Alias, an innovator of 3D graphics technology and a developer award-winning software, custom development, and training solutions, announced today the latest version of its award-winning Maya® software package. This newest version should provide the power and reliability to work with the heaviest models, scenes and animation data.

Maya 6.5 is loaded with performance improvements throughout key areas of the software, which assists artists in dealing more effectively with their large scenes and datasets. New with Maya 6.5 is mental ray® for Maya Satellite, and a host of new features (including rapid scan-line rendering) that stem from the integration of a new mental ray 3.4 core.

Modeling – Many polygon and UV texturing operations in Maya are now orders of magnitude faster, helping artists achieve their desired look with much greater efficiency. A series of enhancements have also been made to the polygon bevel tool.

Animation, Character Setup and Deformers – Toolsets have all been optimized, resulting in a more efficient workflow for character animators. Wrap deformer setup is many times faster in Maya 6.5 as are cluster deformation and sculpt tool deformations. Optimizations to the soft modification feature permits animators to quickly manipulate many vertices at a high-level – an ideal workflow accelerator for those working with dense datasets. Animators can now get better results when copying smooth skin weights between models with differing topologies and take advantage of the new ability to bind to non-joint objects and maintain max skin influence.

Large Address Awareness – Maya artists using the Windows® XP platform can now take advantage of up to 2.6 GB of memory for Maya.

Rendering – Alias is introducing a new network rendering option that supplements the mental ray rendering capabilities within Maya 6.5 by taking advantage of the processing power of other networked computers. This allows artists to achieve faster rendering results including Interactive Photorealistic Rendering (IPR), improved interactive and batch rendering performance and faster pre-lighting of both textures and vertices. The mental ray for Maya Satellite feature comes free with Maya Complete™ (2 CPUs) and Maya Unlimited™ (8 CPUs) and is available for the Windows, Linux® and Mac OS® X platforms.

“This latest version of Maya proves the dedication of Alias to meet the needs of the game development community,” comments Stephen White, programming director, Naughty Dog, Inc., widely regarded as one of the most forward-thinking games developers, having produced the highly acclaimed and successful Crash Bandicoot™ and Jak & Daxter titles with Alias products. “Maya continues to evolve as a critical tool in our game development process and this version addresses many important current needs as well as features critical to the future of game development.”

Customers on the Maya Platinum Membership Program can download the software today at www.alias.com/maya/support. Maya 6.5 will begin shipping worldwide in February 2005.