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This is the What’s New for Autodesk® Maya® 8.5. Autodesk Maya 8.5 gives artists enhanced creative control, enabling faster completion of complex animation and simulation, and the ability to manipulate, customize, and automate pipelines for next-generation productions. Important features in Autodesk Maya 8.5 include nCloth, the first module built on Nucleus, the next-generation unified dynamics simulation framework; Python scripting and API bindings; platform support for Intel Mac OS X; Japanese User Interface support; and many other productivity and workflow improvements, such as new mental ray shaders, modeling tools, and Hypergraph improvements.
Click the links on this page to get details of the features in this release. The summary pages also have links to movies on new features: click the blue Watch: links.
You can search for all topics that are New and Updated in this release. For more information, see Maya Help overview.
General
New features include access to Maya commands and the Maya API through the Python language, Japanese User Interface, Hypershade and Hypergraph improvements, among others.
See General and Performance.
Modeling
There are many modeling improvements, including the reflection feature for Rotate and Scale tools, improvements to the Edge Loop tools, Transfer Attributes and Transfer Maps, and a new Relax function.
See Modeling and UV Mapping.
nCloth and Classic Cloth
A new simulated cloth solution called Maya® nCloth™ provides a fast and stable dynamic cloth solution. nCloth is flexible enough to simulate objects such as clothing, balloons, shattering surfaces, and deformable objects. nCloth is built on the new dynamic simulation framework called Maya® Nucleus™. Many effects are possible, using component collisions; collision layering; dynamic constraints; inflation, deflation, and volume preservation; tearing and shattering; and surface restitution.
See nCloth, and Classic Cloth.
Rendering
New features include new mental ray physical sun and physical sky shaders, new mental ray architectural material shader, enhanced mental ray Render Settings, improvements to the Transfer Map tool, and enhancements to the CgFX shader node.
See Rendering and Hardware Rendering.
Animation
New features in animation include FBIK enhancements, geometry caching enhancements that make geometry caches work better with the Trax editor, and improvements to Copy Skin Weights and Mirror Skin Weights.
See Animation.
Simulation and Paint Effects
New features include follicle control enhancments, improved volume fur and fur interpolation, and new Paint Effects brushes and callbacks.
See Hair, Fur, and Artisan and Paint Effects.
Maya commands and API
There are many new and changed commands and new and changed API classes to give you access to new functionality in Maya.
See Maya commands and API.
