Maya 3, the flagship 3D animation and f/x software from Toronto-headquartered Alias|Wavefront, will soon be available on the Mac os x platform. a|w demonstrated this new capability at the Macworld show last month in San Francisco, with plans to ship in the second quarter of this year. By adding Mac os x to Windows nt, Windows 2000, Linux and Irix as a Maya platform, a|w believes it has its bases covered.

‘There are a lot of people in the artistic community religious to the Mac, and they’ll use whatever applications that are there,’ says Richard Kerris, director of Maya technologies, from his office in Santa Barbara, ca. ‘Bringing such a big high-end application to os x tells them they’ll be able to start using Maya.’

Kerris says a|w has also been getting a lot of attention from the film studios, which tend to downplay the fact they do some of their work on desktop Macs. Those studios are especially interested in Maya Real Time sdk, a solution developed primarily for creating interactive content for next-generation game platforms.

‘A lot of people want to use it for pre-visualization and to make decisions on animations before they go to final render,’ Kerris explains.

The company’s original entities, Toronto’s Alias Research and Santa Barbara’s Wavefront Technologies, were both contemplating the move toward desktop platforms at the time they were purchased and merged by Mountain View, ca’s Silicon Graphics. But the 3D animation product was then running only on bigger, more expensive sgi machines.

‘With everybody heading toward nt and such, we knew we had to do that as well,’ Kerris says. ‘It’s always been that as the machines get more powerful for the desktop, so should the software become more available that in the past was limited to the high end.’

According to Kerris, a|w’s strategy of opening up Maya to customers at both ends of the spectrum has been highly successful, with the company moving five times as many units in the past six months as it did in all of the previous year. The bulk of these new users are on the nt platform, and availability on Mac os x can only increase these numbers.

‘The Mac edition is going to get the professional graphics marketplace that uses [Adobe] Illustrator and Photoshop,’ Kerris says. ‘They want to start adding 3D to their workflow, whether it’s for the Web, something they’re going to use on video or interactive content.’

Kerris outlines a|w’s goal as going beyond its traditional customer base and becoming as ubiquitous in the 3D world as Photoshop, Adobe’s number one image editor, is in 2D.

‘Working with the Mac community, we’re going to be able to do just that,’ he says. ‘If we set our sights on it and build the right tools, we should be able to really take it to that next level.’

Maya on Mac os x is scheduled to enter its beta cycle in a matter of days. Once released, updates will become available within 90 days of those for other platforms.

Kerris is proud of several high-profile film projects that have used Maya in recent months, including Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

‘The Grinch is an excellent example of not only the use of Maya, but also custom tools by [Venice, ca f/x house] Digital Domain on top of Maya,’ he says. ‘They built their own little Who set so they could build and manipulate Whos on the fly.’

Another breakthrough project for Maya was The Perfect Storm, which set a new standard for weather and wave effects.

‘The believability of that was amazing,’ Kerris says. ‘I was very fortunate to go to the cast and crew screening and to be able to sit there and look at that and say, ‘You guys did that with our tools and your magic?’ I was stunned.’

And a|w has more to look forward to. Kerris reports the forthcoming Star Wars: Episode 2 and The Mummy 2 will both make heavy use of Maya. •

-www.aliaswavefront.com