Autodesk Maya 2008 Extension 2 software is expected to be available for download to Maya Complete 2008 and Maya Unlimited 2008 Autodesk Subscription customers with Gold support in March 2008. The Extension 2 is not sold separately.
Extension 2 provides enhanced creative control over polygon modeling and UV texturing, as well as significant improvements to the Maya Muscle toolset.
Key features and enhancements offered in Autodesk Maya 2008 Extension 2 include:
Superior Modeling Workflow:
New selection management features offer modelers a fast and precise workflow for controlling large amounts of complex geometry. Also, symmetrical modeling has been enhanced through such additions as seam preservation functionality.
Faster Texturing through Streamlined UV Workflows
New and enhanced UV workflow tools provide artists with more control over their texturing, which enables them to achieve their desired results faster.
Detailed Skin Articulation and Animation
New features and enhanced workflows for Maya Muscle extend the animator or technical director's ability to precisely direct muscle and skin behavior. These include a new smart collisions toolset, support for three new forces, and the ability to displace skin.
For more information about the features offered in Autodesk Maya 2008 Extension 2, visit
The also announced reduced pricing for Autodesk Maya Unlimited 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software.
The Autodesk suggested retail price of a new license of Maya Unlimited, Standalone has been reduced from US$6,995* to US$4,995*. The Autodesk suggested retail price of a new license of Maya Unlimited, Network has been reduced from US$8,345* to US$6,245*. Maya Complete 2008 customers can now cross-grade to Maya Unlimited 2008 at the reduced Autodesk suggested retail price of US $2,995*. All price changes are effective as of Feb. 18, 2008.
Last edited by NMILIOTI; February 22, 2008 at 16:06.
Preselection Highlighting
Visual feedback, based on the proximity of the cursor, takes the guesswork out of selection, saving you an enormous amount of time. You can now see, simply by hovering your mouse over a component, what will be selected should you choose to click.
Soft Select for TRS
Soft selection enables you to efficiently translate, rotate, or scale regions of an object with adjustable fall off. Color feedback lets you see the precise impact the soft selection will have before an operation is performed. Because it is a weighted, selection-based paradigm, and not a deformer, soft selection supports a very natural workflow.
Tweak Mode
The addition of a new Tweak mode greatly streamlines the process of making fine adjustments to models and scenes. Rather than having to switch to the Move Tool and select individual components/objects to move, Tweak mode enables you to move what lies under the cursor with a single click, regardless of the tool (Select, Move, Rotate or Scale) you are currently using.
Symmetrical Modeling for TRS with Seam Preservation
The translate, rotate, and scale tools now offer improved support for reflection: components along the reflection axis may be locked to the plane of symmetry. This allows you to confidently make large-scale changes to your model, with operations like soft select, while maintaining symmetry.
Selection Management
In addition, Autodesk® Maya® 2008 Extension 2 delivers double-click selection of edge loops and shell faces, vertex selection performance improvements, movable marquee selection, and more.
Region Preset
You can now layout your UVs within a specific region of the texture editor. Presets are available for the most common areas (quarters, eighths, etc.).
Prescale Option
You now have the option to preserve the scale of an object’s UVs as you simultaneously layout UVs for multiple objects of different sizes. This enables you to make more efficient use of texture space and ultimately improve runtime performance.
UV Snapping Improvements
During TRS operations, UVs and UV pivot points can now be snapped to the grid, other UVs, and texture pixels. Having the same level of efficient snapping functionality in the Texture Editor that you have in other areas of Maya improves productivity and shortens learning curves.
UV Discrete Rotate and Scale
UVs can now be rotated and scaled in discrete steps, giving you more precise control over the layout of your UVs and avoiding precision errors.
Smart Collisions
The Maya Muscle smart collision toolset enables you to simply paint shape changes based on joint orientation; plus it automatically handles skin self-collision. For example, the area around elbow and knee joints can be set so skin pinches, where appropriate, but does not interpenetrate, and muscles bulge and lengthen correctly as the joint moves. All this is possible without any elaborate setup; in fact, collisions can often create accurate skin behavior without the use of muscles or deformers.
Skin Displacement
Maya Muscle now gives you the ability to deform skin via displacement. Fine shaping of details (like veins or tendons) can either be controlled interactively by a curve, or applied as a texture map or mental ray® software shader in order to shift costly processing over to rendering, after creative iterations are complete.
New Forces
Precise control over three new forces—gravity, wind, and noise—lets you create highly realistic muscle and skin dynamics (for example, sagging) that were previously extremely difficult to achieve.
New Weight Maps
Fourteen new weight maps have been added to Maya Muscle—giving you a faster, more intuitive way to assign, paint, adjust, and blend new types of weighted attributes (through maps) for various muscle and skin parameters.
Linear Mode
