Maya 2008

This release includes many overall enhancements to support the integration of Maya into your production pipeline. New algorithmic and parallel optimizations give you improved performance throughout the application.

Maya continues to support the widest selection of hardware technologies and operating systems of any 3D package in the entertainment industry, including Windows Vista™.

Click the links on this page to get details of the features in this release.

You can search for all topics that are New and Updated in this release. For more information, see Maya Help overview.



General

There are many enhancements in this release that help make you more productive, including the ViewCube™, new Channel Box menu items, and hotkey toggles for Artisan brushes, along with many performance enhancements.

* General
* Performance
* Artisan and Paint Effects





Modeling

Maya's suite of modeling tools have been enhanced, revised and fine-tuned to be faster and more precise. This release includes many polygon modeling improvements including the new Smooth Mesh Preview feature as well as a new Slide Edge Tool. Improvements have been made to the Crease Tool (including crease sets) and the Bevel feature now has improved UV assignment options. The Reduce, Extract, and Separate features have also been improved.

* Modeling
* UV Mapping





Animation, Character Setup, and Deformers

Character animators and technical directors will enjoy new levels of flexibility in their skinning and rigging workflows. This release includes animation enhancements such as curve templating, a new Smooth Skin Weights feature that automatically smooths the skin weights of a bound character, and improvements to bind poses, joint management, and Full Body IK. As well, there are Wrap and Polygon Sculpt deformer enhancements.

* Animation
* Character Setup
* Deformers





Simulation

nCloth updates include the nConstraint membership tool, dynamic wind, improved control over nCloth stretch, and many attribute presets and example files. In Hair and Fluid Effects, there are enhanced hair controls and improved oceans.

* nCloth
* Hair
* Fluid Effects





Rendering

Rendering has been extended through ongoing development efforts and the integration of the latest mental ray