Values, which won the Siggraph computer animation festival, was created using Maya and uses simple shapes to depict a story about parent-child relationships. © 2000 Van Phan.

Alias|Wavefront recently hosted a Maya 4 launch event to showcase the new features and fixes found in the latest version of this 3D animation powerhouse. While not a major feature release -- you won't see anything as radical as Artisan, Paint Effects or Trax were when they launched -- this "stabilization" release has many of the enhancements users have been asking for. It's only been a year since version 3, so what's changed?

First off, the user interface (UI). Nothing has been totally overhauled here, but there are differences. Along the left side of the UI there now resides the Toolbox (formerly named the Minibar), evicted from its former residence next to the Shelf. Just below the Toolbox are the Quick Layout buttons, which allow you to switch your panels and layouts quickly. To be honest, these changes seem to be aimed at making the interface friendlier to novices, rather than at helping the seasoned user (who probably uses marking menus, MEL scripts or hotkeys for this type of operation).

Kleiser-Walczak transformed David Kirk's 2-D oil paintings of Little Miss Spider into a stylized 3-D world. Maya was used for character and scene modeling as well as animation and rendering. Composer and After Effects were used for compositing. © 2001 Callaway & Kirk Company LLC. All rights reserved.

Other additions to the UI include a progress bar when opening files, a lasso selection tool, a "name#.ext" option for file names, the option to open the Attribute Editor in the Channel Box area, and a number of new HUD display options like a frames-per-second counter and Character name. These small details add up to an environment that can be nicely tailored to your particular working style, increasing your speed, efficiency and chances to spend time with friends and family.

Navigation and manipulation of objects has been improved with the inclusion of rotation snapping, object alignment, Edit > Invert Selection and...(drum roll please)...(finally)...ghosting/onion skinning. Now all your 3D Studio Max-using friends will stop picking on you! The way ghosting works is that you can choose a number of frames before or after your current frame for which you will see a copy of the character. These time-travelling iterations of your model have different wireframe colors to distinguish them from the genuine one, and you can set your frame spacing to fine-tune the feedback.