Autodesk announces new extension releases for Maya 2016 and 3ds Max 2016, and unveils a new 3D marketplace on Creative Market.
At the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference and Expo, being held August 11-13 in Los Angeles, CA, Autodesk announced the latest extension releases for its Maya 2016 and 3ds Max 2016 3D modeling, animation, VFX and rendering software, available to Autodesk Subscription customers beginning August 11 for 3ds Max and September 9 for Maya. Concurrently, the company unveiled the new 3D marketplace on Creative Market – its online platform for purchasing and selling custom content developed by artists. These solutions, along with Autodesk’s newly announced Stingray Game Engine, will be on display throughout SIGGRAPH, with additional resources available on AREA.
2016 M&E Extensions: 3D Content Creation Simplified
With new features designed to improve the artist experience, the extensions streamline complex animation tasks and accelerate the design, sharing, review and iteration of dynamic 3D content across every stage of the creative pipeline.
Autodesk Maya 2016 Extension 1:
- A brand new text tool makes it easier than ever to create branding, flying logos, title sequences, and other projects that require 3D text. 3D Type allows artists to create editable, non-destructive, multi-line, deformable type.
- Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) support helps artists bring 2D designs created in applications like Adobe Illustrator to life in a 3D environment.
- New procedural texture and image processing nodes in the Hypershade allow simplified development of more sophisticated looks
- Game exporter workflows have been simplified and streamlined, making it faster and easier to move from Maya to game engines such as Unity, Unreal and Autodesk Stingray. Artists can achieve an even better level of detail (LOD) when changing lens length or field of view with the inclusion of screen height percentage.
- Live linking between Maya and the Stingray game engine can update geometry, characters, and camera positions dynamically. Changes can be seen instantly in either tool, eliminating the need to re-export or manually replace assets in a scene.
Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 Extension 1:
- Geodesic Voxel and Heat Map solvers allow artists to create better skin weighting faster. New Max Creation Graph (MCG) Animation Controllers that provide procedural animation capabilities.
- A new Game Exporter allows artists to transfer models, animation takes and other data from 3ds Max into game engines like Unity, Unreal and Autodesk Stingray. ShaderFX has also been enhanced to support physically-based shaders in Stingray, ensuring visual consistency in booth tools.
- A new Live link between 3ds Max and Stingray allows design visualization experts to assess and review their designs in an interactive 3D environment.
- Introduces a powerful 3D text tool to build engaging visualizations: adding and animating data driven information to a scene has never been easier.
For more information on the Extensions, visit 3ds Max 2016 and Maya on Autodesk.com. The products will be demonstrated throughout SIGGRAPH on the exhibition floor and in Autodesk's speaker room (# 408A).
Creative Market 3D Marketplace Opens New Doors for 3D Artists
Creative Market, an online content marketplace acquired by Autodesk last year, is expanding its offerings with the debut of 3D content. The marketplace is currently home to nearly 9,000 shops selling more than 250,000 design assets to a community of more than one million members. Launched today, artists can now search, purchase and license high-quality 3D content created by designers around the world or upload and sell original 3D models on the site.
Source: Autodesk
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
