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.

Recent version history

Maya 6.5 was met with much the same disappointment as Maya 8.0, but is easier to forgive a company for a “poor” X.5 release than an X.0 release. In addition to a few features and speed improvements, Maya 6.5 included an extensive rewriting of the code to lay the ground for new features. The users were skeptical, but Alias really showed us that they were serious about launching new features with the release of 7.0.

SIGGRAPH 2005 and AGUA

I had to cancel my trip to SIGGRAPH 2006 in the last minute, so I can not say how the User Group Event went this year. But I did attend the Alias Global Users Association (AGUA) meeting during SIGGRAPH 2005.

Maya 7.0 was released at AGUA 05. The release was a great performance where Alias’ Principal Scientist, Duncan Brinsmead, personally presented his new Toon Shader. In addition to this, Jos Stam was awarded the 2005 Computer Graphics Achievement Award at the SIGGRAPH Keynote. It was clear that Alias was in the middle of a very innovative period. I do not think I was alone in leaving SIGGRAPH with a strong feeling that Alias would keep their promise of bringing some great improvements to Maya in the following year.

So, what is Autodesk up to?

I find it quite troubling that Autodesk has not made an extra effort to make Maya 8 a far more impressive update. They must have known that the specifications of their first update would be thoroughly analyzed by the user community.

Alias were quite quick to explain the lack of new features in 6.5 and to reassure us of a better future. I know it is still early as I write this, but we have yet to hear Autodesk promise us an equally strong and continued commitment to Maya.

It may seem that the Autodesk acquisition has killed the innovative spirit that we saw in Alias. We can only hope that what we are seeing now is only a passing result of a long and painful acquisition period, and that the geniuses of Duncan Brinsmead, Jos Stam and their colleagues will once again be set free in Maya 8.5.

Update:

Duncan himself did showcase some amazing new dynamic features to be included in a future release of Maya at the User Group Event, so the image may not be as bleak as it appears right now. But according to this report, the audience did not seem quite convinced by his message from Autodesk about their future commitment to Maya.

I have created a PDF of the Maya 8 “What’s New”-pages. This is a more complete list of the new features than Autodesk’s marketing material, and it helps explain all the new features in a little more detail.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.