Autodesk® Maya® 8.5 software gives artists enhanced creative control, enabling faster completion of complex animation and simulation tasks. Creative control is achieved through innovative new technologies such as Nucleus, Autodesk's next-generation unified dynamics simulation framework. Python integration further extends this creative control, giving scriptwriters the ability to efficiently manipulate, customize, and automate the software for use in next-generation pipelines and industry-leading productions.
Nucleus Simulation Framework
Autodesk Maya 8.5 delivers Nucleus, Autodesk's next-generation dynamics framework featuring technology developed by award-winning research scientist Jos Stam.
Unified Framework: Multiple solvers can influence each other bidirectionally and use the same forces and constraints. Ultimately, simulations for cloth, hair, rigid bodies, and particles will all be able to interact seamlessly for maximum believability and control.
Fast and Stable: Greater performance and stability than previous solutions mean Nucleus automatically recovers where other solutions fail, for example, when rapid motion causes clothing to collapse or implode.
Directable: Artists can shape and influence results toward a modeled target, even while the simulation is running. Blend multiple simulations together in the TRAX timeline to achieve an optimal single result.
nCloth—The first Implementation of Nucleus Technolog
With nCloth, the first module based on the Nucleus solver, artists can quickly direct and control a range of simulations, including cloth and other materials, in entirely new ways.
Artists can create believable cloth-on-cloth simulations with complex cloth collisions, such as a cape over a jacket, more easily.
A unique air-pressure model enables artists to create more than just clothing simulations. Use any geometry (whether a closed, sealed volume such as an inner tube, or an open one such as a balloon) to create an inflatable object with internal and external pressure.
Simulate other materials. Deformable plastics and metals can be pulled, sheared, dented, and stretched.
Python
Autodesk Maya 8.5 now supports Python scripting. This popular, open-source programming language helps accelerate facility-specific custom script development and plug-in prototyping, better extending and automating Maya production pipelines
Scripting
Python scripting offers a robust alternative to Maya software's native scripting language, MEL, while featuring the same deep level of integration with the Maya command engine.
API Bindings
Technical directors and developers can rapidly prototype plug-ins to customize and integrate Maya into existing production pipelines via the OpenMaya API (application programming interface).
Modern Scripting Language
Higher-level language constructs for increased developer productivity and easier maintenance of code. Readily available scripting resources and knowledgeable community of users. Highly extensible, offering a collection of third-party tools and modules.
Proven in existing production pipelines. Allows for greater interoperability with other Autodesk products such as Autodesk® MotionBuilder™ and Autodesk® Toxik™ software.
Productivity
Autodesk Maya 8.5 includes new features and performance optimizations specifically designed to increase artists' productivity and streamline CG workflows.
Containers simplify the display of complex node hierarchies into more meaningful, high-level groups.
Improved support for CgFX hardware shading offers a wider range of customer-created, real-time shaders and effects. mental ray® shaders (architectural and design) enable representations of real-world materials, such as waxed floors, frosted glass, and brushed metals, without the need to create the shaders from scratch. The transfer of skin weights (character rigging) has been improved for more precise and accurate skinning results.
Rotate and Scale tools now offer symmetry and reflection, complementing existing Move tools and significantly enhancing productivity for symmetrical modeling. Geometry Cache threading and algorithmic enhancements mean overall increases in speed.
Platforms (New Intel Mac Support)
Autodesk Maya 8.5 supports the latest hardware technologies and operating systems, providing customers with more choices when selecting the best option for their production environment. New Intel® Mac® support provided as a universal binary results in greater productivity for Mac users by taking full advantage of the latest processor technologies.
Maya 8.5 on Intel Mac now shares the same level of threading as the Microsoft® Windows® and Linux® releases. Maya is currently available on six different platforms:
Mac OS® X running on Intel Mac and Power PC® platforms Microsoft® Windows® XP 32 and 64 bit Linux® 32 and 64 bit.
Autodesk Maya 8.5 Product Overview