What Is Maya Rendering Software?
A company named Alias Systems Corporation developed a high end 3D graphics and 3D modeling software package called Maya rendering software. This software program is now owned by Autodesk which is a big part of the Media and Entertainment division. Autodesk bought Alian Systems Corporation in October of 2005 and acquired the Maya rendering software through the sale. Maya is used widely in the TV and film industry in order to create 3D computer generated images and is also used widely in computer and video games for its architectural visualization that it gives. The types of animation that the Maya rendering software programs give to the designer are keyframe animation, nonlinear animation, path animation, and motion capture animation. The keyframe animation is very similar to the traditional way a cartoon is made, moving the object frame by frame. The original model is placed in a starting position and a keyframe is set to that position. The model is then moved as desired and another keyframe is set and this process goes on and on until the desired animation is achieved. The nonlinear animation is when all of these frames are put into what is called an animation clip. The Maya rendering software collects all of the data about the keyframes and integrates them into one single editable sequence. To get the nonlinear animation, the manipulating, moving, and blending of these regular animation clips are put together to achieve a smooth series of motions for the character. In the Maya rendering software, the path animation controls the rotation and position along a path curve. The motion capture animation of the Maya rendering software involves skeletons, skinning, constraints, character sets, and deformers. The skeletons are objects that are similar to the skeleton of the human body. These skeletons allow the designer to see the movement of the character by adding joints where needed and when you add joints and bound the character together, this process is called skinning. Putting the body of the character together with a grid covering or by skinning it with an actual transparent skin layer. The designer is able to see the movement of the character and how it affects the skin that is put on the skeleton. Constraints are used in conjunction with the character when they are interacting with props or something in the environment. The character sets are a way for the designer to bring all of the attributes that are defined by that created character into one character node. Deformers within the Maya rendering software are more advanced tools that are used to manipulate or drive low level components of the character node in order to get the full effect of animation. |