Autodesk announced their new 2011 line up of Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, Motion Builder and Mudbox, due to be released in April. Considering their market share these news are always remarkable and echoed through many of the web forums.
For the visual effects industry Maya is certainly the dominating product of the “three big” (Maya, 3ds Max and Softimage). It’s 2010 release was met with some disappointment by users even though it marked a departure from the Complete and Unlimited tiers and included a compositing solution formerly sold as Toxik. Now just 6 months later there is a new GUI based on the Nokia Qt toolkit that allows to keep all platform versions at the same level and introduces a new 64-bit version for OSX. Beside those changes in the GUI Maya 2011 comes with many improvements across all areas in the software. The well integrated dynamics seem to receive further attention with this release also.
Autodesk’s latest aquisition Softimage is apparently doing well – exceeding sales expectations. The update introduces ICE support for kinematics – a feature that was previously available in an unsupported form. Now there are plenty of new nodes included to make use of this feature, including IK solvers an an implicit bone primitive. Beside many new features the new auto-lipsync feature of Face Robot and the shading sandbox also stand out. All around a very solid update that should be appreciated by TDs and character animators.
3ds Max has not been left out either. Just like Maya it has received a more powerful viewport based on the OGS (One Graphics System) in the form of Quicksilver. Next to many improvements 3ds Max now ships with a Toxik based compositor and fully integrated CAT (character animation toolkit) acquired from Softimage earlier.
All three tools ship with the latest version of Mental Ray. It is not clear yet if that includes iRay (interactive photorealistic rendering) support as well.