Autodesk Launches Autodesk Maya 2008 Software

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SAN DIEGO, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq:
ADSK) today announced Autodesk Maya 2008 modeling, animation, visual
effects and rendering software.

Maya 2008 will be showcased at the Autodesk booth (#703) during SIGGRAPH 2007, held at the San Diego Convention Center August 7-9.

Designed for multi-core workstations, the 2008 release provides artists with an
optimized application that includes new creative tools in modeling and
animation to help artist meet demands quickly and easily.

Highlights of Maya 2008
Increased polygon modeling efficiency:
-- Maya 2008 enables artists to quickly create, manipulate and place
polygons that form highly detailed characters and environments, through
a streamlined Mesh Smooth workflow, a new Slide Edge feature and
improvements to Booleans, Bridge, Bevel and other tools.

Overall performance improvements for greater efficiency:
-- With Maya 2008, Autodesk continues the task of optimizing the
software's toolsets to provide greater performance through both
multi-threading and algorithmic speed-ups. For example*:
-- The Poly Reduce function is now up to 30 times faster for a 22k face
poly mesh, and Poly Smooth is now up to 4 times faster
-- The Maya nCloth cache performance up to 3 times faster on a cache of
10k vertices
-- mental ray translation for a 20k mesh instanced 2,000 times is over
20 times faster

Tools for creating better looking games:
-- Maya 2008 is better equipped to create and display content destined for
the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 game
consoles. It offers support for DirectX HLSL shaders in the Maya
viewport, a new hardware shader API, enhancements to the high-quality
render view, accelerated mental ray texture baking performance, and
more.

Increased flexibility for character setup and animation:
-- Building upon the Maya software's advanced, customizable animation
system, Maya 2008 delivers improved skinning and rigging toolsets,
including new, non-destructive skin editing capabilities. These
enhancements allow animators and Technical Directors to efficiently
explore ideas, manage iterations and get superior results, faster.

Autodesk anticipates that Maya 2008 will be available in English in
September 2007.

Autodesk suggested retail pricing is US$1,999* for Maya 2008 Complete
(Standalone) and US$6,999* for Maya 2008 Unlimited (Standalone). The
upgrade price from Maya 8.5 Complete to Maya 2008 Complete is US$899*, and
the upgrade price from Maya 8.5 Unlimited to Maya 2008 Unlimited is
US$1,249*.

Check in autodesk site for what's new:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7635643

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From the site source:

Key Features and Enhancements

New and Enhanced Modeling Tools and Workflows
Maya 2008 introduces considerable performance improvements and a number of new features that will make modeling workflows significantly more efficient. The Maya Mesh Smooth workflow, for instance, has been dramatically streamlined: You can now preview a smoothed mesh while editing the mesh cage—with superb performance, particularly on multiprocessor workstations. Other much-requested workflow enhancements include the ability to position objects along a curve, replace objects within a scene, and convert instances to objects.

Additionally, a new Slide Edge feature—as well as significant enhancements to Booleans, Bevel, Bridge, Reduce, and other tools—can let you model more efficiently. Maya 2008 also delivers two new selection management features: X-Ray selection highlighting and the ability to “pick walk” edge loops.


Faster, More Accurate Viewport / Hardware Rendering
Truly WYSIWYG interactive previews are several steps closer now that the Maya hardware rendering engine supports layered textures, multiple UV sets, negative lighting, and object space normal maps. Not only does this improve preview fidelity when using the High Quality renderer in the interactive viewport, it allows a greater range of effects to be rendered to final output using the Maya hardware renderer. Moreover, accelerated draw and selection performance, together with more efficient updating of UI elements, facilitates level editing and speeds overall workflows.

Support for DirectX HLSL Shaders
Maya 2008 can let you effectively create and display sophisticated looks for content destined for the next-generation game consoles. In particular, native support for DirectX® HLSL shaders (in addition to the existing CgFX support), lets you work with assets in the viewport and see them as they will be seen on the target console.

Nondestructive Skin Editing
Animators and animation technical directors usually find it necessary to work iteratively on their rigged characters. Maya 2008 now streamlines iterative skinning workflows by enabling you to modify the skeleton of a bound character, without having to rebind it after, thus preserving any work done after the skeleton was bound. This process is supported through new tools for inserting, moving, deleting, connecting, and disconnecting joints on a bound skeleton, as well as support for multiple bind poses.

API Enhancements
Game developers can now more easily write high-performance hardware shading plug-ins for Maya using the new API for hardware shaders. This API includes native support for OpenGL and DirectX shaders, built-in support for shader parameters, and direct access to the Maya rendering cache. Also, a new constraints API can let plug-in developers write their own animation constraint nodes and commands derived from the underlying Maya constraint node and command architecture. This makes it easier to write custom constraints and have them interact with the rest of Maya in a manner similar to built-in constraints.

mental ray 3.6 Core
Maya 2008 uses the latest mental ray 3.6 core, a release that boasts dramatic performance improvements in the translation of polygon meshes and instances for rendering, as well as for IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Rendering) startup. Additionally, particle types previously supported only in the Maya hardware renderer can now be rendered in mental ray, eliminating the need to combine outputs from multiple renderers.

Expanded Platform Support
Support for Windows Vista™ operating system has been added, that enables you to take advantage of the performance capabilities of this recent technology.