Alias Maya 7

Maya 7

This page will give you an idea of the key features of Maya 7 and the system requirements of Maya 7.

Take a look around.

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New and enhanced Character Animation Tools

Integrated Alias MotionBuilder technology, and enhancements to deformers and skinning tools make animating characters faster, easier and more accurate.

• The industry's leading full-body IK solver makes rigging and posing characters faster and easier, and enables the natural articulation of biped and quadruped models.
• Deformations are now more flexible.
• Collaborative, parallel workflows are supported through the ability to iteratively substitute geometry while skinning, deformation, and key framing are in progress, and to propagate topology changes to blend shape targets.

Character Animation Tools Includes:

• Full Body IK
• Substitute Geometry
• Topology Propagation for Blend Shapes
• Weightable, Paintable Wire and Blend Shape Deformers
• Delete Non-Deformer History
• Rotate Joint While Painting Skin Weights
• Spring IK Solver
• Dope Sheet Enhancements
• Performance Improvement for Copying Skin Weights
• Plateau Tangent Type
• Display Normalized Curves in Graph Editor
• Blend Set Driven Key and Constraints
• Performance Improvements for Lattices
• Custom Key Colors and Sizes in Timeline
• Improvements to Influence Object Setup

New Tools for Modeling and Mapping

• New polygon modeling functionality enhances modeling productivity and provides greater control over form.
• Faster, easier texturing is made possible with powerful new UV tools.
• New and enhanced tools are available for scene optimization without loss of detail particularly valuable to game developers.

The tools include:

• Variable Creasing for Smooth Proxy
• Edge Loop and Edge Ring Tools
• Additions and Enhancement to Snapping and Alignment
• Beveling for Adobe Illustrator Files, with History
• Bevel Option for Text
• Universal Manipulator
• Move Tool Symmetry
• Pick Walk On Polygon Vertices
• Additional Polygon Primitives
• Easier Access to Polygon Commands
• Soft Modification Falloff Resizing
• MMB Pivot/Manipulator Relocation for Components
• Smooth Proxy Toggle
• Convert Selection to Contained Components

Texturing and 3D Paint:

• Surface Sampler
• New and Improved UV Tools
• Unfold UVs with Pinning
• Tri-planar and User-Defined Projections for Automatic Mapping
• Lattice and Smudge Tools in UV Editor
• Enhancements to UV Layout
• Enhancements to UV Snapshot
• Performance Improvements for Automatic Mapping and Layout UVs
• Direct Numeric Entry for Relative Transformations

Texture and Mapping Tools:

• Multiple Sets of Color Per Vertex
• Convert Texture to Geometry
• Warp Image

Powerful Visual Effects Tools

Maya 7 continues to innovate with unique tools for specialized visual effects.

• A powerful Toon Shader supports a wide range of non-photorealistic rendering styles and features interactive previews in near real-time. Maya Paint Effects also benefits from the real-time mesh preview.
• Maya Fur is integrated with Maya's dynamic curve technology, allowing realistic dynamics to be applied, and Fur and Hair to be used together easily.
• Maya Hair can be transplanted from one model to another, and it delivers support for texture mapping of attributes such as baldness and color. Hair can also be rendered directly in mental ray for Maya.
• Numerous enhancements to Maya Cloth extend the usability and power of this production-proven tool.
• Per-object attributes and support for transparency bring new creative possibilities to the Maya vector renderer.
• A new High Detail Solve mode for Maya Fluid Effects makes the realistic simulation of complex explosions even easier.

Dynamic tools include:

• New Drag Field Attributes
• Falloff Curve for Use Max Distance
• Per-Particle Per-Object Goal Weights
• Per-Particle Goal Point Data
• Selectable UV Set for Collisions

Maya Paint Effects includes:

• Fast Mesh Preview for Paint Effects
• Modifier Objects for Paint Effects
• Screen Space Width Controls for Paint Effects
• Pressure Scale Graph for Paint Effects
• Convert Paint Effects to NURBS or Curves

Maya Cloth (Maya Unlimited) includes:

• Cloth Collision Enhancements
• Controls Over Recoiling Characteristics
• Controls Over Recovery Velocity for Collisions
• Friction Control Per Collision Object
• Per Collision Shape Toggle for Collision Constraints
• Ability to Specify Collisions Per Face
• Resimulate Selected Region
• Property Blending
• Tessellation Limit
• Random Seed for Tessellation
• Transition Regions Across Seams
• Control Over Seam Roundness

Maya Fluid Effects (Maya Unlimited) includes:

• High Detail Solve
• Solver Performance Improvements
• Arbitrary Falloff Grid
• Wireframe Draw Performance Improvement

Maya Fur (Maya Unlimited) includes:

• Ability to Transplant Hair
• Hair Presets
• Render Hair in mental ray
• Start Curve Attraction
• Paintable Baldness and Color Maps
• New Hair Displacement Attributes
• New Hair Creation Options

Integration with Essential Production Tools

Streamline your workflow between Maya and Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Flash and popular CAD applications.

• Re-architected render layers technology allows multiple passes from any combination of the four Maya renderers, or third party plug-in renderers, to be prepared for optimal output to the compositor of choice. Plus, layers can be rendered to Adobe Photoshop (PSD) and Macromedia Flash (SWFT) files.
• Enhanced connectivity with Photoshop also includes "round-tripping" with the 3D Paint tool, automatic conversion of procedurals to PSD, and direct launching of the package from within Maya.
• Connectivity with Adobe Illustrator provides an iterative workflow for creating 3D animated models from 2D vector data.
• Support for both ATI ASHLI and Nvidia CgFX plug-ins allow hardware shaders written for next-generation games platforms to be previewed in Maya.
• An enhanced FBX plug-in provides seamless exchange of animation data and character rigs with Alias MotionBuilder.

Rendering:

• Toon Shader
• Render Layers
• Render Layers to PSD
• Render Layers to SWFT (Flash smart layers)
• ASHLI Plug-in
• Improvements to CgFX
• Swatch Rendering for Third-party Applications

Hardware Renderer

With Maya 7, the hardware renderer supports direct input of normal maps, shader translucency, many aspects of ramp shading and Blinn shaders. This means that these elements can now be previewed and adjusted in real-time in the interactive view, and rendered for final output using the offscreen hardware renderer.

Mental ray for Maya

• Color Per Vertex Rendering
• Hair (Maya Unlimited)
• Performance Improvement when Tuning Lights in IPR
• Better Memory Handling
• Support for Camera Depth Settings
• Unlimited User Framebuffers
• Support for Custom Output Passes in Cameras
• On Demand Translation for Fur
• New Finite Attribute for Image-Based Lighting
• Support for Alpha Plugs
• Baking with Custom Shaders
• Support for Custom Maya Shaders
• Improvement to 3D Texturing with Motion Blur
• Support for Additional Maya Nodes

Vector Renderer

• Per-Material Attributes
• Ability to Handle Transparency
• Enhanced Curve Tolerance

Other Rendering Enhancements

• Print Sizes for Rendering
• Render Optimization Setting
• Render View Enhancements
• Render Settings Enhancements
• HyperShade Enhancements
• Option to Use Alternative Image and Sequence Viewer

Maya/Photoshop Workflow-Enhancing Features

• 3D Paint/Photoshop Roundtrip
• 3D Paint/Create PSD Automatic Procedural Conversion
• Launch Photoshop/Open and Edit File and PSD Textures from Maya
• Edit Existing PSD files
• Convert PSD to File Texture

Maya 7 System Requirements:

• Windows XP Professional or Windows 2000 Professional (service pack 2 or higher)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 WS
• SUSE Linux 9.3
• Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher

Maya requires one of the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
• Netscape 7 or higher
• Safari

Maya 7 Hardware Requirements:

• Windows: Intel Pentium III or higher, AMD Athlon processor
• Macintosh: Power Mac G4 and G5
• 512 MB RAM
• CD-ROM Drive
• Hardware-Accelerated OpenGL graphics card
• 3-button mouse with mouse driver software
• 450 MB of hard disk space