2016, A Big Year for Autodesk Media & Entertainment Software

Maya, 3ds Max and Flame Premium Deliver Unparalleled Quality, Collaboration and Efficiency

As teams become more dispersed geographically, and the data used in entertainment creation is growing in both size and complexity, Autodesk provides complete solutions to help streamline creative, collaborative workflows that will allow for greater experimentation with new cloud and mobile technologies.

“Our customers are the world’s best artists, and our tools would be nothing without them. This year, we worked hard to connect artists more closely with one another and across projects,” said Chris Bradshaw, Autodesk senior vice president, Media & Entertainment. “Our 2016 software is more intuitive, connected, powerful, scalable and accessible than ever before. Our tools’ expanded flexibility enables new and seasoned artists to more easily navigate industry disruptions so they can keep telling great stories, without compromising quality.”

3D Animation Improvements

This year, the 2016 3D animation portfolio is stronger than ever with significant updates to Maya and 3ds Max. Each release includes new features and improvements designed to boost performance, collaboration and simplify daily operations for advanced creativity. 

Maya 2016: Significantly Faster and Easier To Use

• Supercharged animation performance with a parallel evaluation system takes advantage of the CPU and GPU to increase the speed of both playback and character rig manipulation.
• An all new look and feel and the updated hypershade showcase improves ease of use and artist-friendly workflows.
• New capabilities in Bifrost, including adaptive foam and guided simulations, help deliver state-of-the-art, realistic liquid simulations.

3ds Max 2016: Procedural Content Creation, tools for better collaboration and ease of use

• New Max Creation Graph: A new node-based content and tool creation toolkit integrated by user request. Empowers users to extend 3ds Max with geometric objects and modifiers. Users can package graphs and share them with other users.
• New XRef Renovations: Externally reference objects to scenes and animate/edit material on the XRef object in the source file without having to merge the object into the scene. Non-destructive animation workflows and improved XRef stability simplify collaboration among teams and throughout the production pipeline.
• New intuitive Design Workspace and Template Systems: The Design Workspace provides easy access to object placement, lighting, rendering, modeling and texturing tools to create high-quality stills and animations; built-in settings for rendering, environments, lighting and units.
• 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design are coming together.

Updates to Flame Family

The new releases of Flame and Flame Premium provide customers with a comprehensive, high-end VFX and creative finishing toolset, new look development tools, a connected workflow, faster, interactive performance, and other user-requested improvements.

• New Look Development: Tools to help artists exceed customer expectations, including:
• Lightbox– An interactive GPU shader toolkit for 3D color correction.
• Matchbox in Action-Applies fast, interactive Matchbox shaders to texture maps/textures for image treatments without leaving the 3D compositing scene.
• Color Management Workflow Enhancements.
• A more connected workflow for connected creativity:  
• Tighter Shotgun Integration: Quickly and easily send shots to other apps/exchange formats, share content for review/approval, and load Shotgun projects into Flame.
• Flame Desktop Enhancements: Artists can now create VFX in a faster, artist-centric environment with easily accessible and essential tools.
• Interactive performance enables artists to work faster, meet deadlines: New method to handle proxies in players; faster indirect module creation in action; and new foreground export.
• New improvements to the Batch Workflow address user-requests: MUX-node links are semi-transparent and links in batch setups are more articulated; easier access to operational information with image generators and basic operators; better handle inputs with different bit depths.

The 2016 Entertainment Creation Suite includes all the new features and updates to Maya 2016 and 3ds Max 2016, in addition to updates and enhancements in Mudbox 2016 and MotionBuilder 2016 that help improve the daily work of artists, developers, directors and cinematographers.

• Mudbox 2016 with news sculpting tools and relax brush for smoothing surfaces.
• MotionBuilder 2016 includes story tool updates and enhancements.

Availability

Autodesk offers its standalone products on a pay-as-you-go basis through desktop subscription, which makes Autodesk tools more accessible and enables regular updates that help improve designers’ daily operations; this allows them to focus on what they enjoy – being creative. 

Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite 2016 and related cloud services availability vary by country. See details and purchasing options at http://www.autodesk.com/subscription. To purchase Flame 2016 or Flame Premium, please visit http://www.autodesk.com/products/flame-family/buy.