Maya (software)

From Free net encyclopedia

Maya is a high-end 3D computer graphics and 3D modelling software package by Alias but now owned by Autodesk Media & Entertainment used in the film and TV industry, as well as for computer and video games. Autodesk Media & Entertainment acquired the software in October 2005 upon purchasing Alias Systems Corporation.

1 Overview
2 Select features
3 Version release history
4 Pre-release history
5 External links

[edit]

Overview

Maya, used in most films today, is named for the Sanskrit word meaning "Illusion" and is a popular, proprietary integrated 3D software suite, evolved from Alias PowerAnimator. Maya comes in two main versions, Maya Complete (the less powerful package) and Maya Unlimited. Maya Unlimited is now priced similarly to other proprietary 3D programs, but used to be considerably more expensive. Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE) is available for non-commercial use, and is available at no cost. Images rendered with Maya PLE are watermarked.

Maya was developed by Alias and is released for the Microsoft Windows, Linux, IRIX, and Mac OS X operating systems. The latest version of Maya, version 7.0, was released in 2005. 6.5 was the last version that supported IRIX, due to the platform's declining popularity in recent years. When Autodesk acquired Alias in October 2005, they agreed to continue the product line.

The most important feature of Maya is its openness to third-party software, which can strip Maya completely of its standard appearance and, using only the Maya kernel, can transform it into a highly customized version of the software. Apart from its intrinsic power and flexibility, this feature in itself made Maya appealing to large studios which tend to write quite a lot of custom code for their productions using the provided software development kit.

Maya also features a powerful, interpreted, cross-platform scripting language called Maya Embedded Language (MEL), which is similar to Tcl. It is not only provided as a scripting language, but as means to customize Maya's core functionality (much of Maya's environment and tools are written in the language). Additionally, user interactions are implemented and recorded as MEL scripting code which users can view and drag onto a toolbar to create new 'macro' tools instantly. This provides animators with the power to add functionality to Maya without experience in C or C++ programming and compilers, though that option is provided with the software development kit.

Project files, including all geometry and animation data, are stored as sequences of MEL operations which can be optionally saved as a 'human readable' file (.ma, for Maya ASCII), editable in any text editor outside of the Maya environment and allows for a tremendous level of flexibility when working with external tools. It can also be edited to allow the file to be opened on previous versions of the software.

[edit]

Select features

Powerful tools to build objects using polygonal, nurbs, or subdivision modeling and, in the current version, tools to freely convert objects between the geometry formats.
Simulation of particle effects (effective for smoke, water droplets etc.)
A realistic fluid simulator (effective for smoke, fire, clouds and explosions, added in Maya 4.5)
Inverse kinematics (to realistically simulate human limb movement, for example)
Cloth simulation (to automatically simulate clothing and fabrics moving realistically over an animated character, for example)
PaintEffects integrates 2D painting tools into a 3D rendering environment. Libraries include numerous trees, grasses, and plants which can be painted to 'grow' off the surface of an object. (Also effective for volumetric effects.)
Fur (good for simulating fur and short hair).
Hair, a simulator for realistic-looking human hair implemented using curves and PaintEffects.
Physical effects (simulating colliding objects, object deforming under pressure etc).
Matching CG to live footage via Maya Live
Native mental ray renderer.
Fully reconfigurable user interface (dragging snippets of script code onto a shelf creates a new icon that executes that code)
Hotbox provides instant access to the majority of features in Maya via a large menu that surrounds the mouse pointer at any time when a user holds down the space bar.

[edit]

Version release history

7.0: August 2005 [1]
6.5: January 2005 [2]
6.0: May 2004 [3]
5.0: May 2003 [4]
4.5: July 2002 [5]
4.0: June 2001 [6]
3.0: February 2000 [7]
2.5: November 1999 [8]
2.0: June 1999 [9]
1.5: October 1998
1.0: February 1998

[edit]

Pre-release history

Maya is the culmination of three 3D software lines: Wavefront's The Advanced Visualizer (in California), Thomson Digital Image (TDI) Explore (in France) and Alias' Power Animator (in Canada). In 1993 Wavefront purchased TDI, and in 1995 Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI) purchased both Alias and Wavefront (due to pressure from Microsoft's purchase of Softimage earlier that year) and combined them into one working company, producing a single package from their collective source code. Previous to the merger TDI Explore was the most popular 3D application used in Europe (used in films such as "City of Lost Children"), Wavefront TAV was the most popular Scientific Visualization package used by Scientists and Researchers (Arnold Schwarzenegger's Eraser used TAV for the "X-Ray Vision" scene), and Power Animator was used in the film industry for movies like The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. When SGI advertised the merger, they used the words "Watch the sparks fly" to capture the juxtaposition of the event and the humor of the marriage, considering the rivalry and nationalism between Alias and Wavefront. The combined company was referred to as Alias|Wavefront. Though it was much awaited, it took Alias/Wavefront two more years after the merger to release Maya.

Both Alias and Wavefront were working on their next generation of software at the time of the merger. Alias had taken a Macintosh product, "Alias Sketch!", moved it to the SGI platform and added many features to it. The code name for this project was "Maya". The first scene ever animated with Maya was the cave-mouth from Disney's "Aladdin".

After much discussion it was decided to adopt Alias' "Maya" architecture, and merge Wavefront's code with it.

In the early days of development, Maya used TCL as the scripting language. After the merger, there was debate amongst those who supported TCL, Perl and Sophia. Sophia was much faster than the others and won out. However, once error checking was added, it ended up being equally slow.

Upon its release in 1998, Alias|Wavefront discontinued all previous animation-based software lines including Alias Power Animator, encouraging consumers to upgrade to Maya.

[edit]