Alias' ultimate 3D powerhouse program, Maya, has now reached version 7.0, seemingly following right on from v6.5 which was only released in febuary of this year! Here's a small snippet of new features, plucked from an utterly HUGE list...<br>
<table width="90%" align="center" border="0"><tr><td><p align="justify">
· A powerful Toon Shader supports a wide range of non-photorealistic rendering styles and features interactive previews in near real-time. Maya Paint Effects™ also benefits from the real-time mesh preview.
· Maya Fur is integrated with Maya's dynamic curve technology, allowing realistic dynamics to be applied, and Fur and Hair to be used together easily.
· Maya Hair can be transplanted from one model to another, and it delivers support for texture mapping of attributes such as baldness and color. Hair can also be rendered directly in mental ray for Maya.
· Numerous enhancements to Maya Cloth extend the usability and power of this production-proven tool.
· Per-object attributes and support for transparency bring new creative possibilities to the Maya vector renderer.
· New polygon modeling functionality enhances modeling productivity and provides greater control over form.
· Faster, easier texturing is made possible with powerful new UV tools.
· New and enhanced tools are available for scene optimization without loss of detail—particularly valuable to game developers.</td></tr></table>
And the list goes on for quite some time! Maya Complete 7 can be purchased for $1999 from the
Alias site, with Maya Unlimited 7 priced at $6999. The free Maya Personal Learning Edition for Mac and Windows remains available, although currently for version 6.