At the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference and Expo, being held Aug. 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 today 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.
Autodesk Maya 2016 Extension 1 is a new text tool designed to make it easier 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 in Autodesk Maya 2016 Extension 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 in Autodesk Maya 2016 Extension 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’s 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 in Autodesk 3ds Max 2016 Extension 1 between 3ds Max and Stingray allows design visualization experts to assess and review their designs in an interactive 3D environment. It also introduces a 3D text tool to build engaging visualizations.
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).
