LOS ANGELES — Autodesk (www.autodek.com) is at this year’s SIGGRAPH show with a number of announcements, including the latest extension releases for Maya 2016 (available September 9th) and 3DS Max 2016 (now available). In addition, the company unveiled its new 3D marketplace on Creative Market – its online platform for purchasing and selling custom content developed by artists. Furthermore, Autodesk’s Stingray Game Engine is also on display throughout the show.
Maya 2016 Extension 1 offers a brand new text tool that makes it easy 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. Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) support helps artists bring 2D designs created in applications like Adobe Illustrator to life in a 3D environment. And new procedural texture and image processing nodes in the Hypershade allow simplified development of more sophisticated looks.
Game exporter workflows have now been simplified and streamlined, making it faster and easier to move from Maya to game engines such as Unity, Unreal and Autodesk Stingray. Artists can achieve a better level of detail when changing lens length or field of view with the inclusion of screen height percentage. And live linking between Maya and the Stingray game engine can update geometry, characters, and camera positions dynamically.
3DS Max 2016 Extension 1 provides Geodesic Voxel and Heat Map solvers that allow artists to create better skin weighting faster. New Max Creation Graph (MCG) Animation Controllers provide procedural animation capabilities. A new Game Exporter allows artists to transfer models, animation takes and other data from Max into game engines like Unity, Unreal and Stingray. ShaderFX has also been enhanced to support physically-based shaders in Stingray, ensuring visual consistency in booth tools. In addition, a new live link between 3DS Max and Stingray allows design visualization experts to assess and review their designs in an interactive 3D environment. The extension introduces a powerful 3D text tool to build engaging visualizations.
Creative Market (https://creativemarket.com/3d) is an online content marketplace acquired by Autodesk last year. It has expanded 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. Launched today, 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.