#AUTODESK MAYA 2014 HELP UPDATE#
The update lets games artists see their assets in context via the new Maya ‘ubershader’: an HLSL shader that supports many attributes of current-gen games, including vector displacement and real-time reflections. Like 3ds Max 2014, Maya’s viewport now supports DirectX 11, enabling a range of advanced display options, and exposing DirectX 11 natively to Maya. Surrounding meshes can be set up as collision geometry or given a Surface Attract value: for example, to cause objects to displace or attract Paint Effects vegetation.Īrtists also get more control over the way vegetation flows over a surface via new Occupation Surface options and a Surface Snap checkbox, creating more realistic-looking results.Ĭharacter artists get a Snap To Projected Center option for the Joint Tool, which finds the centre of the body part being rigged: a user can place joints in the Top view and have Maya position them automatically on the Y-axis. The Paint Effects toolset receives its first update in a while, with new options to control how Paint Effects strokes react with surfaces, volumes or one another. The workflow is based around two new types of node: Assembly Definition and Assembly Reference.Īssembly Definition nodes act as containers for different representations of an object, ranging from fully textured geometry through a lighter, non-editable GPU Cache to a simple locator.įurther control over level of detail can be achieved via the Convert Geometry to Bounding Box options.Īrtists can set the default display level for each Assembly Definition individually or toggle between levels via the Outliner, Attribute Editor, or by right-clicking in the viewport.Īssembly Definitions can then be linked via Assembly References, creating lightweight, easily navigable representations of complex scenes: the video above shows a 70kb file that represents a 3.5GB dataset.Īlso aimed at managing complex scenes, the new File Path Editor helps diagnose and fix unresolved file paths to external assets, including textures, references, audio nodes and image planes. Layout artists also get the benefit of the new scene assembly options, which are designed to enable users to manage very large scenes, toggling between display levels on the fly. The video at the top of the story also shows a number of other new tools, and is worth watching in full. Selection options have been increased, with options to store vertex, edge and face selections simultaneously while middle-mouse-dragging lets you tweak the positions of vertices or edges without making a selection first. There is an improved mesh-decimation algorithm, with options to apply a given percentage reduction in poly count, or to achieve a given vertex or triangle count and to do so on a per-component basis. However, a lot of other digitalRaster tools have been added, including new Bevel, Bridge and Connect options, and a useful-looking Multi-Cut tool for creating edge loops more quickly.
Of the new tools, arguably the ones that most Maya users will use most often are the new modelling options, which are derived from digitalRaster’s NEX plugin.Īutodesk previewed some of these in a sneak peek video, which showed the new Quad Draw tool in use to retopologise a character. Autodesk has announced the new features of Maya 2014 in the run up to tomorrow’s live Unfold event.
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