Alias/Wavefront has announced Maya Paint Effects. Paint Effects is a toolfor the instantaneous creation and animation of organic and painterlyeffects. Completely integrated inside of Maya, Paint Effects comes with amyriad of editable pressure-sensitive preset brushes including: EffectsBrushes which can create complete environments with trees, grass, andflowers, characters with realistic hair, eyebrows and beards, and specialeffects such as lightning, clouds, rain, fire, fireworks, starfields andsparks; and Natural Media Brushes which includes traditional painterlybrushes. Paint Effects, available this fall, will be a standard feature ofMaya 2.5 software in both Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited for MicrosoftWindows NT and Silicon Graphics IRIX workstations. Alias|Wavefront has alsoannounced Maya Builder. Maya Builder, a subset of Maya Complete, has beenoptimized to address the specific needs of level designers and programmersin the game and interactive title development community. Maya Builderincludes the polygonal modeling and texturing tools that are also includedin Maya Complete, Artisan features, MEL scripting and the full Maya API.Priced at US$2,995, Maya Builder is a cost-effective solution for games andinteractive title developers looking to standardize on Maya technologythroughout their games production pipeline. Maya Builder will be availablefor Microsoft Windows NT or IRIX as part of the release of Maya 2.5 thisfall. Maya Builder has a SRP of US$2,995. Maya Complete 2.5, Maya Unlimited2.5 and Maya Builder 2.5 are scheduled to ship in the fall of 1999. MayaComplete 2.5 has a SRP of US$7,500 and includes modeling, rendering,animation, dynamics, and Maya Artisan.
