Maya 2008 Extension 1 Muscle System for win32/64 bit and MacOSx

Maya 2008 Extension 1 Muscle System for win32/64 bit and MacOSx
9.50 Mb for 64Bit | 9.45 Mb for 32Bit | 9.75 Mb for MacOSx

Autodesk has just released Maya 2008 Extension 1 software, which introduces Maya Muscle functionality into the 3D modelling, animation, visual effects and rendering solution. This comprehensive muscle and skin system, recently acquired from Comet Digital, LLC, allows artists to create life-like skin motion through features that let them precisely direct muscle and skin behaviour. The toolset integrates extremely well with the Maya architecture and overall workflow, enabling it to be used in isolation, interconnected with other Maya features, or customised and scaled as needed.

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Maya Muscle provides technical directors and animators with the tools they need to create detailed skin articulation and animation. These include advanced muscle and skin sculpting and deformation tools, as well as extensive jiggle and weighting options, like slide, sticky and wrinkle weights.

In addition, Maya Muscle can increase artists’ productivity by taking advantage of familiar user interface and workflow features included in Maya 2008, such as the software’s brush-based interface. At the same time, it delivers a number of tools, including automatic rigs, real-time jiggle tweaking, and file caching, designed specifically to make the process of achieving secondary character motion.

Maya 2008 Extension 1 New Feature Highlights

Muscles and Skin

Deformations
Use the powerful, full-featured Maya Muscle deformer on skin, muscles or as a standalone deformer in conjunction with other Maya tools. The built-in Volume Preservation solution gives you realistic results as a muscle mass is contracted and lengthened – helping you avoid the typical collapsing and pinching problems that frequently plague jointsthat bend. Custom squash and stretch can be used to override volume preservation.

Custom Weight Painting
Maya Muscle delivers custom weight painting with customizable, color-coded weight display. There are many different kinds of weight maps including:
Slide/Sticky Weights – These let skin slide and bind over the deforming muscles and articulating bones (e.g. elbows) accurately. Blending between sliding and sticky weights, enables skin to transition correctly over different areas of the character.
Relax/Wrinkle/Flex Weights – These let wrinkles, folds and creases appear and disappear at the right time.
Muscle on Muscle/Skin

The flexible Maya Muscle toolset gives you the freedom to create a wide range of rigs: from those which incorporate simple musculature to those with more complex, real-world musculature where muscle is attached not only to bone, but also to other muscles and/or skin.
Muscle Sculpting

Rather than rely on the shape that results from default deformations, you have the option to sculpt exactly the results you want for your muscle with the Custom Muscle Shaping feature.
Jiggle Functionality

Secondary motion, such as jiggle, can be added automatically through the automated Jiggle functionality. Muscles and skin can be created with as many jiggle and control points as desired, for the ultimate in control.

Workflow

Automatic Rigs and Presets

Begin using muscles instantly thanks to Maya Muscle’s automated rigging utilities and presets — available for the most common muscle setups. Technical directors may find they can reduce the total number of specialty rigs a character requires as each Maya Muscle rig caters to a wider range of special character performances.
Realtime Jiggle Tweaking

Because jiggle animation is frame-based you can modify it on a per frame basis (often in realtime) for efficient fine-tuning and quick repetition of the deformation.
Deformation Level of Detail

You can balance performance versus accuracy through the ability to selectively enable deformer details.

Flexible Rigging

Because each Maya Muscle rig caters to a wider range of special character performances, technical directors may find they can reduce the total number of specialty rigs a character requires. The toolset supports a wide variety of rigging options including spline-based rigs.

Caching

The point-cache feature gives you faster feedback after the main deformation and animation has been processed (or baked). This is useful, for example, during the lighting stage, where you need faster timeline scrubbing. Because caching is an independent feature of the deformer, it can be applied on top of other Maya deformers to write out and read cache data for the object.

Batch Processing

Save time through the ability to batch process (offline) Maya Muscle – and then cache the processed data.

These are extensions for Maya 2008 providing the new Muscle System. Enjoy.

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