Toronto-based software tech company Alias unveiled the latest version of its award-winning Maya software package today. This new offering was created to meet the demands of the most challenging next-generation productions. Maya 6.5 is a performance-driven release optimized to meet the needs of games, film, broadcast and digital publishing professionals seeking dramatic performance enhancements while working with massive datasets.
Alias has re-architected the software to increase performance across the package, preparing Maya to provide the power and reliability to work with the heaviest models, scenes and animation data. Customers on the Maya Platinum Membership Program can download the software today at www.alias.com/maya/support. Maya 6.5 will begin shipping worldwide in February 2005.
Users can take advantage of new scene segmentation in this new version.These enhanced tools give artists more control over scene load times, project collaboration and overall data-handling performance. Scene segmentation enhancements include new file referencing options such as proxies, reference locking and the ability to save changes back to a reference, as well as enhancements to existing file referencing features. In addition, the range of large CAD datasets that can be imported into Maya 6.5 has been expanded through the addition of the new STEP translator that allows efficient importing of files from most major CAD packages.
Along with providing performance enhancements across the software, Alias has also addressed other highly requested features from the global Maya customer base. Areas of improvement include, Maya Cloth, Maya Hair, Maya Fur, Maya Fluid Effects, Maya Embedded Language (MEL), API, Plug-ins, Devkit and the embedded web browser.
"This latest version of Maya proves the dedication of Alias to meet the needs of the game development community," notes Stephen White, programming director of Naughty Dog, the game developing house behind such hits as Crash Beandicoot and Jak & Dexter titles. "Maya continues to evolve as a critical tool in our game development process and this version addresses many important current needs as well as features critical to the future of game development."
For full Maya 6.5 details, visit www.alias.com.
