Maya 2011 press release

Toast · Mar 2010

New UI revealed. :poly124:

http://www.motionmedia.com/blog/autodesk%C2%AE-maya%C2%AE-2011-announced/

Can't wait to play around with this.

giyomu · Mar 2010

from far i thought it was 3dsMax dark theme UI ....

serialkiler · Mar 2010

yeah it looks very nice
how many years since the last change of the maya GUI ?

MoP · Mar 2010

That looks awesome, can't wait to get that!

CheeseOnToast · Mar 2010

No mention of improved modeling tools though.....

CrazyMatt · Mar 2010

CheeseOnToast wrote: »

No mention of improved modeling tools though.....

Aye, they could at the very least hire on the dRaster guy(s) and have them implement their modeling tools into the system as staff of autodesk. Or something of the nature..:\

Kwramm · Mar 2010

Now Maya reinvents the GUI, or is this the Mac version? What's wrong with using windows scroll bars, sliders, drop down lists, buttons, etc? A simple re-coloring a la max's dark UI theme I would have understood. ...Don't they have more important things to do?
Ah well I forgot, it's Autodesk: "we got our priorities right!(tm)"

MoP · Mar 2010

Kwramm: Actually, improved UI is a pretty big step, if they've actually gone with QT for everything - that's much more flexible for creating custom UI tools than MEL, you can have all sorts of extra controls. Plus, it's skinnable, so you could probably revert to "default Windows" look if you wanted.

I didn't see a mention of QT in the press release but I'd heard that's what they wanted to use and were working on for Maya 2010, so I assume they just finalised that integration.

I imagine they just wanted to re-skin it to make it seem really artist-friendly (and funnily enough makes it look more like Modo, XSI or new Blender), since historically Maya has always looked like it was thrown together by programmers who couldn't care less about ergonomics. Maybe this facelift will entice more users in who might otherwise have shunned Maya, so it's probably a fairly smooth marketing move.

Cheesestraws · Mar 2010

They rewrote the interface using Qt rather than the piece of crap that is motif. It is much more important that you think.

SimonT · Mar 2010

great! was about time for a new UI, the old one looks like windows 3.11

DerDude · Mar 2010

seems like a fantastic release for my point of view

Jeff Parrott · Mar 2010

Looks groovy. The UI changes are huge. Can't wait to try it out.

Kwramm · Mar 2010

MoP: If they use a different UI framework, then fair enough.
Not that I'm against skinning by default and it kinda looks neat too.But it's just waaaaaay down on the priorities list imho. e.g. better tools / more stability make me work faster. Different shaped and colored buttons....? And unless they reshuffle buttons and clean up the menues it won't improve ergonomics much either except reduce eye strain. But for that you don't need to implement a whole skinning system.

Mind you, I found the whole skinning thing in C4D also rather useless. In the end I'm more annoyed when every app has its own way of dealing with UI elements rather than sticking to a system wide unified look where UI elements behave the same in all apps. I'm looking at you Lightwave! ...and you ZBrush, and you XSI, and you Modo, and you Bryce (why did you have to start this trend Bryce?) !!!!

That's where OS X shines - almost all apps, except crappy windows ports, stick to a certain way of handling their UI and menues. I like that. Personally I'd rather skin the whole OS than each app independently...but that's just me I guess

jipe · Mar 2010

I know we have a lot of modelers here, but frankly it's really nice to see the animation tools get some love. Aside from the addition of Animation Layers in Maya 2009, most of the core animation tools have been the same for way too long... and if you spend any amount of time in the graph editor, it shows. The new shot and editing features are intriguing, too.

I am looking forward to seeing 2011 in action, but as with any feature-laden release I'm sure some things are too good to be true (and/or too buggy to be used for another version or two).

javi · Mar 2010

is the link working for anybody else?

.Murder · Mar 2010

link 404'd

East · Mar 2010

ivaj wrote: »

is the link working for anybody else?

Nope, it's been removed by the look of things. Maybe there jumped the gun a bit releasing this?

gaganjain · Mar 2010

Here how it look in 2011

MikeF · Mar 2010

bah, that sucks! anyone have a pic of the aforementioned new ui?

jipe · Mar 2010

Edit: old links were taken down, here's the official Autodesk page:

http://area.autodesk.com/maya2011

Illusions · Mar 2010

They're down too at the moment...no Maya 2011 preview goodness for me yet...

ZacD · Mar 2010

No one saved any screen shots?

gaganjain · Mar 2010

I have in my cache history
Wait i will upload it...

Cyrael · Mar 2010

well. they pulled that quick.

javi · Mar 2010

ya, they took it all down real quick.

serialkiler · Mar 2010

yup not even google as them

gaganjain · Mar 2010

Maya 2011 Screenshot

Cyrael · Mar 2010

That is one massively sexy overhaul. but i agree I'd like to see some improvements with some of the tools as well.

Thanks for the post gaganjain!

sama.van · Mar 2010

Here is the list :

http://area.autodesk.com/products

They added it 10 min ago

NyneDown · Mar 2010

ohhHh....so many shiney buttons!

CrazyMatt · Mar 2010

Nice to see some videos demonstrating both newer versions of max and maya.

Joopson · Mar 2010

I think you are wrong, this must be Max 2011.
*shifts uncomfortably*

Also, when Maya 2012 comes out, I am going to laugh at the irony.

ZacD · Mar 2010

Still way to many buttons, IMO. Looks like XSI and Maya had an ugly baby.

EDIT: http://area.autodesk.com/maya2011 video 4, does it really take 10 seconds to load in a sword? That's a bit much.

Frump · Mar 2010

Well, The interface is dark now. I guess that's cool. It looks a bit more slick. It's still identically laid out though, I was expecting that to change. If there's going to be a lot more options for customization, I guess that will just be one thing we will have to wait to see.

Are the Maya 2011 videos not loading for anyone else? I can't watch the new UI feature video.

Sandro · Mar 2010

gaganjain wrote: »

Maya 2011 Screenshot

Looks even more cluttered and busy than original windows-based interface...

A-N-P · Mar 2010

Both Maya 2011 and 3ds Max 2011 look like they have some cool new features Id like to play around with. And as a Max user id be more than happy to try my hand at using Maya for the first time as the new interface looks much more user-friendly. Looking forward to these releases.

East · Mar 2010

Those low res videos aren't doing them any favours, that's for sure, unless they want to give us the impression Maya 2011 is a blurry mess.

Yeah, what can I say, of all the things I could whine about..

claydough · Mar 2010

whats an interactive viewport?
what was it before?

hoping that includes mo post process shader support, nicer shadows and Direct X intergrated into viewports?

JasonLavoie · Mar 2010

Intrigueedd!!

Kwramm · Mar 2010

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/what_s_new_in_2011

detailed feature list.
some stuff sounds really really neat

PolyHertz · Mar 2010

The script editor now auto-completes recognized commands and object path names when you enable the Command Completion and Object Path Completion options.

Sounds good, but what about syntax highlighting?

You can now connect vertices and edges in one operation with the Connect Components option. This allows you to quickly create edge paths from vertices to edge mid-points

Finally! Most people are still using yee-old MJ Polytools for this, and I made a version myself a few months back sense didn't want to have to use a plugin for it. Will be interesting to see how well this compares to existing scripts.

The Scale Settings in the Scale Tool now allow you to scale along arbitrary axes (such as Object, Local, World, Normal, etc) similar to the Move Tool

So will we finally be able to do insets on complex selections? Either way, this is another much needed addition.

Also glad to hear about the dockable UI stuff.

claydough · Mar 2010

claydough wrote: »

whats an interactive viewport?
what was it before?

hoping that includes mo post process shader support, nicer shadows and Direct X intergrated into viewports?

New Viewport 2.0: The new Viewport 2.0 provides large scene performance optimization and higher quality lighting and shaders. It allows for higher interactivity: you can tumble complex scenes with many objects as well as large objects with heavy geometry.

Hopeful

sama.van · Mar 2010

Could be nice if they repear the mimapping options...
They are dead since the maya 2009 version

elte · Mar 2010

SOunds like of out of 3 (SI, Maya, Max), SI get the least update, does this mean Autodesk ppl still have yet to understand their code? on the other hand, max got the biggest update.

Addition to Maya, besides its UI and new Dual quaternion skinning, the rest are not so impressive.. And now max got hypershade. I wonder how stable maya's gonna be with this new UI but old core. Urm.. maybe we need to wait till service pack is out.

James Edwards · Mar 2010

ICE kinematics is worth all the updates in max and maya together to me =]

crasong · Mar 2010

elte wrote: »

SOunds like of out of 3 (SI, Maya, Max), SI get the least update, does this mean Autodesk ppl still have yet to understand their code? on the other hand, max got the biggest update.

Addition to Maya, besides its UI and new Dual quaternion skinning, the rest are not so impressive.. And now max got hypershade. I wonder how stable maya's gonna be with this new UI but old core. Urm.. maybe we need to wait till service pack is out.

Hmm, based on observation I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Autodesk is and has been shifting XSI's features into maya, and eventually provide 3ds and maya as the two ultimate packages for the industry. I maybe wrong, it's just my observation.

P.S I'm working amongst a bunch of longtime XSI users and even they haven't seen any improvement in XSI, and claim that a bunch of it's modeling tools have been integrated into maya ever since Autodesk got hold of both.

MoP · Mar 2010

Haha yeah that demo video for the "Assets and Referencing" made me very scared - it took ages to update the scene after the reference changed... however, it seems like this was because it was actually refreshing all the textures/shaders in the scene. Which is a bit weird, but would mean that if you don't have any textures, it should be instant.

Max had this problem for a long time with DX shader display, it just always reloaded all the textures even if it didn't need to.

I watched the skinning video and was very impressed. It's come a long way.

The updates to the modelling and selection tools will be very handy. Generally this looks like the release I've been waiting about 5 years for

DerDude · Mar 2010

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/maya_2011_highlight_qt_user_interface

qt designer video

claydough · Mar 2010

DerDude wrote: »

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/maya_2011_highlight_qt_user_interface

qt designer video

QT designer looks nice...
Very very happy

MoP · Mar 2010

Holy shit, that QT Designer and the dockable UI stuff will be a godsend for custom tools (I'm thinking of my in-house stuff mostly, but also for third-party scripts), a proper graphical UI editor and tons of flexible controls, along with the new icon formats you can load, will make for WAY slicker scripted tools that integrate with the main application much more nicely!

Seriously can't wait to get my hands on this, I imagine it's similar to what they're talking about for the Max UI overhaul, it's just done sooner

claydough · Mar 2010

I jes noticed the script editor had color syntax... did 2010 have this?
That would be great if the script Editor becomes mo useful.

Maya 2011 press release

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