No, it is not the end of civilization. It is the latest release of the 2012 Autodesk super software mashup, where according to the website you can save 42% off the cost of buying each software separately. The big news with Premium is they have added Softimage to the bundle. You now get Face Robot for dealing with complex face rigging, the simply incredible ICE visual programming system and the much talked about and drooled over Lagoa Multiphysics dynamic solver system written in ICE. I know what you're thinking: I have not used Softimage since Maya 1.0 came out, why would I now? Well, Autodesk made it easy to add its very powerful toolset to the pipeline with one click Send To functions letting you push and pull data between the other suite software via the updated .FBX format. Also helpful are the Maya navigation and hotkeys for a quick transition. Want to use ICE to make amazing effects and send it over to Maya? No problem. I think it is time to add some Softimage artists to your "to be hired" list if you haven't done it yet.

 

Maya, MotionBuilder and Mudbox have not been left behind and have some interesting, helpful and also long overdue improvements. What I am personally excited about is the further push to streamline the animation and motion capture editing process with the unification of the HumanIK solver and UI between MotionBuilder and Maya.

Not everything is sunshine and mocha triple shot lattes, as many users know, because for every extra or new feature added, something somewhere is broken. With the unification of Suite mode, be sure to, as always, test your workflows and existing files out. As of this writing, there have been hot fix releases for most of the 2012 software. The nice thing is that the new 2012 hot fix patches install faster and don't require an uninstall first, as they used to do for previous versions.

As my areas of interest and work are character rigging, animation and motion editing, I will naturally focus on these.

Maya 2012
Having rigged a few bits of clothing and trench coats over the years, I'm excited to see the NVIDIA PhysX plug-in with Apex Clothing now included with Maya. Sorry to say that PhysX for Maya is available only for Windows.

The DMM (Digital Molecular Matter) plug-in for Maya from Pixelux Ent. is also now included, and since there is always a need for something to be blown up, shattered or broken and the DMM plug-in is a huge step up from the existing shatter tools previously included in Maya. These are not enabled by default, so the first place you will need to go will be to the Plugin Manager to turn them on. Simulation tools take some time to get used to and I look forward to the chance to test them out further in the future. The less trench coats I have to rig by hand, the better.

A minor update that I was most excited to have (I found it is not on by default either) was also the one I wanted to test first. It is the unfortunately obtusely named Selection type effects active option. The help file says, "When on, this option backs up your component selection when you switch selection type, and restores the type that you are switching to."