***Alias/Wavefront Reintroduces Maya
by Rob Glidden
Alias/Wavefront introduced Maya again this year at SIGGRAPH, promising,
as it did at last year's SIGGRAPH, a next-gen successor to
Alias/Wavefront with breakthrough character animation capabilities.
Delivery is promised for Q1 97, with pricing unannounced but comparable
to the existing PowerAnimator line.
In addition to "an architecture built for speed", Maya offers the
ability to "build characters with embedded behaviors and higher level
controls so that animators can quickly and intuitively interact with
them as digital puppets". Also, Maya is built around MEL (Maya Embedded
Language), a scripting language that supports all of the Maya commands.
In response, Softimage has started a distant-destination drumbeat for
Jakarta, version 4 of Softimage due out in 2H 97.
Contact: 416-362-9181
Wave Issue 9606 8/16/96 Article 8-01