More info on Maya 6
 

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=138662

Is it just me, or are they pumping these out like mad.

Have to save up to upgrade=)

Good think that I never left 4.5 :D hehe

Alias has officialy announced Maya 6 in their website -
I get the impression that they have'nt much to tell -

in the New in Maya 6 for architecture page - they listed no new feature - do they think we are a bunch of fools ?


BTW their "Detailed list of new in Maya 6" PDF is only 12 pages long whereas 3DMAX 6 had 72 pages (or was it 152 ?)

no description of new features except for some - do we really need Browser iontegration ? Should we pay so much for so little ?

I doubt..


NIR

but it's new... new things are instantly better than old things...

At least they have a fancy box design - which is something I really like !

:-\

MR now renders FUR and paintFX,
MR can do IPR with FG GI etc...
a new FUR creation node.
and much more.
i wonder how much to update..... as if we have learned all of maya 5.0 already!!! oh well, i think i'll wait for maya 7.0 or until i have money to blow in an upgrade....
i'll stick to 5.0

These upgrades just keep coming....once you finally buy one version, the new one gets released.....Glad to hear about Maya 6.....Sounds like it is going to be a good one!

there are a bunch of little upgrades. So little that if they had been Microsoft we would be calling this a free service pack. On the other hand, it's the little things that make life better ;) I'm kinda exited about the new curve editing tools (straight and lock lenght), and being able to use the mouse wheel (not to dolly in 3D, I don't like that, but in the 2D windows it's exactly what I wanted).
I think the design of the previous box was way cooler, but that's just me.
And I'll probably skip this version too, because I'm still trying to buy me a workstation :p

Also, I'm a noobie, so I can't have much of an opinion in advanced stuff like hair and fur. But hey, it's still sounds pretty cool to me to have mental ray renderable fur, and to have a hair plugin, every body else does, why shouldn't maya?

this is terrible! get your act together alias, softimage are releasing xsi4 at the same time and the upgrade from 3.5 to 4 is actually worthwhile, more than i can say for maya 5 to 6 :(

i think too, maya 6 is to early ... the should have made this a maya 5.2 or something ...

its not worth a new number ...

but i don´t care ... with anual maintenance i get it anyway ... so, just hope the will release a maya 7 within my contract as well ;)

Personally, I think there are some good features in this upgrade. Integrated browser is going to be handy for me (asset management, documentation, etc). From the OS X front, the port to a Mach-O application is a big deal. I don't think it deserves a new version number nor the $900 price tag, but, then again, my job will pay for it. :)

More Maya 6 info - an interview with Shai Hinitz from Alias:


http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfe...sp?newsid=2721


Nir

They should just call it 5.5.

hey guys

There has been hundreads of upgrades done all over the package. I will try to list a as much as I can think of.

obviously everyone has heard about the Long hair feature. This can be used many more ways. you Can make any nurbs curve dynamic. eg. you can turn a spline IK in your character dynamic and it will give a great flow when being animated like a bees legs or an octapuss.

The soft modification tool is great. this will allow you pick any point on your poly mesh and pull scale and control falloff of the modification. There is also little widgets in the attribute editor that allow you control the taper of the falloff

char animation - huge update. basically trax was re done. UI is very easy to use and understand you can trim clips, cycle, scale hold and also you can lock clips mute and solo. you can crete clips from expressions and contraints. also import multiple audio tracks into trax. many more updates.

you can now retarget animation from on skeleton to another. trust me this is awesome. the two skeletons can be completely different and it will still work. Also label your joints in viewport
You can also now redirect your skeleton

in the hypergraph you can now move animation curves with a falloff or select multiple curves and apply a lattice to them. This is great with mocap data.

you can now apply deformers to particles and you can control falloff on lattice

the hypershade now has all the mental ray shaders integrated into it. you can create bins to organize your shaders. Also there is a text box to search for shaders and more stuff available here

PSD file integration. You can create PSD files in maya and also save out the UV snap shot into the PSD file. you can select which channels you want to map and this will create layer folders in the PSD file.

wow im getting tired already...

for MR rendering now... IPR is working. Fur, fluids now render. Countour integration in the mental ray globals. image based lighting and you can see the image in the viewport. Photon and final gathering visualization maps. Render blurry reflections and refractions. GLOW is working. and more

general texture stuff including DDS support and PNG formats. you can also bake normals on your poly mesh.

some modeling features are polygon mirror cut, vertex normal edit, PFX on polys also you can convert nurbs to polys as a single mesh.

Tones of updates to file referencing have been done. load and unload refrences in viewport. you can control which references will load when scene opens. automatically crete anotations and locators with references and many more

web panel in the viewport is now supported and you can actually have mel scripts in your html. full java support uses mozilla.

you can also crete multiple cloth caches and view and blend between them. see stress areas of your cloth also

sorry guys got to go very busy but trust me when I say this is a huge release for Maya. I only listed things that came to my head but there is so much more guys. TXS!

sorry for the spelling mistakes, I wrote this quickly and please if you guys have any questions ask away and I should be able to answer.

Roach

THX for taking the time to list those features but STILL I think this is not a worthwhile upgrade for many people like me who want more modeling power - I for one , do not do animation and I have Maya Complete so hair Fur and such - mean nothing to me , but Alias will force me to upgrade in the next release (7).


Only modeling tool Alias has added is the polygon mirror cut feature that looks like a programmer's excersize more than a real life usefull tool.

If you look at the digication website you'll see many needed tools ideas that are much simpler to program but Alias declines to add them.

I already have Mental ray in my Maya 4.5 so why bother ?


Maya has the potential to take over 3DMAX 6 in the architecture modeling area by simply improving on not many features but it seems that they don't want it so badly.

GRRRR.....

it's ok now that alias have been taken over I'm sure they will be liquidated before long and we will not have any more upgrades of maya (at least then they wont do a new release every 6months!) ;)

argh ... i've only just ordered Maya 5. It hasn't even arrived yet.

cancel the order quick?

I think you are liable for Maya version 6

if you bought Maya in April you should be fine.

I think I did forget to mention the bevel tools actually has great use know. We have added extra functionality to it.

Also being free from SGI will definetly help out in the future.

Do you mean baking down normal maps? As in, from a hi-res model to a lo-res for example? If so, that's freaky awesome! :D

yes Mike. transfer surface information from a hires mesh to low res. this will create a normal map with all your funky red, blue, yellow color map for your game engine. you can export it as dds and also see a preview in the viewport.

This is a huge feature. you can apply it in tanget space mode or world space mode. Unfortunetly I don't I can post pics yet but will do so as soon as possible. or you can PM me mike if you wish to see it.

sounds good to me roach!

Thanks for the info mate.

yeah and the byrons poly tools are called smooth transform and they promise it works even better...

this seems to be the release of the fixes of things that should have worked from 4.5 +inclusions of plugins that were arround +automation of old techniques... wich is great... but where are the new toys?

And since i dont seem to see it in no paper... paintfx will be rendered directly in mr(autoconverted to polys just for that) or u still have to convert em before and bear with them in the viewport?

Holy freaking cow, that's fantastic! Almost worth the cost of purchase right there for me. :D :)

Yay! No more exporting to Max to bake a normal map. :)

quick someone stop mike from drolling all over his keyboard :D

Yes, so now you can get baked in maya alone. ;)

the lock curve length tool as well solves a big problem i got ...

:)

yeah, once again, maya is just great ... what if microsoft office, or even Windows was in a way like maya ...

the lock curve is part of the new long hair system. So guys if you dont have Maya Unlimited you are out of luck. This feature is awesome and works really fast.

are we talking about the same ?
->attached image ...
if its really only in maya Unlimited, then GRRRRRR - even so, i got a maya Unlimited too, there is NO reason to but such a tool in the unlimited version ....

but lets see ... ;)

lol maya 6 rocks. i havent figured out how to do hair yet, but it has paint effects hair and I figured out how to use that and it looks pretty freaking shibby :) check it out :P

Hey, Roach, I PMd you. :)

let me look into it again. Sorry, I think you can make curves dynamic in MC only hair features are in MU


Mike for some odd reason I can't find the area to check messages in simplymaya. Is it still there? if not maybe MSN will work

Should be at the top of the forum's main page. Feel free to IM me. :) Info in sig.

Just installed Maya 6 and checked out the "lock curve length" tool ... I gonna love that one !!