Hasta La Motion!

, by Matthew Doyle | Productfocus

When Autodesk launched Maya LT a year ago, the goal was simple: create a version of Maya that would arm indie game makers with a powerful set of 3D creative tools at an affordable price. But we didn’t stop there. We made it our mission to get to know indies and understand their needs. Since launch, we’ve listened to feedback and rapidly updated Maya LT. A lot of people don’t even realize that in just about a year we’ve had five Maya LT releases with significant features and workflow enhancements.

Having just passed the one-year anniversary of Maya LT’s launch, I thought this would be a good time to share some of the great things about Maya LT you might not know.

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#1: We ♥ indies.

We knew when we launched Maya LT that indies were going to have specific demands that we couldn’t fully anticipate. We had to get to know them and listen to feedback. We have a publicly accessible site at Maya LTFeedback.autodesk.com that allows users to create submissions, and vote on which features they’d like to see promoted or demoted. Almost every feature that we’ve added to our extension releases has been driven by community feedback on the Maya LT site. We’re in the forums every day, paying close attention to what people are saying.

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#2: You can export directly to game engines.

We know how important the Unity and Unreal engines are to the workflow of many indie developers. The ability to export to these engines became one of our highest requested features—and we responded by adding “Send to Unity” and most recently “Send to Unreal” export options. We also added a more generic Game Exporter tool that lets users create export pre-sets that ensure consistency in exported assets and also has a better way of exporting animation data in the FBX format. These three export options represent some of the things that we’re doing at a high level to make Maya LT easier to use for people who might not have have the same experience or resources as people working in a big AAA studio.

#3: Polygon limits aren’t really a problem.

We heard loud and clear from our users that the polygon limit in the early versions of Maya LT was just a little too low. As a result, we adjusted the general export limit from 25,000 polygons up to 65,000 polygons. And when we say polygons, we’re talking about four sided polygons, not triangles—so, the cap of 65,000 polygons is really 130,000 triangles. Best of all? If you’re using “Send to Unreal” or “Send to Unity”, there is no limit on the number of polygons. One other important clarification to note is that the polygon limit is per asset export, not per scene file. You can have as many polygons as you want in your working scene file in Maya LT.

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#4: Maya LT includes MEL scripting.

Scripting is a big deal for a lot of our customers, and it became one of the most requested features. MEL can make a lot of tasks in an artist’s daily workflow easier, so we added basic MEL commands into Maya LT late last year. But, we realized that a lot of people wanted to use scripting to export data for their game engine. We thought that we could make it easier for indie developers, and that’s why we added the new export tools. So MEL is there to help handle a lot of things, but we’re also exploring ways to improve the product such that people have easier options.

#5: Maya LT is a real-time asset creation tool.

The intent behind Maya LT is to create a product better focused on the needs of indie game developers. Most of the functionality in Maya, such as simulation and dynamics, is utilized by people working in the high-end film industry or high-end cut-scene content for AAA titles, rather than indie game makers. Maya LT is not and was never intended for creating elaborately rendered video content: it’s for creating real-time game assets.

#6: Maya LT can import and export the formats game makers need.

Maya LT allows you to import in a wide variety of formats including MA, MB, and OBJ. Additionally, you can save your high-poly, work-in-progress in the MLT format, and then either use one of the built-in export tools, or just export into FBX or OBJ formats, both of which are supported by a wide number of development tools.

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#7: Maya LT gets new features all the time.

Maya LT is not a static product that’s frozen in time: we add features and tweak aspects of it on a very regular basis. Since launching, our goal has been to do a release every quarter, and we’ve managed to stick to that aggressive schedule so far. Put simply: the feature set is changing very regularly, and always based on user-feedback.

Notable new features added to Maya LT since its initial launch:

• Send to Unreal
• Send to Unity
• Game Exporter tool
• MEL scripting
• Send to Mudbox
• Unfold3D

#8: Maya LT is more affordable than you think.

You can get started with Maya LT for $30 a month, or even $20 if you pay for a year up front. When we first launched Maya LT, the monthly subscription price was $50 per month. We heard loud and clear that was too much, so we dropped it down to $30 per month. If you do an annual subscription the total is $240 USD, which breaks down to $20 per month.

#9: Maya LT has all the animation features you need.

There might be a few features in Maya that aren’t in Maya LT, but everything you really need to create character animations is there: the graph editor, the dope sheet, even HumanIK. We’re continuing to add animation features as our users request them, such as the recent inclusion of Set Driven Keys and Maya Utility Nodes, but Maya LT is already a very solid package for animation that offers the most important parts of the animation functionality of Maya.

#10: Maya LT is a great path to Maya.

For indie game makers, Maya LT is the tool to learn. If you ever want to make the jump into AAA games, knowing how to work in Maya is a must. Maya LT offers a very accessible entry-point into the world of professional 3D modeling and animation with Maya.

Conclusion

Maya LT can provide indie developers and small studios with a powerful workflow for designing remarkable 3D characters, environments and props – at a price that fits within even the most modest budget. By working with the community, we’re going to make sure Maya LT will continue to be great 3D tool for indies.

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About the Author

Matthew Doyle is a game artist and developer with over 14 years of experience. He has made worlds and creatures for both AAA and indie games.