Check out the brand new look of all the modeling an animation software products found in their 'Enterainment Creation Suite 2014' and the official new logo of Autodesk:
Daryl Obert of the Autodesk team has been so friendly to provide us with several videos showing you what's hot and cool about Maya 2014, and how the new features can be used to create your 3D graphics with less effort and smarter ways to manage your pipeline. Some of the features might already seem familiar to you, as they' ve been available in some way in other products from the Entertainment Creation suite, such as 3ds Max or SoftImage.
What's New in Maya 2014?
The video's are three to four minutes long, with the more advanced enhancements taking up a bit more of your time, say eight minutes or so. I've put all 7 video's in a playlist below with a complete description of what's new in Maya 2014 below. So check them all out, or just pick the ones you like to watch (click the bar at the botom of the player and you'll get a list of all videos. Make sure to watch in 720p).
Accelerated Modeling Workflow.
Building on technology from the well-known NEX toolset from dRaster, Maya 2014 delivers an expanded, integrated modeling feature set that offers an accelerated workflow for modeling. A new Modeling Toolkit panel presents a streamlined environment that enables artists to access new selection, transformation, and mesh-editing tools in one place for increased efficiency.
With topology-based Symmetry tools that enable artists to work on posed meshes, a Quad Draw tool that facilitates retopology workflows, and a Multi-Cut tool that combines both Split/Cut Faces and Insert Edge Loop tools in a single operation. A new Polygon Reduction algorithm offers a faster and more efficient method for reducing mesh complexity by removing unneeded vertices without affecting the object’s basic shape.
Scene Assembly Tools for Smarter Data.
Creating large, complex worlds is now easier in Maya 2014. Building on the Open Data platform, the Alembic open source exchange format, and File Referencing, Scene Assembly tools provide a mechanism for representing production assets in Maya as discrete elements, each with complete support for multiple representations.
Artists can easily swap between different representations for example: varying levels of detail, enabling them to select the most appropriate compromise between fidelity and performance for the task at hand. Edits can be applied, animated, or queried at any level in the scene assembly hierarchy, while overrides on Assemblies can be tracked via an improved Edits system, helping facilitate collaborative workflows across production departments. A robust API enables studios to customize the toolset to create completely proprietary solutions.
Grease Pencil.
Most artists use Digicel's Flip book plugin for Maya, to set up some fairly simple 2D animations that can help guide them to create 3D animations accordingly in Maya. Let' s see if the new Grease Pencil can improve on that!
The Grease Pencil allows artists to draw directly into the viewport to capture poses at key frames, and view in-between transitions as cross-fades. The pencil strokes are automatically stored as an image plane sequence, enabling artists to use them as reference while creating 3D animation. In addition, directors and other stakeholders can use the Grease Pencil to mark up performances and record their input in the form of notes for their animators, without themselves requiring knowledge of the 3D application.
New Paint Effects Surface and Volume Attributes.
Artists can now control how Paint Effects strokes react with surfaces, volumes, and each other. Surface Snap help to make sure that tubes grow from the nearest point on the surface at their base. Surface Attract causes tubes to wrap around or cling to a surface.
Surface Collide helps prevent tubes from interpenetrating surfaces, while Make Collide can be used to make Paint Effects strokes appear to be pushed by a surface. Occupation is based on a Space Colonization algorithm that helps avoid self-collisions, and can be used to cause tubes to grow over a surface or into a volume. Together, these attributes can be used to more quickly and easily create a wide range of natural effects that would be very difficult and time-consuming to create with conventional methods.
Node Editor Enhancements.
A number of enhancements to the Node Editor—grid display, grid snapping, custom grid and background colors, better hotkeys, and improved name display—combine to provide an improved user experience and greater productivity.
File Path Editor.
Don't you just hate it, when you get a file from a collegue or friend and all the paths to the textures are broken? It's nice to see the guys at Autodesk finally put a stop to that.
The new File Path Editor in Maya 2014 enables artists to quickly diagnose broken file paths and to fix them in a clean and easy-to-use UI. The editor lists the nodes that use external files: textures, image planes, references, and audio files.When a file path is broken, the artist can quickly relocate the file – or search recursively for the file within a directory structure. Paths can even be set to nonexistent files, in preparation for hand off to another user who may have a different directory structure.
Joint Centering and Symmetry.
Artists can now automatically center joints in a model using the new Snap to Projected Center snapping mode. This is particularly useful for creating skeleton joints and joint chains, but it can be used when creating or manipulating any object type. In addition, new options in the Joint Tool settings enable artists to automatically create symmetric joints and joint chains.
For more information on all of Autodesk's new 2014 suites and upgraded software features, check Autodesk.com. For more information on Maya 2014 check the Maya 2014 documentation.
