SIGGRAPH 2011 was great and we had lots of exciting Maya news. Let's start with the Subscription Advantage Pack features of Bullet Physics, Alembic Caching and the new Node Editor.

As you may know, Alembic is an OpenSource project from Sony Pictures Imageworks and LucasFilm. Here's an example of one of our internal test scenes we've been using to put Alembic through its paces.

If you want more info, please chech out Alembic.IO for details.

The other big news was Walt Disney Pictures and Autodesk Sign XGen Technology License Agreement. XGen is a very cool tool for covering things with stuff like grass, flowers, fur and hair. I can't show you the toolsbut you can watch the tangled trailer and look at how lush the environments are and how impressive Rapunzel's hair is to get an idea of what it is capable of.

We also had lots of demos and discussions about all the great things one can do with Maya. 

Duncan showed some of the crazy things he's been doing with Maya and has more details on his blog as well as two movies: Part 1 and Part 2.

Daryl talks about Building Characters in the Maya Entertainment Creation Suite.

Steven talks about Project Skyline and Building Game Content.

Marcel talks about Entertainment Design.

Lee shows some more of what you can do with the Maya 2012 Subscription Advantage Pack.

It was not just the Autodesk team talking about Maya. Here's a bunch of other presentations.

Greg Berridge from VFS talks about the Evolution of an Animator.

Frederick Fowles of Rainmaker talks about Creature Development.

Mark Jackson from Eurocom talks about Live Animation Binding.

There was a lot of discussion about Previsualization and Virtual Production - the main drive of these initiatives is to help capture the director's vision more accurately and the beginning of the pipeline to avoid mistakes and unnecessary iteration later on in the production.

Daniel Neufeldt and Richard Baneham from Lightstorm share info on the 3D Tech Behind Virtual Production.

Jeremy McCarron, Troy Thibodeau and Bradley Olesky from Electronic Arts discuss the Virtual Production at EA.

Justin Denton from Halon shares some of the Previs of Halo Reach and Battleship.

There was a talk on the 3D Tech Behind Virtual Production using Kinect with Kevin Wittkopf of Microsoft and Geoff Richardson of Triagle.

And to get you thinking, the Previsualization Society presents Post Visualization.

The Autodesk SIGGRAPH show reel is always a good watch to see how creative our customers are.

One last video to share - nVidia shows interactive fluid simulation running in Maya: