Alias announced today that worldwide shipping of Maya® 6.5 is now underway. Maya 6.5 provides the high performance and flexibility required to address the ever-increasing needs of next-generation productions in the games, film, broadcast and digital publishing industries. New and upgrading customers can purchase Maya 6.5 from an authorized reseller or online at www.alias.com.
"The decision to focus an entire release on solving a single set of problems – the challenge of handling massive datasets – was a bold and calculated decision by our product development team," comments Bob Bennett, general manager of product management, Alias. "Alias strives to be ahead of the technology curve for the benefit of our customers and what’s coming for their pipelines in the next 18 months."
Maya 6.5 software has been equipped to handle larger datasets by a dual approach; speed improvements in critical parts of the workflow and new tools for efficiently managing very large datasets. Absolute speed improvements have been dramatic in many cases, as Maya performs more efficiently in relation to larger scene sizes. For example, UV manipulations have been benchmarked as being more than 100 times faster in Maya 6.5 compared to Maya 6. Depending on specific file characteristics and customer workflow, Maya now delivers improved interactivity, faster calculations of deformations and simulations, speedier I/O and faster redrawing.
In addition, large datasets are more manageable in Maya 6.5 software due to a variety of improvements in scene segmentation including reference file editing, nesting and locking. A new STEP translator makes the importing of CAD data files several orders of magnitude faster.
Additionally, the new mental ray® for Maya Satellite rendering allows network rendering across multiple CPU’s for interactive and batch rendering, including use of mental ray for pre-lighting.
To read full details of Maya 6.5 please visit www.alias.com.
Pricing and Availability
The pricing of Maya remains unchanged from Maya 6 – Maya Complete 6.5 is $1999* and Maya Unlimited is $6999. Upgrade pricing is $899 for Maya Complete and $1249 for Maya Unlimited. Both Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited are available on the Windows®, IRIX®, Linux® and Mac OS® X platforms.
Maya 6.5 will be the last upgrade release for IRIX. Due to a significant decrease in the number of Maya customers relying on the IRIX operating system for running Maya interactively. Going forward, Alias will concentrate its development of Maya on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms but will continue to offer support for IRIX as a license-serving platform.
About Alias
As the world’s leading innovator of 3D graphics technology, Alias develops award-winning software, custom development, and training solutions for the film and video, games, web, interactive media, automotive, industrial design, education, and visualization markets. On March 1, 2003, for the awards year 2002, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Alias|Wavefront™ an Oscar® for scientific and technical achievement for the development of Maya software, the professional 3D animation and effects package. Alias offers a powerful range of services for new to advanced users in the most demanding environments; Learning Tools and training, support, and professional services help meet rigorous production deadlines.
* All pricing is in USD. International pricing may vary.
This article was last modified on January 3, 2023
This article was first published on February 17, 2005
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