Maya 7 continues Alias’ tradition of 3D innovation at Siggraph

Maya 7 software builds upon the architecture and performance enhancements in Maya 6.5 to deliver a feature-packed release.
On show at Siggraph booth 1312, Maya 7 offers new and improved tools for fast, realistic character animation, streamlined modelling and texturing, groundbreaking visual effects, and increased productivity. The powerful new product features and enhanced benefits of Maya Platinum Membership enable extended hotline access along with improved response times. 3D professionals working in film, games, broadcast, digital publishing and design visualisation are set to achieve more with the latest edition of this award-winning software.
One customer-driven feature is a complete re-architecture of the Maya render layers functionality, which means that multiple versions of objects, including materials, lights and cameras, as well as post processes such as Maya Fur and Maya Paint Effects, can now be managed in a single scene file.
“We have been an Alias customer for the past 13 years and in our opinion, Maya 7 is the biggest release we have ever seen”, said Jonathan Brosseau, Chief Technology officer for Alpha Vision. “In the architectural visualisation field, the 3D scenes tend to be very large and cumbersome, and we were truly blown away by the power and flexibility of the new Maya 7 render layer systems. Not only can we set specific attributes per layers on objects, shaders and lights, but we can also choose which renderer is required by a specific layer, all this within the same Maya scene. This makes it more convenient for us to use the power and continued integration of mental ray for Maya. Maya 7 is truly in another league.”
Render layers can be processed with any renderer integrated in Maya, including the latest mental ray for Maya technology.
Maya 7 also boasts new functionality that streamlines the workflow between Maya and Photoshop, in addition to Adobe Illustrator, Alias MotionBuilder, and popular CAD applications.
Scheduled for release in August 2005, Maya Complete 7 and Maya Unlimited are both available on the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms.
Alias, www.alias.com.
(SP)