Turn your big ideas into reality. Academy Award winning Autodesk Maya software is the world's most powerfully integrated 3D modeling, animation, effects and rendering solution. Autodesk Maya will also add to the quality and realism of 2D graphics.

Artists and designers select Maya because of its intuitive user interface, which facilitates customization and fine-tuning of effective workflows, and technicians (technical directors and programmers) choose Maya for its reliability, open architecture, wide range of supported platforms, and the ease with which it can be incorporated into any existing or new production pipeline.

Productivity-Enhancing Workflows
Get unmatched productivity through a combination of performance and workflow features, including marking menus, 3D manipulators, selective display, brush-based tools, selection management tools, and unlimited levels of undo. Advanced data and scene management functionality give you the flexibility to work the way you want.

Comprehensive 3D Modeling and Texturing Toolsets
Access a full suite of production-proven polygon, NURBS, and subdivision surface modeling and texturing tools. The polygon workflow tools, including advanced selection functionality, attribute transfer tools, an interactive UV layout and unfolding mode, and optimization tools—have also been designed to promote efficiency.

Powerful Animation Functionality
Animate characters and other scene elements with a comprehensive range of specialized keyframe, nonlinear, and advanced character animation editing toolsets, including animation layers, graph and dope sheet editors, constraints, expressions, a nonlinear animation data editor, full-body inverse kinematics (IK) system, skinning functionality, and Maya Muscle.

Advanced Visual Effects Tools
Produce any visual effect you can imagine, from highly realistic natural phenomena to stylized, 2D “painterly” effects. Maya software delivers dynamic interaction of hard and soft bodies determined by physical rules, along with the state-of-the-art visual-effects technology of Maya nCloth, Maya nParticles, Maya Fluid Effects, Maya Fur, Maya Hair, and more.

Flexible Rendering
With Maya, you get the freedom to choose the right renderer and rendering pipeline for your project. A unified user interface and workflow provide easy and consistent access to the Maya hardware and vector renderers as well as the powerful mental ray for Maya and mental ray for Maya network rendering (Satellite) options.

You can also use the Render Layers and the Render Pass tools to create an efficient workflow from Maya to Autodesk Toxik software and other compositing packages.

Tools for Extending and Customizing Maya
Customize, extend, and manipulate Maya. The fully integrated Maya Embedded Language (MEL) and Python scripting languages give you high-level access to every aspect of the software so you can create custom windows, reconfigure the user interface, and issue commands from an HTML page. Moreover, the OpenMaya API/SDK completely unlocks the power of Maya for C++ and Python developers, providing direct, low-level access to all scene data required to make effective plug-ins and new types of nodes, shaders, manipulators, file importers and exporters, and more.

NOTE: To be able to download Autodesk Maya to your Mac you will first have to fill out a form on the developer's website.

Here are some key features of "Autodesk Maya":

· Intuitive User Interface
· Data and Scene Management Tools
· Polygon Modeling
· NURBS Modeling
· Subdivision Surface Modeling and Polygon Proxy Modeling
· General Animation
· Character Animation
· Muscle and Skin System
· Deformers
· Rigid and Soft Body Dynamics
· Particles and Fields
· Maya Paint Effects
· Toon Shader
· Maya Artisan
· 3D Paint
· Multiple Rendering Options
· Rendering Controls and Effects
· Integrated Scripting
· OpenMaya API/SDK
· Japanese Localization
· Connectivity and Integration
· CAD Data Transfer
· Plug-ins

Requirements:

· 2 GB RAM
· 2 GB free hard drive space
· Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card
· Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
· DVD-ROM drive

Limitations:

· 30-day trial
· Vector Renderer available in preview mode only.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

Enhanced User Interface:
· Enjoy a consistent, enhanced user experience on all supported platforms with an updated user interface that offers a fresh new look, dockable UI elements, more flexible editors, and a new color chooser and file browser.

Accelerated Skinning Workflow:
· Create better skinned characters with more realistic deformations in less time, with new skinning tools and workflows: a dual quaternion option for smooth skinning, interactive volume binding, multiple enhancements to the Paint Skin Weights tool, deformer weight mirroring, and a surface falloff mode for the Wrap deformer.

Nondestructive Live Retargeting:
· More quickly and easily reuse, correct, and enhance motion capture and certain other animation data with a new nondestructive retargeting workflow that uses the Autodesk HumanIK (HIK) middleware libraries. Transfer animation from one character to another and adjust retargeting parameters live.

3D Editorial:
· Accelerate pre-visualization and virtual moviemaking ...