Maya Key Features

© 2007. Picturehouse Entertainment, Pan’s Labyrinth , image courtesy of CafeFX. New and Enhanced Modeling Tools and Workflows Faster, More Accurate Viewport/Hardware Rendering Maya introduces considerable performance improvements and a number of new features that will make modeling workflows significantly more ecient. The Maya Smooth Mesh workflow, for instance, has been dramatically streamlined: you can now preview a smoothed mesh while editing the mesh cage—with superb performance, particularly on multiprocessor industrial workstations. Other much-requested workflow enhancements include the ability to position objects along a curve, replace objects within a scene, and convert instances to objects.Additionally, a new Slide Edge feature—as well as significant enhancements to Booleans, Bevel, Bridge, Reduce, and other tools—lets you model more eciently. Maya also delivers two new selection management features: X-Ray selection highlighting and the ability to “pick walk” edge loops. Interactive previews are several steps closer to reality now that the Maya hardware rendering engine supports layered textures, multiple UV sets, negative lighting, and object space normal maps. Not only does this improve preview fidelity when using the High Quality renderer in the interactive viewport, it allows a greater range of eects to be rendered to final output using the Maya Hardware renderer. Moreover, accelerated draw and selection performance, together with more ecient updating of UI elements, facilitates level editing and speeds workflows.
Image courtesy of Noumena Digital