You should be able to download next week.

When will the documentation be uploaded to the Autodesk website, I want to read the full new feature list.

Hmmm… to be honest… i dont really know right now, what to think about this announcement. autodesks selling point seems to become bundling maya with cheesy, unsuccesful apps.

Another idea thats fighting this rather dissapoointing one, is that you guys primally worked in Mayas backyard and i hope this "gardening" leads to a fructifying release. Hence i a curious whetere this release may be a much more stable and mostly bugfree one (renderlayers/passes *cough).

how is MotionBuilder, Mudbox and the rest "cheesy"?

how are subscriptions being handled for this release? For instance, if you have a license of Maya Complete, will you be grandfathered into Maya 2010? I'm asking as there is now a single price for Maya 2010 but previously there was 2 different price points for Maya and their subsequent subsciptions (ie. Unlimited's subscription was more, for some reason).

Really disapointing for now! What are the new features please???

If you have Maya Complete and you are on subscription then you will receive Maya 2010.

full feature list!

Well,...not interesting at all.
Do you guys want Maya dead?

Still no 64-bit on OSX...
=(

I big difference to what I was expecting...hopefully they have more actual features to announce soon...

@ pixelmonk: I actually thought about toxik and matchmover, those which are advertised as mayas new features on autodesks corporate site…

it's funny to see all the moaning when all of the features won't be announced until tomorrow.

Mudbox and Softimage 2010 both have feature lists or videos of what's new....but not Maya...maybe that's why people are moaning

No one is forcing you to use Toxik or Matchmover. Show me where in the EULA that Autodesk is now forcing everyone to install Toxik and Matchmover and use it or else their license is invalid?

It's there as an option, and it's probably still going to be a standalone app. You don't even have to pay for it. It's part of the Maya 2010 package. There's probably a few things people don't use in Maya on a daily basis. There's probably people who will use Toxik as they don't have access to something like Nuke of Fusion. I could probably fiddle around with Matchmover, even though I too use Syntheyes at home and at one site.

Again, Autodesk isn't forcing anyone to use these applications. They are there is you want to use them. The same goes with Mental Ray. If you don't like it, don't use it.

man I love these "Woah is me" posts around Siggraph and NAB. They're almost as entertaining as the demos! Some people take software releases and announcements so personally. Cheers Cory.. keep the information flowing!

Do you think, that something changed? I don`t think so...

Thanks, Pixelmonk!

We hope you find value with what we're offering. We know that some folks are happy with their existing tracking and compositing tools and we know that others like the idea of getting them included with Maya. For someone starting or expanding a studio, particularly in the current economy, Maya 2010 should be a welcome solution.

We've heard complaints from people over the years about Maya Live and believe that MatchMover provides a better solution with less effort.

The Toxik user base has been slowly growing over the years. Now as Maya Composite, there have been changes to improve the workflows and expand the feature set.

Is it fair to call either of them a dead product? We've had engineers working on these products to make them better so I would say no. For those upgrading, I will let you make the final call - I would like to hear your feedback after you've taken Maya 2010 for a test drive.

As for Maya itself, we have the dev team busily working to make it better but I cannot tell you about that stuff until it is ready. Rest assured that there is good stuff coming and that Maya has a long life ahead!

not a single word on the linear space workflow problem in Mental ray for Maya, it's the most important fix that rendering artists around the world were waiting for more than 2 years now.
As a person who makes his living out of rendering in Mental ray, Maya 2010 is a complete disappointment. I don't understand why this has been fixed in Max but not in Maya
i just want to quote MasterZap on that issue: "Maya still is in the dark, gamma wise, which is depressing indeed"


http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=87&t=775085&page=2&pp=15

After viewing the live maya 2010 demo, I'm sad to admit I do agree with Max's comments. I've been a long standing fan/user of Maya and try to defend it when logic permits. So far this release looks to be nothing more than compiling other applications Autodesk owns and dropping the price on both the software and the subscription. It seems as though no information has been given regarding bug fixes or core enhancements (ie. real working render passes and MR fixes). I can't imagine the Maya team spent the whole year working on new logos for the products and editing lines of code for it to say "Maya Composite" versus "ToxiK' in the title window. Hopefully some more information will be given to the public immediately regarding the actual Maya 2010 product.

So far 2010 is getting a complete a**whooping on almost every CG forum out there. Not good.

I've also signed up for the beta site in the hopes of helping the Maya product team define futures version of the software, if there will be any. :\

If 2010 is not the most bug free version of Maya ever, a lot of people will be very annoyed.

I like the idea of expanding the possibilities of Maya by 2 additional applications instead of integrating all
in Maya. This way you have a better usability and more light applications instead of a lazy "i-can-all-do application".
But i also want to see some NEW features from Maya 2010.
Toxic is not really new and Matchmover Software either.
Also fluids and other Unlimited features of Maya are not new.
At the moment it seems that anything changed is:
Maya is now sold with Maya Unlimited, Matchmover and Toxic inside the package.
Don't get me wrong, i think this is a nice idea, but what's with software development...

Needed some time to find this comment, so well...let's see...
> Posted by mogkc on 2009-08-04 at 7:17 AM
> ... As for Maya itself, we have the dev team busily working to make it better but I cannot tell you about that stuff > until it is ready. Rest assured that there is good stuff coming and that Maya has a long life ahead!

I would like to add that I invest my free time in learning maya, years of my own free time.
As “investor” I am in trouble seeing maya release by release gets less or no features at all.
I need advice:
should I quit maya?
Is maya 2010 means freeze or stop of its development?
Is maya 2010 just marketing trick?
If so what software you recommend?
Thank you and sorry for my English.

The Strategy behind Maya 2010

First, rest assured that we read the forums, (both here, on CGSociety and elsewhere) and we do take note of what is being said. So I want to take a moment to follow up on Cory's comments and explain a little of our strategy behind Maya 2010.

Firstly Maya 2010 is (as advertised) a unification of the Maya Complete 2009 and Maya Unlimited 2009 feature sets – (See http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=13577897&siteID=123112) – with the addition of Maya Composite (based on Toxik), MatchMover and Mental Ray Batch.

Maya 2010 is therefore a new product configuration. It is based on the Maya 2009 feature set + new software. The strategy of the release is to offer a single, affordable CG pipeline solution based on feedback from our customers on the overall cost of owning Maya. Maya 2010 is offered at no cost to all subscription customers, upgrade pricing is equivalent to significantly lower to previous upgrade pricing for both Complete and Unlimited customers and we have addressed customer requests for more affordable Subscription and Gold Support offerings – this release is really about more putting more value in the box.

So what does this mean for the future development of Maya? – Well first, to be crystal clear – Maya is one of Autodesk’s top selling products and we are 100% committed to it. As Cory says, the development team is hard at work on what we feel will be some very compelling features – we’d love to share them with you to make our point but as a publicly traded company we cannot without then having to defer all Maya revenue until we ship the disclosed features (If you are interested in why I can tell you more) – and we are not ready to do that just yet. We wanted a slightly longer development cycle this time to get these features to where we feel they really need to be.

Every release we do try to offer value to our customers. We cannot always succeed with all customers equally. With such a broad customer base and such a diverse product there are always areas of focus, but we try to create a long-term balance. Not all features can be developed in short time frames and so releases can be lumpy with one release seeming to be more for user type X and another for type Y.

We do understand that there are many things we can be doing with Maya – many requests, many ideas for areas of improvement and many things people would like to see changed – some of these are great ideas and some are contradictory but we take them all into consideration and then make decisions based on feasibility and what we feel is best for the product as a whole.

We plan our strategy a few years out and our strategy calls for us to enable more efficient creative workflows – we believe this requires more integrated CG workflows and we see the synergy between rendering and compositing becoming more important as CG content continues to grow – hence that focus on this release – beginning to bridge the gap between 2D and 3D.

We understand that this is of more value to smaller companies and that larger facilities will often have high levels of specialization and customization – often developing their own simulation tools –and sometimes even their own compositing tools – but our goal was to provide a more cost-effective and complete solution to everyone – especially customers who do not have access to internal development resources or bigger budgets.

However we also collaborate closely with our larger customers and we will continue to develop tools and capabilities that address those needs too – much like our stereo capabilities (Maya 2009) were developed in close collaboration with companies like DreamWorks.

Regards

Maurice Patel
Product Marketing – Autodesk M&E

"hence that focus on this release – beginning to bridge the gap between 2D and 3D"
well if this was really the focus, then the first thing to do was to build the structure for that bridge and in Maya it means building a unified linear gamma workflow. Users have been inserting gamma correct nodes for 3 years now and what did your department and Autodesk did about it: Nothing.
empi999, i would really like to hear your thoughts on that specific issue.

My thoughts:
I agree that color management is important - We have a color scientist on staff and its no easy task - I disagree that we are not doing anything - some of our solutions have fairly advanced color management systems
but the key word in your quote is "beginning"
SOP 97-2 and all that prevents me from saying more

thanks Maurice for the thorough explaination. With the new features you are unable to talk about currently, is Maya 2010 still projected to be available for download soon? Or, are you talking about maybe a 2010 service pack, extension, or the future of Maya in general?\

gah, I wish we could edit our comments. I can spell. Really, I can!

But I think people will be happy - but then I am biased
(I do work for Autodesk after all)

Based on the Autodesk site, referring to Maya 2010 coming out this month, is that still projected to happen? Or is that something you still can't discuss? I mean it was in the press release.

Also, as subscription members, can we download and tool around with Toxik (Composite) right now or is that tied to a Maya 2010 license which obviously we won't have access to?

wait.. saw the answer, no need to respond. My eyes are bugging out of my head after creating clipart in Illustrator for 9 hours today @@

Maya 2010 has been RTM'ed (Released to Manufacturing)
It should be shortly available to Subscription customers for download - expected date Aug 10th barring Acts of God and such
Public availability is anticipated to be around the Aug 18th

The reason I can talk about this is because we are shipping the software in the same quarter that we are talking about it. What i can't talk about is what might be happiening in future quarters (i.e after our Oct 31st Q3 cut off)

Don't you love surprises

Yes, you will need a Maya 2010 license to launch Toxik 2010 as they will share the same license

Pixelmonk, make sure your beta request has your real name as well as Pixelmonk in it.

I think its highly unsatisfying from customers perspective not to know anything about your roadmap. Look at foundry. They get on a stage early and say what theyre doing, and they get things done as they promise. This reassures the customer and invest its time learning and money buying their products.

We are in the web 2.0 world. Its not engough to advertise in magazines, the most important thing is to get people recommend your product.
Look at the music industries. Their old shemes collaps and they struggle to find success. Autodesk seems like those old boons right now, that dont know how to react to the customers needs. Business as usual may deems a bad sign for the future, i guess…

Hi Pak

Believe me we find it difficult - but we understand the need. It is a legal reality and a matter of business ethics that we do not make speculative claims (and the further you look into the future the less predictable things become - things always change and even the best laid plans can be derailed). I am not going to comment on the Foundry's business practices other than to say that, unlike Autodesk, it is a UK-based, privately-held company and therefore is not subject to SOP 97-2 guidelines.

However as regards Autodesk:
First, it is always ethically dubious to sell futures or non-existing product- it sets the precedent for vaporware, and previously the lack of strict governance on how companies do business led to fiascos like Enron and Tyco. This is why public traded US companies now operate under very strict guidelines. Believe me it’s not a whole lot of fun but if you have trouble sleeping you can always read this…
http://www.kpmg.ca/en/industries/ice/software/documents/SoftwareRevenueRecognition2008.pdf

Look at it this way: if I say that that the next version of Maya will feature say a feature that automatically solves the uncanny valley of eeriness  and hundereds of people rush out to buy the product in the hope of that, then they are not buying the product as is - they are buying a potential future product based on future functionality. So technically, I have not sold them what they have bought until I actually ship this all this functionality –and I owe them a debt until I do – so I should not recognize that revenue. Many start-ups went public with vapor ware during the dot.com boom. Customers bought into future promises, as did investors, and when the bubble burst everyone lost out.

Even more recently the burst in the housing credit bubble and resulting credit crisis should have taught us, if anything, not to speculate on future value. It is healthier for business and for us individually if we did not speculate too much on the future and looked at what we can do today.

By the way I am not saying that companies that make promises do not intend to keep them but since the future is unpredictable (especially in something as fast moving as high-tech) – companies get bought and sold or go out of business, net technologies arrive suddenly, competitors do something unexpected etc – all of which can force someone to change even the most well intentioned plans.

Note we do however validate our roadmap with customers under strict guidelines requiring both NDA and acceptance of various safe harbor terms.

Cory, I fixed my beta app. I didn't complete it the first time it seems. All fixed *fingers crossed*

Well I don't know Matchmover (PFTrack is IMHO the best tracking software period), but I might have a look and try as I did for some others. But Toxik is certainly not a cheesy applications. Sure it has not the commercial success of Nuke but that doesn't mean it is not a good product. And about the creative interface, well this is why I like Toxik, because IMHO it has by far the best UI of the compositing package.

I surely aggree on most points here about adsk beeing focus in its communications on the packaging of Maya instead of new feature. Will see.

cheers,
antoine.

it's Monday!!!

I am downloading it off of Subscription now.

Yes, it's there now: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/maya_and_motionbuilder_2010_available_for_download