Autodesk Maya 2012 Review

PRICE: $3,495

UPGRADE: $1,745 

Platform:

Windows / Mac / Linux

Developer:

Autodesk

Main features:

• Viewport 2.0 improvements
• Enhanced HumanIK
• Render passes in Hypershade
• Improved fluids and nDynamics
• Third-party procedural textures, plus vehicle animation, DMM and PhysX plug-ins

Reading Autodesk’s press release, Maya 2012’s new features struck us initially as underwhelming.

Later, however, more details emerged and the prospect seemed rosier.

With the new release now available, it isn’t immediately clear where Maya 2012 sits on the scale ranging from ‘must-have upgrade’ to ‘maybe wait for the next release’.

Maya 2011 brought substantial improvements to the existing toolset, including a fantastic overhaul of the skinning system; new features like the Camera Sequencer and Viewport 2.0; and, of course, a new look with the versatile Qt interface.

Over the following year, a lot of initial bugs and glitches were ironed out of 2011: the last update was extremely solid.

It’s been reported that there’s an effort within Autodesk to improve communication and co-operation between the separate development teams working on its 3D and compositing applications.

It’s not surprising that this has resulted in all the 2012 releases benefiting from greater interoperability, as well as (for the first time) their simultaneous release.

Interoperability

A large part of Maya 2012’s attraction is its increased ability to exchange data with Softimage, MotionBuilder and Mudbox – we’ll look at this later on. But if you are staying within Maya, with no need to shunt data around, or you favour ZBrush over Mudbox, what else is on offer?

Viewport 2.0 has been given a huge boost, and has now become viable as a viewport for working in (as it shows most manipulators and tools), as well as a render option with the addition of Hardware 2.0 to the render globals.

Anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, motion blur and depth of field are all supported, and though there are still many limitations, it will be of use in some situations.

To try this out, we set up a scene to render in Viewport 2.0, using a workstation with a standard Nvidia gaming card.

It was easy at first to work quickly, but when the scene became more complex with lots of lights, Maya would have to stop and think for a couple of minutes upon reloading the scene or after dropping in and out of Viewport 2.0.

Also supported in Viewport 2.0 is Ptex, Disney’s system for texturing without the hassle of UVs.

This is obviously a good development, but Ptex is not supported anywhere else in Maya, including mental ray and software rendering.

Rendering and modelling

Other than Viewport 2.0, rendering has had limited development in Maya 2012.

There has been a lot of online discussion about iray, a new interactive render system from the creator of mental ray, and whether it would make it into Maya 2012.

It hasn’t, although it’s already in 3ds Max 2011.

In the 2012 editions of Softimage and Max, mental ray has several improvements, particularly a new Unified Sampling method that reportedly offers large speed increases in some situations.

This has been implemented but is not exposed in Maya 2012.

Any Maya user wishing to experiment with these settings will have to try searching the Maya forums to obtain a short MEL script to activate this feature.

mental ray now supports vector displacements, so rather than simply displacing outward from the surface normal, displacements can now curve away and form overhangs.

Also introduced are node-based render passes in the Hypershade, which are a welcome addition.

It’s now possible to do basic composites using Hypershade nodes. We’re not entirely convinced of the need for this within Maya when Maya Composite (formerly Toxik) is included in the package as standard; but it could be handy for 3D operators who don’t wish to learn a whole new application to quickly check their render passes before handing off to a compositor.

Substance Procedural Textures, meanwhile, are a set of pre-built surfaces that can be easily applied and tweaked, although they must be baked to work with mental ray.

New to the modelling tools is Interactive Split, which can be drawn across multiple edges.

There are some issues with this that will hopefully be ironed out in future releases, and you might sometimes favour the old Split tool: at first it seems this has vanished, but thankfully it’s still there in the Polygon Marking Menu.

There are also new tools for projecting and splitting polygon models with curves, which has previously only been possible with NURBS surfaces.

Extrude Face can now generate a curve automatically, and there are new sliders for several tools – Bevel and Extrude, for example.

Animation & dynamics

New animation features include – somewhat late to the party – editable motion trails, something many other 3D apps have had for years and that users have been crying out for.

It seems to have been implemented well, greatly helping the visualisation of an object’s trajectory, and allowing the moving of keyframes in 3D space – although it doesn’t display ticks to show key spacing, only actual keyframes.

Further animation developments include additions to the Camera Sequencer, with a new Ubercam that outputs all the shots though one master camera, and a Playlist window for efficient shot management.

The Graph Editor has been updated to resemble other Autodesk products.

A new Auto Tangent type produces very nice curves by default, and should save animators a lot of time editing curves.

HumanIK has been further unified with MotionBuilder: the older FBIK is now gone, and rigs can be sent straight to MotionBuilder.

Two new HumanIK windows have been introduced: the Characterization Tool, to speed up mapping a skeleton to a HumanIK rig; and Character Controls, for quickly selecting parts when animating, or pinning and adjusting Reach and Pull settings.

Keyframing and retargeting tools have been greatly improved.

If you create the joints using the Skeleton Generator, speedily map them to a HumanIK rig with the Characterization Tool, and finally skin the character with the rigging features introduced in Maya 2011, it’s impressive how quickly a good rig can be achieved.

Also added is the Craft Animations plug-in, providing rigged models for two cars and two planes that can be used for your own vehicles, as well as several camera rig set-ups that seek to emulate natural camera motions.

 

nDynamics and Fluid Effects both see multi-threaded performance improvements.

Fluid Effects has new features focusing on liquid simulation and mesh output, including a new method for pouring and splashing.

Local gravity has been added to nDynamics, and there is now a collection of Effect Assets presets in the Visor, which feature various prefabricated effects that act as good starting points for customisation.

They also present you with fewer controls, focusing only on the relevant attributes.

nCloth gains rigid shells to enhance rigid object simulation, and many more existing attributes like Damp and Drag are now paintable.

nCloth also benefits from solver threading to improve overall performance.

Added extras

Quite a large part of this release depends on the inclusion of third-party plug-ins.

We’ve already mentioned Craft Animations and Substance Textures, but there’s also Nvidia’s PhysX plug-in, plus a limited version of Digital Molecular Matter, which simulates the shattering and destruction of objects.

The version included here only solves up to 1,500 tetrahedrals: when you exceed this, a window pops up with a link to the website where you can buy the full version.

The inclusion of plug-ins can be a great thing if the tools are as good as DMM – but when they are limited versions, their presence seems more to do with padding out the new feature list.

It would be far more encouraging, for example, to see more refinement and expansion of the already great Nucleus simulation system.

 

Let’s return finally to the subject we began with: interoperability.

If you have other Autodesk 2012 applications installed, you will find a Send To option for each supported package (currently Softimage, MotionBuilder and Mudbox) in the File menu.

Send To Softimage is of particular interest, as it enables interoperability with ICE, Softimage’s much-praised nodal dynamics system.

We tried sending some Maya test scenes to Softimage and most, though not all, elements were successfully transferred, but this is a promising start for the first version of this translation system.

For studios and individuals who will be using this new interoperability, Maya 2012 is a worthy upgrade.

If not, there is probably enough besides this to qualify as an attractive upgrade. But only just.

Verdict

PROS

• Interoperability with Softimage, MotionBuilder and Mudbox

• Viewport 2.0 has far more features

• Streamlined HumanIK has great retargeting tools

CONS

• Limited versions of third-party plug-ins

• mental ray integration has not improved

• Mac version still not as robust as Windows

Maya 2012 is a useful update if you are a studio or individual user with multiple Autodesk products.

But the much maligned mental ray integration is now falling further behind Max and Softimage.