Autodesk Maya Unlimited 2008 Extension 2 Win32

Autodesk Maya Unlimited 2008 Extension 2 Win32
Autodesk Maya® (formerly Alias Systems Corporation) - Academy Award® winning software is the world’s most powerfully integrated 3D modeling, animation, effects, and rendering solution. Because Maya is based on an open architecture, all your work can be scripted or programmed using a well-documented and comprehensive API (Application Program Interface), or one of two integrated scripting languages. This, combined with an industry-leading suite of 3D tools, means Maya enables you to realize your creative ideas. Maya also adds to the quality and realism of 2D graphics. That’s why Autodesk Maya is used by film and video artists, game developers, design visualization professionals, and students to create engaging, lifelike digital images, realistic animation, and extraordinary visual effects.

The ultimate version of Maya—Autodesk® Maya® Unlimited—is the choice of digital artists who are looking to make their 3D projects stand out. Maya Unlimited includes all the functionality found in Autodesk Maya Complete and provides professional artists and animators with additional industry leading-innovations such as Maya Fluid Effects, Maya® nCloth, Maya Hair, Maya Fur and Maya Live, for the creation of superior digital content.

Autodesk Maya Unlimited contains everything in Autodesk Maya Complete, plus:
- Maya Hair
- Maya Fluid Effects
- Maya Cloth
- Maya Fur
- Maya Live

* Maya Fluid Effects™ - Simulate and render a huge variety of atmospheric, pyrotechnic, viscous liquid, and open ocean effects. Maya Fluid Effects overcomes one of the greatest barriers in computer animation.
* Maya Fur - Easy creation of realistic fur, short hair, wool and grass on NURBS or polygonal models. Incredibly realistic styling and rendering of short hair and fur, with Maya Artisan brush interface for painting fur attributes.
* Maya Cloth - The fastest and most accurate software solution for simulating a wide variety of digital clothing and other fabric objects. Any cloth object can be animated including sails, skins, tents, drapery, bedding, etc.
* Maya Live - Sophisticated matchmoving combines 2D live-action with 3D elements. Maya Live provides greater flexibility, a fast integrated 2D tracker and an interactive root frame solver. Maya Live also allows you to reconstruct live-action elements as 3D geometry plus output to external applications.
* Maya Hair - Tools for the creation, styling and rendering of fully dynamic long hair on NURBS or polygon objects. Make any NURBS curve dynamic for use in advanced character rigging and effects. Create a wide range of other “non-hair” effects too.

Autodesk Maya Complete:
- Intuitive User Interface
- Data and Scene Management Tools
- Polygon Modeling
- NURBS Modeling
- Subdivision Surface Modeling
- General Animation
- Character Animation
- Deformers
- Rigid and Soft Body Dynamics
- Particles and Fields
- Maya Paint Effects
- Toon Shader
- Maya Artisan
- 3D Paint
- Multiple Rendering Options
- Rendering Controls and Effects
- MEL
- Maya API/SDK
- Connectivity and Integration

Autodesk Maya 2008 software delivers faster, more efficient tools and workflows for creating the stunning, high-resolution characters, environments, and performances that will populate the games consoles, theater screens, and televisions of the future.

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—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
With Maya you can 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), can let 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 can streamline 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 allow plug-in developers to 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, enabling customers to take advantage of the performance capabilities of this recent technology.