At SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference, Autodesk announced the latest extension releases for its products 3DS Max and Maya. The 3DS Max software has already been launched by Autodesk and Maya will be available for subscription to customers from 9 September. At the same time, the company unveiled the new 3D marketplace on Creative Market – Autodesk’s ecommerce platform for purchasing and selling custom content developed by artists. Autodesk’s newly announced Stingray Game Engine was also on display throughout SIGGRAPH.
Maya 2016 Extension 1 will have new features like a new text tool that will make it easier to create branding, flying logos, title sequences, and other projects that require 3D text. 3D Type allows artists to create editable, non-destructive, multi-line, deformable type. 2D designs created in applications like Adobe Illustrator can easily be turned into 3D elements using Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG). New procedural texture and image processing nodes in the Hypershade allow simplified development of more sophisticated looks. Game exporter workflows have been simplified and streamlined, making it faster and easier to move from Maya to other game engines. Live linking between Maya and the Stingray game engine can update geometry, characters, and camera positions dynamically. Changes can be seen instantly in either tool, eliminating the need to re-export or manually replace assets in a scene.
3DS Max Extension 1 provides Geodesic Voxel and Heat Map solvers that allow artists to create better skin weighting. A new Live link between 3ds Max and Stingray allows design visualisation experts to assess and review their designs in an interactive 3D environment. Marc Hamaker, Autodesk’s senior industry marketing manager for media and entertainment, reassured users that Autodesk will continue to support other game engines despite the recent launch of Autodesk’s Stingray engine. “Having our own engine helps us understand [other] engines a little better,” he said. This also offers a new Game Exporter to allow artists to transfer models, animation takes and other data from 3DS Max into other game engines like Unity, Unreal and Autodesk Stingray. The new extension also introduces a powerful 3D text tool to build engaging visualizations: Autodesk claimed that adding and animating data driven information to a scene has never been easier.
Creative Market which was acquired by Autodesk last year is a marketplace for digitally-designed content like fonts, icons, photos and templates. It is expanding its offerings with the debut of 3D content. The marketplace is currently home to nearly 9,000 shops selling more than 250,000 design assets to a community of more than one million members. Artists can now search, purchase and license high-quality 3D content created by designers around the world or upload and sell original 3D models on the site.
