National Geographic Magazine used both Maya and StudioTools to create this forensic reconstruction of the famous Kennewick Man skull. © 2000 National Geographic Society.

Enhancements to animation are plentiful. The new Jiggle deformer is a great way to add secondary motion such as floppy ears or a wiggling belly. Motion trails give you a trajectory spline for an object's animation (they are informational only; you can't edit them). Perhaps one of the most important animation changes is the new FK/IK switcher. This allows you to animate an arm, say, using both forward and inverse kinematics. Sometimes you just can't get the pose exactly right with IK, but you don't want the tedium of a full FK animation. You may now keyframe the switch between the two systems.

In the modeling arena, sub-division surfaces have continued to evolve. You may now create Sub-D primitives, instead of first making a polygon or NURBS primitive and then converting it. Texture UV commands now work directly on Sub-D objects, as do the paint selection tools. Maya 4 has definitely stepped up the commitment to sub-division surfaces.

Maya takes on a painterly look in DYGRA: The Living Forest. © DYGRA © 2001.

On the rendering and shading fronts there are some very cool new features and fixes. If you have ever used Illusion the Magic of Pixels (www.coolfun.com), you will be interested in the new Maya Sprite Wizard. This tool lets you create particle systems using lots of individual 2D sprites (like snowflakes or leaves) that can grow, rotate, decay and spawn other sprites. It is a quick and fun way to generate particle effects with a stylized look. The Hypershader has been overhauled; gone is the visor, in is a new thumbnail browser. The renderer is now much better at keeping bump maps looking good at the terminator of an object and deals with texture correction more effectively when objects like roads run off into the distance. The addition of a Display Render Globals window button to the status line is terrific.

These things probably don't seem like major features, but overall, Alias|Wavefront has listened to user feedback and built a very solid, easier-to-use Maya.

John Edgar Park is a 3D animator, instructor and writer based in Los Angeles. He received his B.A. in Drama from the University of Virginia.