Autodesk Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2013

Autodesk has recently showed off the new line of Media and Entrainment packages with 2013 updates to Autodesk Maya 2013, Autodesk 3ds MAX 2013, Autodesk Softimage 2013, Autodesk MotionBuilder 2013, Autodesk MudBox 2013, and Autodesk Flame 2013 in a media event that set the focus on Autodesk’s larger picture roadmap to cloud technologies as well as smaller and more portable tools to enhance desktop tools which would be aimed to liberate some workflows from desktop computers.

Autodesk Maya 2013 features include:

Enhancements to workflow with:

• Viewport 2.0 Enhancements: Evaluate your work in a higher fidelity interactive environment in order to make better creative decisions.
• New Node Editor: Create, edit, and debug node networks more easily with the new Node Editor.
• File Referencing Workflow Enhancements: Segment your scenes more easily, to work in parallel and better manage complexity, thanks to targeted improvements to both the user interface and the underlying architecture for file referencing.
• Heat Map Skinning: Enjoy a more accurate initial binding of geometry to skeletons, thanks to a new Heat Map Skinning method that is better able to assign skin to the intended bone as opposed to an adjacent but unrelated one and requires less manual refinement.

New Features in Dynamics:

• Bullet Physics: Simulate both soft and rigid bodies in a single system, with the high-performance open source AMD Bullet Physics engine.
• Maya nHair: Create stunning, highly realistic hair and other curve-based dynamics with the new Maya^® nHair module for the Maya^® Nucleus unified simulation framework.
• Alembic Caching: Read and write the Alembic open source computer graphics interchange framework format, co-developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd.

… and Animation Improvements:

• HumanIK Enhancements: Gain the ability to map and retarget Autodesk® HumanIK® animation to and from a custom rigged character; a unified character context for increased usability; character views that can be customized to fit specific requirements; continuous rig alignment during manipulation and playback; and greater control over Roll Bone influences. Graph Editor Enhancements: Enjoy the increased efficiency resulting from a new interactive Retime tool, and a stepped preview mode for pose-to-pose animation in the Graph Editor.
• Trax Clip Matching: Visualize how Trax clips overlap in order to build complete character performances from individual animations.
• ATOM Animation Transfer: Transfer animation between characters via the new ATOM (Animation Transfer Object Model) offline file format, in order to repurpose existing animation data as new characters are created.