Maya 8 at Siggraph 2006?
After Autodesk acquired Alias this winter, many Maya users have been expressing concern about Maya’s future. I asked an Autodesk employee about this, and he said: “..you will see from the future releases that our dedication to the product is unwavering”.
So, what can we expect?
New releases are usually announced at Siggraph, and I don’t think this year will be an exception.
My guess is that the Maya user interface will get a facelift to match other Autodesk programs. And as much as I like working with Maya, I can’t say that’s a bad thing – as long as shortcuts are left unchanged.
I also think we’ll see a tighter integration of Mental Ray, less development in the built-in Maya renderer, and better support for hardware rendering – making better use of the GPU.
Another comment I got from Platinum Support was: “I’m glad you understand our commitment to development and support of Maya. We love it as much you guys do. And Duncan may have some more tricks up his sleeve for future releases. Stay tuned!”. My guess is more innovations on the new toon shader, but there may be something equally innovative and surprising coming up this year…
June 9th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Interresting post, but the Siggraph link doesn’t work. Links to some silly go-script on localhost.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Thanks! It should be fixed now!
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:09 pm
[...] Maya users have been quite nervous about the package’s future since Autodesk acquired Alias last year. Maya 8 has now been released at the Autodesk Siggraph User Group Event as expected, but the release did not meet the users’ expectations. [...]