Maya 8.0

Following Autodesk’s buyout of Alias, Maya 8.0 is the first release to come under its ownership. While the company assured users that it would continue development of the program, which is arguably the pinnacle of 3D software for effects and character animation, there has been speculation whether this would hold out in practice.

Autodesk also develops 3ds Max, which is in direct competition with Maya, so why would a company produce two different products that do basically the same thing? Autodesk’s answer is that they serve different markets, with Maya fitting snugly in with its high-end film tools.

As a result, much of the focus of this release is concentrated on improving workflow between Maya and Autodesk’s other products – notably Toxic, its collaborative compositing solution. As for new features, Maya 8.0 doesn’t have an excess of them. There are some important improvements for graphics pros, such as 64-bit support on Windows and Linux platforms, although Mac users don’t yet benefit from this, and Maya 8.0 is not a Universal Binary, so it won’t run natively on the new Intel-based Mac Pro machines at the moment. This is a shame, but hopefully there will be an update available soon.

Maya’s 64-bit support means you can work with much larger and more complex scenes, because 64- bit systems are able to access more memory than 32-bit equivalents. More RAM equals more complexity, which in turn equals richer and more impressive content.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, there are some useful new features, though they don’t exactly make you want to rush out and upgrade. The first of these is the new Bridge tool in the polygon modelling section. By selecting unconnected edges on a model you can choose to join them with a bridge of polygons and keep control over the shape and resolution of the connecting span. You can taper and twist the bridge to get some interesting shapes and make a smooth transition from one section to the other.

The modelling tools have also been reorganised, as have many other commands. There is now a separate Polygon and Surfaces popup menu set, which makes sense because the previous Modelling set was overflowing. Usefully, you can also create your own custom menus.

Other notable features include Geometry caching, which enables complex surface deformations to be sped up when they are replayed, and blended with other cached deformations using Trax.