Alias|Wavefront, an SGI company, is shipping Maya 2 for Microsoft Windows NT and Silicon Graphics IRIX workstations. Maya 2 includes a number of feature enhancements, timesaving workflow improvements, and across-the-board performance optimizations for 3D animation and visual effects. New features include Wavefront IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Renderer), a rendering technology that allows users to edit lights, shaders, textures and visual effects in a final rendered image. New workflow improvements include support for polygons in Maya Artisan, Maya software's brush sculpting tool, and the addition of a new shader creation environment called Maya HyperShade. Other new features include a "pose-based" character interface and new skinning techniques to streamline production workflow in a way that is familiar to traditional animators. Maya Complete 2, available for Windows NT or IRIX, has a SRP of US$7,500 and includes modeling, rendering, animation, dynamics, Artisan, MEL (an embedded scripting language) and a well-documented API that provides an open interface for programming in Maya. Maya Unlimited 2, available on Windows NT or IRIX, has a SRP of US$16,000 and includes Maya Complete 2, Maya Live, Maya Fur, Maya Cloth, additional batch rendering capability and the new integrated Advanced Modeling functionality.
