Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 12, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
In Los Angeles, Autodesk is celebrating the software’s tenth anniversary with Maya 2009. Maya 2009 includes a wide range of improvements for modeling, animation, rendering, and effects creation.
“We want to celebrate the work realized with Autodesk Maya over the past ten years by numerous artists and creative visionaries in film and television productions, video games, product design, and architecture,” said Marc Petit, senior vice president of Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “We developed Maya 2009 to recognize creative innovation and increase production efficiency. With the new version, artists can raise the bar even higher and create still more breathtaking computer graphics.”
Mike Romey, senior technical director at Zoic Studios, was one of the Maya 2009 beta testers. “With the new version, Maya has a bright future,” Romey said. “Autodesk Maya 2009 will fundamentally change how artists view dynamics, rendering, compositing, and pipelines. The robust mental ray multi-render workflow makes production much more effective. The new workflow optimizes render times with multiple render layers while improving work quality. nParticles are based on the unified dynamics engine introduced with nCloth, enabling excellent integration of complex effects.”
Maya 2009 is expected to become available in English in October 2008. The software supports 64- and 32-bit Windows and Linux operating systems, as well as Mac OS X on Intel-based Macintosh and PowerPC computers (32-bit only).
Autodesk’s suggested retail price is €2,225 for Maya Complete 2009 standalone and €5,575 for Maya Unlimited 2009 standalone. Upgrading from Maya Complete 2008 to Maya Complete 2009 costs €1,000; upgrading from Maya Unlimited 2008 to Maya Unlimited 2009 costs €2,000.
Managing High Complexity
Maya 2009 provides new tools for better managing the constantly increasing complexity and size of scenes. These include the new Maya Assets toolset, which lets users combine an entire set of nodes in a single container and expose a data view tailored to an artist’s specific work. The release offers a new render-proxy function in mental ray and further acceleration of multithreaded processing and algorithms, making interactive painting, simulation, and rendering considerably faster even in the most demanding scenes.
Faster Modeling Workflow
Powerful selection features, efficient modeling workflows, and highly precise UV unfolding and layout capabilities give Maya 2009 artists unprecedented control over polygon modeling and UV texturing.
Iterative Collaborative Projects and Pipelines
With tighter deadlines and smaller budgets becoming more common, projects and development pipelines must make optimal use of available resources. Maya 2009 supports collaborative, iterative workflows and promotes data reuse. The software introduces a new animation-layering paradigm that gives animators greater nondestructive flexibility, along with an updated render-pass toolset. This enables precise control over render output and includes integration with Autodesk Toxik procedural compositing software.
New Creative Tools
Maya 2009 offers the Maya nParticles dynamic particle system and a comprehensive Maya Muscle feature set. nParticles is part of the Maya Nucleus Unified Simulation Framework. This groundbreaking approach enables the creation of complex physical simulations that can interact directly with one another. Maya 2009 also provides a flexible new stereo-camera rig complete with stereo viewing through the viewport, helping studios take advantage of the growing popularity of stereoscopic 3D films.
Related Links:
- Autodesk Maya 2009