maya 2012 test

(a quick Maya 2012 playblast test of new features)

So Maya 2012 just got released and they added some great features to the animation section of the software. You can now edit motion paths in the view port. 3D studio max has always seemed to have this and I found it very useful when I was animating in max.

It helps you manage a lot of keys very early in the blocking stages. Gives you a good overall view of what the animation will look like without needing to use playback. And in the world of animation, any tools like that are greatly useful.

There are some post production features added to there view port 2.0 section too. You can do some very bare bones previewing of what motion blur, Ambient occlusion, and depth of field will look like before rendering a final output. Once again, there are similar features that were already in max.

The last Maya updates seemed very limited in terms of upgrades, especially when it came to animation features. Although these are small updates I feel as if it's a step in the right direction.