Following last year’s successful launch of the Maya 3D animation software, Oscar nominee Alias| Wavefront has unveiled its newest animation technology, Maya Paint Effects 2.5, which for the first time allows artists to literally paint their environments using a brush on a canvas instead of modeling.

‘They can paint grass growing on the side of a hill, trees, clouds above; basically any procedural-based image can now be painted in as opposed to modeling each blade of grass and duplicating in and modeling each tree, etc.,’ says Richard Kerris, Alias|Wavefont industry manager, entertainment division. ‘It’s a totally new paradigm for creating. A brush and canvas will now allow you to do what before you would have to model to do.’

By changing the parameters of the brush, the artist can create an entire environment in five minutes as opposed to a week of modeling, compositing and rendering.

Maya 2.5 has been in development since the beginning of Maya and will be shipped within the next month. In the meantime, Alias| Wavefront has been testing it in a number of different beta sites, where it has been used for everything from game development to feature films.

‘We want to remove the barrier that people have between the artistic ideas and the computer which they are going to extract it from,’ says Kerris. ‘One of the things our chief scientist is constantly establishing is, ‘Think of getting rid of the computer. How can we make the artist feel like the computer isn’t there yet have all the power of it.?’ ‘

Alias|Wavefront application engineer Doug Law will be demonstrating the newest member of the Maya family at the International Student Animation Festival in Ottawa, Oct. 21-24.