autodesk.com/maya.
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