Company: Autodesk
Website: www.autodesk.com

Price (MSRP):
Complete $1999.99 (upgrade $899)
Unlimited $6999.99 (upgrade $1249)
Alternatives: 3D Studio Max, Lightwave 3D

Maya’s world just keeps rockin’. Out of the blue last year comes word that Alias was bought out by giant competitor Autodesk. Now just a short time later we have the very first version of Autodesk Maya on our desk. Exciting, and a bit unexpected.

Unexpected, because the first I heard about it was actually at Autodesk’s Siggraph booth about an hour before the show floor opened on the first day. Apparently they had announced it on the web an hour earlier and assumed everyone knew it by 9:15 am. Well I wasn’t the only one not up to speed, since their own demo artists were still playing catch up with the feature lists their Maya talk was still very V7 centric! As I said, this has all happening really fast, which is credit to Autodesk’s capabilities.

Autodesk has not owned Maya long enough for this release to have much of their imprint on it, so a lot of what we see in v8 is probably in large part Alias. Still, maybe we see a few things that will point to the future of Autodesk Maya? Maybe.

The new Maya reps from Autodesk sat down with me and wanted to make it clear that Autodesk has a strong commitment to the Maya brand and product. That there were absolutely no plans to discontinue Maya, or roll it into any Maya/Max hybrid. It would continue to have its same development pipeline as before. Their main thrust right now is to make Maya and Maya users happy in their new home.

To this end Siggraph also saw their rollout of “AREA” website, a community based portal for supporting their creative user base. AREA will largely take its lead from what was once the community site at Alias, with a similar look and purpose. Visit it at: http://area.autodesk.com

As for Maya, the initial thrust is to make sure that it plays well with the other applications in the graphics production line of software. Autodesk has put some effort into beefing up FBX transfer capabilities between Max and Maya. This is something they can do well because Autodesk bought Alias, not just Maya. In doing so they got MotionBuilder and the FBX technology, something Alias had just acquired the year before when it swallowed up Kaydara. But I digress.

Whats New?

There is a good amount of new to V8.
But are there many whiz bang “must buy this product” features this time out? You be the judge. The V8 brochure lists these as the standout items (with our editorial comments):

• 64-bit version for Windows and Linux (no Mac?)
• They claim widespread optimizations (can I use my old box?)
• Model and texture more easily (since we redid the menu sets?)
• Streamline your workflow (with their other products in your pipeline?)
• Geometry Catching (rather cool!)
• Viewport uses custom renderer (great for game devs)
• Upgraded to mental ray 3.5 (we hear good on this)

So that is pretty much what is on the brochure. As I said, it is not a list to know your socks off. But when you add up the FULL list of improvements and enhancements this is really a nice upgrade. Let’s look at a longer list and then afterwards take it out for a spin.

NOTE: The following list is not complete, just most notable and/or items I have made my way through thus far:

New Interface items:

• New interactive interface for adding primitive shapes to a scene
• Hot key transfer between Graph Editor, Dope Sheet and the Trax Editor. All in the same window space.
• Reorganization of the menus (again!)
• New interface for the new Transfer Maps tools (formerly Surface Sampler).
• Graph Editor also now has a bookmarking system to allow pre-defined selection sets. This works on either an object level or a curves level.
• Many ramp graphs found in the attributes window can now be clicked on to open an enlarged and easy to see version. This should make editing a far less squinty-eyed affair.
• A host of new render layer improvements, some of which were from V7 and some V8, Neither I nor most of the folks from the Maya booth are sure which is from which. But they include things like being able to drop a shader onto a render layer and it will be applied to all objects on that layer in a single action.
• Addition of the Paint Selection Tool to the toolstrip along the left.

New to Rendering:

• Render Previews: You can actually bring in the power of external render engines to be able to preview them real time as you work in the viewport. This is of course ideal for game development.
• Mental ray shaders now preview properly, no more yuchy lime green
• Subsurface scatter controls added to the mental ray tab in the Attribute window. This effect is actually added to the standard Maya shaders, no need for mr shaders.
• In the Render Global Settings window we have a few new rendering niceties added. For example the IMAGE FILE OUTPUT > File Name Prefix allows RMB and insertion of a range of customized labeling.
• While Maya could render to AVI format before, it can now add compression to the outgoing file. While a nice feature to have, it isn’t something you would want to use much if you could help it (.avi is a Windows only feature).
• On a Mac the same compression option is now available using QuickTime.
• You can now paint a new shader’s attributes onto geometry with a brush tool by RMB on the shader selection and choosing the Paint Assign Shader option.

New in Modeling:

• Separate interfaces for Polygons and Nurbs Surfaces
• Polies now have tool descriptions at the top of the Tool Attribute window.
• Polygon’s Split Polygon Tool now allows you to cut across more than one Polygon at a time, so you can use it as a knife across many faces. Very cool and very overdue!
• The Add Divisions tool preferences window has now added the ability to subdivide the selected faces in U or V independently.

New to Animation:

• Geometry Caching for Nurbs, polygons and sub-divs

Test Driving Maya 8

So the full list is pretty nice,, but what does it drive like? As I have said in other articles, Maya has always suffered more growing pains than most “desktop” applications. Capabilities were always high, but system integration was always a bit daunting, like installation woes, problematic Bonus Tools issues, etc. These complaints are passing with each version feeling more polished. That means more stable, more refined, and yes, more accessible to the 3D developer with more modest resources, like the independent artist and small shops.

When such a specialized tool becomes easier to use, more people can find a comfort zone in its utilization. Maya’s steep learning curve has also a problem and caused many to give up. I know a number of major ad agencies in NYC that own seats but can’t find competent operators. The fault for this silliness is shared by many and grist for another article.

One of the first examples we see of this new streamlining initiative is in V8’s new method of adding primitives to a scene. The process is now interactive and a joy to use. It lets the user choose where in the scene the object should be placed and what its scaling should be. This can be done interactively or presets can be used. This, plus the little world orientation screen gizmo added in V7 and other features help a lot. Also of note is the helpful addition of a new Poly Helix shape to the primitives. Helpful.

While the general application felt more stable, and I am sure there are many things that are running faster, my personal screen speed plummeted using my admittedly older workstation card. The viewport was markedly slower than previous versions, and opening Hypergraph and other MEL generated windowing finally became far too sluggish.

I broke down and bought a newer/faster card (not even cutting edge) and all needed speed returned. I note this as there are many folks out there that are still using slightly older boxes–expect mixed performance results.

The next thing that hits you is the new and improved re-arrangement of the menu items. Over the years Maya has been notorious for doing this at every revision, much to its users displeasure as it means relearning a lot of things. (Once you do a call comes to work for a shop using the previous version which you can no longer remember.)

This reshuffling is one I happen to like very much. Its main purpose is to get the modeling controls better in line, something that has been needed for a while. V8 now puts all 8 poly menus and their tools into their own POLYGON interface. All of those opened menus are part of the Polygon interface. This is quite an assortment! This tool set of palettes could take up an an entire second monitor, and we haven’t even looked at sub menus or the Bonus Tools.

The other side of the modeling coin is housed under the new SURFACES interface. While not as formidable in bulk, the interface has only 4 menus, but controls Curves, Nurbs and Sub-Divs. For myself, having come from working with dedicated modeling applications, this interface restructuring goes a long way toward solving some of the problems I had with older versions.

Speaking of modeling, one of my favorite new features is, quite admittedly, a little one. The Split Polygon Tool has always been a staple, but now you can use it to cut along multiple polies at a time for much-much more powerful application. This newfound flexibility will minimize the need to switch to other tools as often.

Other interesting, if less than stellar new items include a nifty “Turntable” animation effect that creates an instant 360 animation. The manual claims it a boon for modelers wishing to see all sides of their work. In truth, its a boon to every college CG major who will now think themselves an animator. (Come now, you know who you are! Do this with a new primitive Poly Helix,just for kicks.)

For more substantial new animation features, take a look at the Geometry Catching which allows the catching of animated effects applied to models deformations, etc. This catched anim data plays back many times faster than would otherwise. The heavier your scene load, the more valuable this feature is.

Lingering Problems:

Even with all the additions and fixes, there remain some old friends from our bug/complaint list.

Here are a few:

• Maya has not shipped with a real printed manual for a very long time.
  Instead it has had Quick Starts and other items, but no real manual, that has been left to online docs. V8 dropped that last vestige and only ships with digital support docs. The online documentation gets better every revision, but it still has glaring problems. Simple but important things like the fact that the actual tool being discussed in a section should have the name of the tool bolded, at least the first time it is used. This is standard practice for all good technical publishing. This is especially important because far too many of the tool names do not really sound like tools. So if it is not in bold it becomes much harder to follow along.
• More documentation woes–far too many of the entries have no image. In this business a picture can be worth more than any number of words. Entries that feebly try to explain something that could be clear with a simple screen grab and a pointy arrow simply don’t get a passing grade in 2006.
• It all seems better, but still too many special installation and extension parameters and environmental settings and…Autodesk appears to see the benefit in streamlining this and making Maya more small shop friendly. I applaud their continued efforts in this direction.
• Still being dead in the water when doing a test rendering… This is getting old.

Conclusion

Is V8 the upgrade you want? If you want that super cool new effect–you know, the one that will be tired and overused in 18 months–then no, v8 probably isn’t your cup of tea. If you work in Maya day to day and need to get things done, then you will appreciate much of what I have seen in it thus far.

The second group of folks that may want to take a look at V8 is the small shop, ad agency or independent who found Maya daunting at one time. It still is, but its raw power is getting tamed and it continues to get friendlier.