Thread: Autodesk Maya 2009

The giant that is Autodesk released a new set of tools for digital media artists this year. After the launch of new versions of Flame, Flint, and Smoke, the 3D line was asking for a serious upgrade-and Autodesk has answered the call with an overhaul for Maya, the most serious application in the CG/VFX world. Maya was first created
by the geniuses at Alias, and came to be closest to its present f6rm in 1998. Since then, it has regularly floored artists and audiences alike with its innovative set
of tools. Consequently, the. theme of 10 years is visible everywhere'and works as the punchline for this version.

However Maya 2009 is more than just a refresh, and not only builds on its older laurels but also adds some new features to the mix. The interface elements are very much the same as before and there's no cause for concern since they behave just as you'd expect. Let's jump in and check out what's new.

Modeling

For modelers, a brilliant feature that makes its appearance is the Multi Select Mode. In this mode, any set of faces, edges, and vertices can be selected. Combined with the X-Ray view mode, it becomes a formidable tool in a modeler's kit. Further ahead we get the Soft-Selection tool that allows us to use the concept of selection gradients. This basically means that if you select a vertex in an object, a certain number of vertices around it will also get selected. The falloff region of the Soft-Selection tool is editable and the viewport provides a brilliant visualization of the falloff region when any components are selected.

Another new feature is the Camera¬based Selection Mode which allows artists to select only those components that are visible through a certain camera. Additionally the Moveable Marquee tool allows the selection marquee to be moved around if the [Alt] key is held down while creating the selection. Artists might be familiar with the concept of edge loops, but Maya 2009 goes even further and adds options for making vertex and face loops that allow for faster selection and modification of the individual components of an object.

Vertices can be merged with the Merge Vertex tool. With this, artists can now simply drag vertices on top of one another to merge them. Earlier, this required accessing a menu item. The Smooth UV tool from Max also makes its appearance here, basically allowing UVs to be untangled with a smoothing brush and then moved around interactively.


Animation

In this release Maya integrates a few features from its sister product MotionBuilder and adds support for basic Animation Layering. This allows animators to build their animations in parts and then put them together as a whole. The new muscle system also has its roots in MotionBuilder and offers control for everything from collisions to jiggles as well as effects such as force field systems.

Rendering

Stereo cameras setups are simplified in version 2009 and users are now able to use stereoscopic rendering almost out of the box. Using a stereo camera setup adds two cameras to the scene as well as a third center camera whose properties are linked to the left and right cameras. That means if you adjust the near or far plane of the center camera, it controls the near and far plane of both the stereo cameras; somewhat like a ganged follow-focus on high-end stereo camera rigs.

Earlier, such solutions had to be developed and tweaked by hand, which required a certain amount of pre-production work. Even the viewports have been upgraded to better support this new feature and adds options such as Stereo View to the Panels menu of each viewport. When a camera is assigned to a viewport, a new Stereo menu pops in allows artists to select the different kinds of stereo previews available to them. However it has to be noted that this feature requires a graphics card capable of framebuffering.



To add to the delight of compositors, rendering in layers and passes has now been simplified beyond belief. There is a new Render layers palette that allows artists to simply select objects that they want included in a render layer. Thus, complex render setups that allow different objects in a scene to be placed in different render sequences can be created. The theme of simplification is carried forward in the Render menu item, where the last menu option now allows artists to render the currently selected render layer with any of the rendering systems supported by Maya.

Performance

There are lots of back-end updates that have improved workflow in the new version of Maya, including .improved display performance of geometry due to additional multithreading. Texturing for a large number of objects is way faster, and there is better handling of textured display both for a large single object with multiple UV sets and lit polygons with a single UV set. Specialized windows such as the HyperGraph have been speeded up, and node creation is a lot faster when the window opens. Opening the HyperGraph window in the presence of a container with a large number of nodes is much faster.

For animators, a lot of performance updates have happened as well. For example, while using proxy geometry, SWitching to hi-poly geometry is faster when you replace a low-resolution model with a high-resolution model. Additionally essential animation and rigging tools such as the lattice deformer, blend shapes and cluster deformers are now multithreaded and offer even better performance with high¬poly meshes.

The wire deformer solver is said to be multithreaded and will surely make life easier for Dynamics artists who use multiple nCloth objects. The fluid emitter is optimized, and when combined with the new multithreaded fluids surface emitter, offers a high level of control over fluid dynamics.

Even modelers and texturers get performance upgrades with better Polygon UV smoothing, which is also multithreaded to improve performance on systems with four or more cores. Editing operations such as sculpting, soft modification and Soft Select are now faster when using last year's Smooth Mesh Preview mode.

Conclusion

All in all, the software has grown to become a behemoth in the 30/ VFX world, and even after three management changes and numerous ups and downs in the industry, it still garners respect from all quarters. The update this year is a significant one and offers a lot of value even to setups that upgraded last year.