Autodesk Maya 2011 software features powerful new tools for helping create and repurpose character animation: enhanced skinning capabilities and non-destructive live motion retargeting. Its new 3D Editorial timeline helps accelerate pre-visualization and virtual movie-making workflows, while an invigorated user interface helps improve artists’ efficiency and creativity. Maya 2011 addresses today’s demanding production requirements with its high-performance viewport display of large scenes, integrated color management, scene segmentation, improved rotoscoping, and new UI toolkit. With support for 64-bit Mac OS X as well as Linux and Windows operating systems, Maya is now more accessible than ever, offering artists an end-to-end creative workflow at exceptional value.

Rachet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, SCE/Insomniac Games.

Key Autodesk Maya 2011 Features

Enhanced User Interface
Enjoy a consistent, enhanced user experience on all supported platforms with an updated user interface that ofers a fresh new look, dockable UI elements, more fexible editors, and a new color chooser and fle browser.

Accelerated Skinning Workfow
Create better skinned characters with more realistic deformations in less time, with new skinning tools and workfows: a dual quaternion option for smooth skinning, interactive volume binding, multiple enhancements to the Paint Skin Weights tool, deformer weight mirroring, and a surface fallof mode for the Wrap deformer.

Nondestructive Live Retargeting
More quickly and easily reuse, correct, and enhance motion capture and certain other animation data with a new nondestructive retargeting workfow that uses the Autodesk HumanIK (HIK) middleware libraries. Transfer animation from one character to another and adjust retargeting parameters live.

3D Editorial
Accelerate pre-visualization and virtual moviemaking production with new 3D editorial capabilities in Maya. Lay out multiple camera shots directly in Maya, or import an edit decision list in Apple Final Cut Pro XML or AAF formats. Then change the timings of shots, create alternate versions, and use Playblast to playback and review.

Enhancements to Assets and File Referencing
More easily segment, reuse, and exchange data with or without fle referencing. A new option to create assets with transforms (DAG assets) helps streamline the most common workfows with assets. Moreover, data can be exported and imported as ofine fles to fexibly partition scenes, while reference edits can be imported, exported, and removed without unloading.

Color Management
Make better decisions and preserve creative intent throughout the rendering pipeline by working within the context of the fnal color space in which images will be viewed. Initial support is through the mental ray for Maya renderer.

Qt User Interface Toolkit
Maya now uses the Qt UI. As a result, you can create interface components for proprietary tools with Qt Designer and load them directly into Maya, while the Script Editor ofers syntax coloring, automatic indentation, and auto-completion.

Large Scene Performance
Achieve signifcantly faster frame rates with a new interactive viewport display option—especially useful for level editors and others working with large scenes and many textures. Texture loading for interactive display is also signifcantly faster for BMP, JPEG, PNG, and Targa formats.

Vector Paint in Maya Composite
Perform complex rotoscoping operations such as removing or replacing elements from live-action plates using the new vector paint option in the Maya Composite functionality. Fully integrated with tracking, paint strokes are animatable and can be used to clone data from another source.

64-Bit Support for Mac OS X
Access considerably more memory to handle larger and more complex scenes with the new 64-bit executable on Mac OS X.