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Maya (software)
Encyclopedia
Autodesk Maya commonly shortened to Maya, is 3D computer graphics software
that runs on Microsoft Windows
, Mac OS
and Linux
, originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation
(formerly Alias|Wavefront) and currently owned and developed by Autodesk, Inc.
It is used to create interactive 3D applications, including video games, animated film, TV series, or visual effects. The product is named after the Sanskrit
word Maya
( ), the Hindu
concept of illusion.
, PowerAnimator
and Alias Sketch!. The code was ported to IRIX
and animation features were added. The codename for this porting project was Maya. Walt Disney Feature Animation
collaborated closely with Maya's development during its production of Dinosaur
. Disney requested that the User interface
of the application be customizable so that a personalized workflow could be created. This was a particular influence in the open architecture of Maya, and partly responsible for it becoming so popular in the industry.
After Silicon Graphics Inc. acquired both Alias and Wavefront Technologies, Inc.
, Wavefront's next-generation technology (then under development) was merged into Maya. SGI's acquisition was a response to Microsoft Corporation acquiring Softimage, Co.. The new wholly owned subsidiary was named "Alias|Wavefront".
In the early days of development, Maya started with Tcl
as the scripting language, in order to leverage its similarity to a Unix shell language. But after the merger with Wavefront Sophia, the scripting language in Wavefront's Dynamation
, was chosen as the basis of MEL (Maya embedded language).
Maya 1.0 was released in February 1998. Following a series of acquisitions, Maya was bought by Autodesk in 2005. Under the name of the new parent company, Maya was renamed Autodesk Maya. However, the name "Maya" continues to be the dominant name used for the product.
for scientific and technical achievement for their development of Maya software.
In 2005, while working for Alias|Wavefront, Jos Stam shared an Academy Award for Technical Achievement
with Edwin Catmull and Tony DeRose for their invention and application of subdivision surfaces.
On February 8, 2008 Duncan Brinsmead, Jos Stam
, Julia Pakalns and Martin Werner
received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement
for the design and implementation of the Maya Fluid Effects system.
Users define a virtual workspace (scene) to implement and edit media of a particular project. Scenes can be saved in a variety of formats, the default being .mb (Maya Binary). Maya exposes a node graph architecture
. Scene elements are node
-based, each node having its own attributes and customization. As a result, the visual representation of a scene is based entirely on a network of interconnecting nodes, depending on each others information. For the convenience of viewing these networks, there is a dependency
and a directed acyclic graph
.
Fluid Effects
Classic Cloth
Fur
Hair
Maya Live
nCloth
nParticle
MatchMover
Composite
Camera Sequencer:
into runtime
. Outside these superficial uses of the language, user interaction is recorded in MEL, allowing even inexperienced users to implement subroutines. Scene information can thus be dumped
, extension .ma, editable outside Maya in any text editor
.
3D computer graphics software
3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery. This article covers only some of the software used.-Uses:...
that runs on Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation
Alias Systems Corporation
Alias Systems Corporation , headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was a software company that produced high-end 3D graphics software. The company was formed in 1995 when Silicon Graphics bought Alias Research, which was founded in 1983, and Wavefront Technologies, founded in 1984, then merged...
(formerly Alias|Wavefront) and currently owned and developed by Autodesk, Inc.
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...
It is used to create interactive 3D applications, including video games, animated film, TV series, or visual effects. The product is named after the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
word Maya
Maya (illusion)
Maya , in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us. Maya is the principal deity that manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality...
( ), the Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
concept of illusion.
Development
Maya was originally a next-generation animation product under development at Alias Research, Inc. based on code from The Advanced VisualizerThe Advanced Visualizer
The Advanced Visualizer , a 3D graphics software package, was the flagship product of Wavefront Technologies from the 1980s until the 1990s.-History:...
, PowerAnimator
PowerAnimator
PowerAnimator and Animator, also referred to simply as "Alias", the precursor to what is now Maya and StudioTools, was a highly-integrated industrial 3D modeling, animation, and visual effects suite. It has had a long track record, starting with Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 and ending in Star...
and Alias Sketch!. The code was ported to IRIX
IRIX
IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...
and animation features were added. The codename for this porting project was Maya. Walt Disney Feature Animation
Walt Disney Feature Animation
Walt Disney Animation Studios is an American animation studio headquartered in Burbank, California. The studio, founded in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio by brothers Walt and Roy Disney, is the oldest subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
collaborated closely with Maya's development during its production of Dinosaur
Dinosaur (film)
Dinosaur is a 2000 American computer-animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on May 19, 2000, and is the 39th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
. Disney requested that the User interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
of the application be customizable so that a personalized workflow could be created. This was a particular influence in the open architecture of Maya, and partly responsible for it becoming so popular in the industry.
After Silicon Graphics Inc. acquired both Alias and Wavefront Technologies, Inc.
Wavefront Technologies
Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold animation software used in Hollywood motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, by Bill Kovacs, Larry Barels, Mark Sylvester...
, Wavefront's next-generation technology (then under development) was merged into Maya. SGI's acquisition was a response to Microsoft Corporation acquiring Softimage, Co.. The new wholly owned subsidiary was named "Alias|Wavefront".
In the early days of development, Maya started with Tcl
Tcl
Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...
as the scripting language, in order to leverage its similarity to a Unix shell language. But after the merger with Wavefront Sophia, the scripting language in Wavefront's Dynamation
Dynamation (software)
Dynamation was a 3D computer graphics particle generator program sold by Wavefront to run on SGI's IRIX operating system. The core software was originally developed by Jim Hourihan while at Santa Barbara Studios, a visual effects company owned by effects pioneer John Grower...
, was chosen as the basis of MEL (Maya embedded language).
Maya 1.0 was released in February 1998. Following a series of acquisitions, Maya was bought by Autodesk in 2005. Under the name of the new parent company, Maya was renamed Autodesk Maya. However, the name "Maya" continues to be the dominant name used for the product.
Awards
On March 1, 2003, Alias was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with an Academy Award for Technical AchievementAcademy Award for Technical Achievement
The Technical Achievement Award is a kind of Scientific and Technical Award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to those whose particular technical accomplishments have contributed to the progress of the motion picture industry and who are given a certificate, which describes...
for scientific and technical achievement for their development of Maya software.
In 2005, while working for Alias|Wavefront, Jos Stam shared an Academy Award for Technical Achievement
Academy Award for Technical Achievement
The Technical Achievement Award is a kind of Scientific and Technical Award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to those whose particular technical accomplishments have contributed to the progress of the motion picture industry and who are given a certificate, which describes...
with Edwin Catmull and Tony DeRose for their invention and application of subdivision surfaces.
On February 8, 2008 Duncan Brinsmead, Jos Stam
Jos Stam
Jos Stam is a researcher in the field of computer graphics, focusing on subdivision surfaces, rendering algorithms and the simulation of natural physical phenomena.-Education and career:...
, Julia Pakalns and Martin Werner
Martin Werner
Martin Werner is a partner at Goldman Sachs, and director general of the firm's operations in Mexico.In 1994, Werner was appointed assistant director of telecommunications in Mexico's Zedillo administration. When the Mexican economy plummeted, the Ministry of Finance hired Werner as Undersecretary,...
received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement
Academy Award for Technical Achievement
The Technical Achievement Award is a kind of Scientific and Technical Award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to those whose particular technical accomplishments have contributed to the progress of the motion picture industry and who are given a certificate, which describes...
for the design and implementation of the Maya Fluid Effects system.
Overview
Maya is an application used to generate 3D assets for use in film, television, game development and architecture. The software was initially released for the IRIX operating system. However, this support was discontinued in August 2006 after the release of version 6.5. Maya was available in both "Complete" and "Unlimited" editions until August 2008, when it was turned into a single suite.Users define a virtual workspace (scene) to implement and edit media of a particular project. Scenes can be saved in a variety of formats, the default being .mb (Maya Binary). Maya exposes a node graph architecture
Node graph architecture
Node graph architecture is a type of software design which builds around modular node components which can be connected together to form a graph. Often the software's underlying node graph architecture is also exposed to the end user as a 2 dimensional visualization of the node graph...
. Scene elements are node
Node (computer science)
A node is a record consisting of one or more fields that are links to other nodes, and a data field. The link and data fields are often implemented by pointers or references although it is also quite common for the data to be embedded directly in the node. Nodes are used to build linked, often...
-based, each node having its own attributes and customization. As a result, the visual representation of a scene is based entirely on a network of interconnecting nodes, depending on each others information. For the convenience of viewing these networks, there is a dependency
Dependency graph
In mathematics, computer science and digital electronics, a dependency graph is a directed graph representing dependencies of several objects towards each other...
and a directed acyclic graph
Directed acyclic graph
In mathematics and computer science, a directed acyclic graph , is a directed graph with no directed cycles. That is, it is formed by a collection of vertices and directed edges, each edge connecting one vertex to another, such that there is no way to start at some vertex v and follow a sequence of...
.
Components
Since its consolidation from two distinct packages, Maya and later contain all the features of the now defunct Unlimited suites.Fluid Effects
- A realistic fluid simulator (effective for smoke, fire, clouds and explosions, added in Maya 4.5)
Classic Cloth
- Cloth simulation to automatically simulate clothing and fabrics moving realistically over an animated character. The Maya Cloth toolset has been upgraded in every version of Maya released after Spider-Man 2. Alias worked with Sony Pictures Imageworks to get Maya Cloth up to scratch for that production, and all those changes have been implemented, although the big studios opted to use third party plugins such as SyflexSyflexSyflex is one of the fastest and most powerful cloth simulators. It is being used by a wide range of creative companies and individuals, from big-name studios, to smaller special effects houses and independent animators. Syflex is available For Maya, Softimage, Houdini and LightWave....
instead of the (relatively) cumbersome Maya Cloth.
Fur
- Animal fur simulation similar to Maya Hair. It can be used to simulate other fur-like objects, such as grass.
Hair
- A simulator for realistic-looking human hair implemented using curves and Paint Effects. These are also known as dynamic curves.
Maya Live
- A set of motion tracking tools for CG matching to clean plate footage.
nCloth
- Added in version 8.5, nCloth is the first implementation of Maya Nucleus, Autodesk's simulation framework. nCloth gives the artist further control of cloth and material simulations.
nParticle
- Added in version 2009, nParticle is addendum to Maya Nucleus toolset. nParticle is for simulating a wide range of complex 3D effects, including liquids, clouds, smoke, spray, and dust.
MatchMover
- Added to Maya 2010, this enables compositing of CGI elements with motion data from video and film sequences.
Composite
- Added to Maya 2010, this was earlier sold as Autodesk ToxikAutodesk ToxikAutodesk Toxik is an interactive node based, film composing solution developed by Autodesk Media and Entertainment, a subsidiary of Autodesk, Inc. - Features :...
.
Camera Sequencer:
- Added in Autodesk Maya 2011, Camera Sequencer is used to layout multiple camera shots and manage them in one animation sequence.
Maya Embedded Language
Alongside its more recognized visual workflow, Maya is equipped with its very own cross-platform scripting language, fittingly called Maya Embedded Language. MEL, as it is often shortened to, is provided not only for scripting, but also as a means to customize the core functionality of the software, since many of the tools and commands used are written in it. Code can be used to engineer modifications, plug-ins or be injectedCode injection
Code injection is the exploitation of a computer bug that is caused by processing invalid data. Code injection can be used by an attacker to introduce code into a computer program to change the course of execution. The results of a code injection attack can be disastrous...
into runtime
Run-time system
A run-time system is a software component designed to support the execution of computer programs written in some computer language...
. Outside these superficial uses of the language, user interaction is recorded in MEL, allowing even inexperienced users to implement subroutines. Scene information can thus be dumped
Database dump
A database dump contains a record of the table structure and/or the data from a database and is usually in the form of a list of SQL statements. A database dump is most often used for backing up a database so that its contents can be restored in the event of data loss. Corrupted databases can often...
, extension .ma, editable outside Maya in any text editor
Text editor
A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
.
Operating systems
Autodesk supports the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms; XP SP3 or later, respectively. As of Maya 2011, the software is 64-bit under Mac OS X. On Linux, the supported distributions are Red Hat and Fedora, 64-bit. While Autodesk acknowledges that the application is not limited to the aforementioned releases, such as the specific Linux distributions, it does not support them.Hardware requirements
Autodesk has published system requirements to run Maya at adequate performance. Both specifications are identical for both x32 and x64 platforms.| Hardware | Spec |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel® Pentium® 4 or higher, AMD Athlon™ 64, AMD Opteron™ processor, AMD Phenom™ processor |
| Video card | Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL OpenGL OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL... graphics cards |
| Memory | 2 GB Gigabyte The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is... , 4 GB Gigabyte The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is... for 64-bit OS |
| Hard drive | 10 GB |
| Optical drive | DVD-ROM |
| Internet browser | Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers... |
See also
- 3D computer graphics software3D computer graphics software3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery. This article covers only some of the software used.-Uses:...
- AnimationAnimationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
- Comparison of 3D computer graphics softwareComparison of 3D computer graphics software3D computer graphics software refers to programs used to create 3D computer-generated imagery.-General information:This is a chart on basic comparative elements that is based on the raw software without the inclusion of additional plugins....
- List of Maya plugins
- Autodesk 3ds Max
- Autodesk Softimage
- Cinema 4DCinema 4DCINEMA 4D is a 3D modeling, animation and rendering application developed by MAXON Computer GmbH of Friedrichsdorf, Germany. It is capable of procedural and polygonal/subd modeling, animating, lighting, texturing, rendering, and common features found in 3d modelling applications.- Overview:The...
- ZBrushZBrushZBrush is a digital sculpting tool that combines 3D/2.5D modeling, texturing and painting. It uses a proprietary "pixol" technology which stores lighting, color, material, and depth information for all objects on the screen...
- BlenderBlender (software)Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, interactive 3D applications or video games. The current release version is 2.60, and was released on October 19, 2011...
Footnotes
- Maya 7 for Windows and Macintosh" by Danny Riddel, Morgan Robinson and Nathaniel Stein. Peachpit Press, 2006.
- Mel Scripting for Maya Animators" by Mark R. Wilkins and Chris Kazmier, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2005.
- Understanding Maya" by Sergey Tsiptsin, ArtHouse Media, 2007.
- YSYT - Maya MEL Basics for Designers" By Nicholas Pisca, 0001d Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-0-578-00988-9
- Maya Version History: http://www.toxik.sk/maya-startup-window-history