New features

Accelerated Performance The integration of new technology into the software’s Adaptive Degradation System improves interactive performance by automatically simplifying scene display to meet a user-defined target frame rate. Scene Explorer Scene Management 3ds Max 2008 delivers Scene Explorer, a robust new tool that provides you with a hierarchical view of scene data and fast scene analysis, along with editing tools that facilitate working with even the most complex, object-heavy scenes. Review This powerful new toolset gives you immediate feedback on various render settings, enabling you to iterate rapidly. MAXScript ProEditor 3ds Max 2008 marks the debut of the new MAXScript ProEditor. This intuitive new interface for working with MAXScript includes multilevel undo functionality; fast, high-quality code colorization; rapid opening of large documents; line number display; regular expressions in search/replace; folding of sections of the script; support for user customization; and many other features. Enhanced DWG Import 3ds Max 2008 delivers faster, more accurate importing of DWG™ files. Significantly improved memory management enables you to import large, complex scenes with multiple objects in considerably less time. Artist-Friendly Modeling Options 3ds Max 2008 gives you a more streamlined, artist-friendly modeling workflow through a collection of hands-on modeling options that let you focus more on the creative process. Biped Enhancements This latest release provides you with new levels of flexibility with regard to your Biped rigs. Expanded Platform Support 3ds Max 2008 is the first full release of the software officially compatible with Microsoft® Windows Vista™ 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems and the Microsoft DirectX® 10 platform.

View the 3dsmax Technical Specifications PDF to see the complete list of all the new features. Visit Autodesk's 3dsmax showcase

Games

Autodesk's award-winning 3ds max® software is the world’s most productive animation environment for creating and editing game assets. Game developers choose 3ds max software for its easy-to-use and highly customizable interface, which offers the flexibility to create fast workflows that suit the preferences of their facility and artists while meeting the very specific needs of each engine and target platform.

Design and visualisation

3ds max® software delivers the advanced animation and rendering capabilities today’s most progressive design visualization experts demand. Complementing Autodesk® VIZ technology, 3ds max software combines a strong visual effects engine with a deep animation toolset—including sub-object animation, particle systems, advanced rendering, and character animation—that can handle even the most demanding mechanical assembly and spectacularly rendered architecture visualizations.

Film and television

With more solutions to modeling, texturing, animating and rendering than any other professional 3D package, 3ds max® offers production artists and technical directors a highly creative, flexible approach to building film-quality effects. Designed as a highly productive 3D solution for distributed workflows, 3ds max integrates perfectly into existing film effects pipelines, and has the scripting and SDK depth required to build and integrate seamless custom production tools.

Highlights

1-Click parametric skeletons: Artists can generate ready-to-animate, parametric character rigs extremely fast, removing the costly setup times associated with hand-building IK associations and joint constraints.

Kinematic blending: Forward and Inverse Kinematics can be used together on the same character to enable animators to use the approach best suited to the task at hand. IK Blend tools allow for hands and feet to have weighted attachments to scene objects – this makes throwing and catching a ball, rowing a boat, or dancing with another character easier than ever.

Features

• Global Illumination simulates light interreflection within a scene
• Caustics render the effects of light cast on an object via reflection or refraction through another object
• Soft ray-traced shadows provide accurate soft shadows generated from area lights
• Vector motion blur creates superior 3D-based motion blurs
• Depth of field simulates a real-world camera lens
• A powerful shading language provides flexible programming tools to create shaders
• High-performance network rendering supports almost any existing hardware

New features

New and Enhanced Modeling Tools and Workflows Maya 2008 introduces considerable performance improvements and a number of new features that will make modeling workflows significantly more efficient. Faster, More Accurate Viewport / Hardware Rendering Truly WYSIWYG interactive previews are several steps closer now that the Maya hardware rendering engine supports layered textures, multiple UV sets, negative lighting, and object space normal maps. Support for DirectX HLSL Shaders Maya 2008 can let you effectively create and display sophisticated looks for content destined for the next-generation game consoles. Nondestructive Skin Editing Animators and animation technical directors usually find it necessary to work iteratively on their rigged characters. Maya 2008 now streamlines iterative skinning workflows by enabling you to modify the skeleton of a bound character, without having to rebind it after, thus preserving any work done after the skeleton was bound. API Enhancements Game developers can now more easily write high-performance hardware shading plug-ins for Maya using the new API for hardware shaders. This API includes native support for OpenGL and DirectX shaders, built-in support for shader parameters, and direct access to the Maya rendering cache. mental ray 3.6 Core Maya 2008 uses the latest mental ray 3.6 core, a release that boasts dramatic performance improvements in the translation of polygon meshes and instances for rendering, as well as for IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Rendering) startup. Expanded Platform Support Support for Windows Vista™ operating system has been added, that enables you to take advantage of the performance capabilities of this recent technology.

View the Maya Brochure PDF to see the complete list of all the new features. Visit Autodesk's Maya showcase

Maya Complete

Autodesk® Maya® Complete comprehensive 3D software solution is designed especially for producing professional-quality graphics on desktop PCs or graphics workstations. It integrates all of the best tools for 3D modeling, animation, and rendering within a single, production-proven workflow. Maya Complete—the choice of award-winning digital artists and animators—has an intuitive design that makes it a favorite amongst film, broadcast, game development, multimedia (print and web), and design visualization artists of all experience levels.

Maya Unlimited

The world's most powerful 3D animation and visual effects software and the ultimate version of Maya® Experience industry-leading innovations for the creation of advanced digital content. Maya Unlimited includes all of the integrated tools and functionality in Maya Complete and adds these industry leading innovations: Maya Fluid Effects™; Maya Cloth; Maya Hair; Maya Fur, and Maya Live.