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Autodesk has released pretty much everything in the 2011 suite this week.  We’ve already told you about Maya & 3dsMax, and now Mudbox, MotionBuilder, and Softimage have all seen updates.  From Autodesk’s website, for Mudbox2011:

Autodesk^® Mudbox^® 2011 digital sculpting and texture painting software includes the following new and enhanced features:

• Deform and pose models quickly and easily to change their design, access occluded regions, present them for approval, or prepare them for map extraction.
• Selectively edit and manipulate existing paint and photo-based layers with new image adjustment brushes.
• Transfer models and scene information between Mudbox 2011 and Maya 2011with a single click.
• Extract maps using a new Vector Displacement method and represent displacements that do not simply follow the normal: for example, forms with appendages, undercuts, folds and bulges.
• Import and export multiple layers in PSD files to leverage the Adobe® PhotoShop® toolset on more demanding projects.

for Softimage 2011:

Autodesk® Softimage® 2011 3D modeling, animation, visual effects, rendering software includes the following new and enhanced features:

• The Rendering Sandbox shader authoring environment automatically hosts external shaders and renderers without requiring custom UI or tools.
• ICE kinematics enable you to drive the movement and behaviors of characters and scene elements.
• Automatic Face Robot® Lip Synching functionality enables the instant generation of facial animation based on an audio file.
• A selection of up to 100 new ICE compounds enables you to create a wide range of effects.
• A selection of up to 100 new mental ray® shaders, including .mi and .mip production shaders, enables enhanced creativity.
• Check out the Automatic Lip Syncing for Face Robot video on Mark Schoennagel‘s Planet Softimage blog.

and for MotionBuilder2011:

Autodesk® MotionBuilder® 2011 3D character animation software includes the following new and enhanced features:

• NVIDIA® PhysX® plug-in enables better creation of rag-doll simulations.
• Improved animation layers match the behavior of those in Maya 2009 and higher, and offer better interoperability.
• Skinned characters play back faster by using the computing power of the GPU.
• Updated native Autodesk® FBX® 2011 format support helps eliminate extra translation steps.

All three products are expected to be available in April 2010.

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Montreal based “Artificial Mind and Movement” (A2M) recently released “WET”, their third-person mature shooter combining acrobatics and swordplay that uses an interesting dual-targeting mechanic.  Autodesk products were instrumental in the development of the game and a press release from Autodesk details how they used Maya, MotionBuilder, and Kynapse to pull it all together.

“Our main philosophy with regards to development tools has always been that if it’s good and it already exists with the right price tag, why reinvent it?” explains Martin Walker, CTO, A2M. “That’s why we chose to work with Kynapse as our AI engine for WET. In the game, the player confronts a large number of enemies. We needed a path-finding and location-awareness system to control decision making for these characters in a coherent manner.”

Walker continues, “Kynapse has a fantastic hide-and-shoot algorithm that was used to conceal and disperse the enemies in a natural way throughout environments.”

via Autodesk – Games – Artificial Mind & Movement (A2M).

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Designorati’s Jeremy Schultz has a nice review up of the new Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2010, which includes Maya 2010, Mudbox 2010, MotionBuilder 2010, and more.

Maya 2010 is also the first Maya release that can serve as a start-to-finish computer graphics workflow. Maya Unlimited tools are included as described above, and so are Maya Composite (for compositing), Autodesk MatchMover (camera tracking) and Autodesk Backburner (a queue manager for multiple computers). Note that Maya Composite is available in a companion application based on Toxik technology, which will be familiar to experienced Maya users.

I have to agree with him in his comparison to Adobe: As Adobe keeps creating more and more “suites” to segment their products to individual markets, Autodesk is going the opposite direction by consolidating everything into a single product line.  I too, think it’s a great move.

via REVIEW: Maya Entertainment Creation Suite 2010 Is A Wonderful Package — Designorati.

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If you’re an Autodesk User and want to try the new 2010 versions, now’s your chance.  Autodesk has released 30-day trial versions of some of the new apps for you to download and try out!

• Autodesk 2010 MotionBuilder
• Autodesk 2010 MudBox
• Autodesk 2010 Maya

The trials are 30-days online, require a short registration, and seem to be fully featured.  They offer versions for XP, Vista, and Mac OSX.  Go get em !

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