Maya 2011 - teh awsomes?!
First, Maya 2011 for mac is fully 64 bit *at last*, which involved rewriting the UI in qt (the widget set found in KDE on linux, not QuickTime). Previous iterations were Carbon on Mac, whatever on windows and Motif on linux (yuck).
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/steve...user_interface
Second, the viewport has been rewritten to support game-engine style performance, meaning culling, what appears to be dynamic texture resizing, support for spec/bump/normal, etc, all at speeds that make the current Maya viewport look pathetic.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/steve...t_viewport_2_0
Fluid bounding boxes dynamically resize, making fluids faster and "better."
Particles can emit fluids, such as balls of fire with smoke trailing from them.
Particles support PP rotations, which means they can now behave like rigid bodies, but 1,100,123% faster. Also large billboard particles can look like thick, churning smoke.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/dunca...ff_in_maya2011
Sweetness.
This release doesn't address everything. There's much, much more threading to be done, and Mental Ray shaders aren't supported in the viewport, etc, but it is a gigantic step in the right direction.
Maya 2010 introduced... nothing very useful. Maya 2011 delivers.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/steve...user_interface
Second, the viewport has been rewritten to support game-engine style performance, meaning culling, what appears to be dynamic texture resizing, support for spec/bump/normal, etc, all at speeds that make the current Maya viewport look pathetic.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/steve...t_viewport_2_0
Fluid bounding boxes dynamically resize, making fluids faster and "better."
Particles can emit fluids, such as balls of fire with smoke trailing from them.
Particles support PP rotations, which means they can now behave like rigid bodies, but 1,100,123% faster. Also large billboard particles can look like thick, churning smoke.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/dunca...ff_in_maya2011
Sweetness.
This release doesn't address everything. There's much, much more threading to be done, and Mental Ray shaders aren't supported in the viewport, etc, but it is a gigantic step in the right direction.
Maya 2010 introduced... nothing very useful. Maya 2011 delivers.
Comments
First, Maya 2011 for mac is fully 64 bit *at last*, which involved rewriting the UI in qt (the widget set found in KDE on linux, not QuickTime). Previous iterations were Carbon on Mac, whatever on windows and Motif on linux (yuck).
That's a good change and if they can do it on Maya, they can possibly do it for AutoCAD and 3DS eventually. I've always wondered why Autodesk maintain both 3DS and Maya. Like when Adobe bought Macromedia, they killed Freehand so people use Illustrator and Indesign. Maybe they will try to transition people over gradually.
Second, the viewport has been rewritten to support game-engine style performance, meaning culling, what appears to be dynamic texture resizing, support for spec/bump/normal, etc, all at speeds that make the current Maya viewport look pathetic.
That never made sense - why games could easily support huge amounts of geometry, 1 million polys and more and yet 3D apps would struggle with a few hundred k. The more that the two fields have come together, it makes sense that they have the same performance. The culling on close-ups has great performance.
Still waiting for the day you can get real-time photoreal in the viewport and manipulate it on laptop hardware. Can't be too far from now though.