Maya 2008 Extension 1 New Feature Highlights

Muscles and Skin

Deformations

Use the powerful, full-featured Maya Muscle deformer on skin, muscles or as a standalone deformer in conjunction with other Maya tools. The built-in Volume Preservation solution gives you realistic results as a muscle mass is contracted and lengthened – helping you avoid the typical collapsing and pinching problems that frequently plague joints.

Custom Weight Painting

Maya Muscle delivers custom weight painting with customizable, color-coded weight display. There are many different kinds of weight maps including:

• Slide/Sticky Weights – These let skin slide and bind over the deforming muscles and articulating bones (e.g. elbows) accurately. Blending between sliding and sticky weights, enables skin to transition correctly over different areas of the character.
• Relax/Wrinkle/Flex Weights – These let wrinkles, folds and creases appear and disappear at the right time.

Muscle on Muscle/Skin

The flexible Maya Muscle toolset gives you the freedom to create a wide range of rigs: from those which incorporate simple musculature to those with more complex, real-world musculature where muscle is attached not only to bone, but also to other muscles and/or skin.

Muscle Sculpting

Rather than rely on the shape that results from default deformations, you have the option to sculpt exactly the results you want for your muscle with the Custom Muscle Shaping feature.

Jiggle Functionality

Secondary motion, such as jiggle, can be added automatically through the automated Jiggle functionality. Muscles and skin can be created with as many jiggle and control points as desired, for the ultimate in control.

Workflow

Automatic Rigs

Begin using muscles instantly thanks to Maya Muscle’s automated rigging utilities — available for the most common muscle setups. Technical directors may find they can reduce the total number of specialty rigs a character requires as each Maya Muscle rig caters to a wider range of special character performances.

Realtime Jiggle Tweaking

Because jiggle animation is frame-based you can modify it on a per frame basis (often in realtime) for efficient fine-tuning and quick repetition of the deformation.

Deformation Level of Detail

You can balance performance versus accuracy through the ability to selectively enable deformer details.

Caching

The point-cache feature gives you faster feedback after the main deformation and animation has been processed (or baked). This is useful, for example, during the lighting stage, where you need faster timeline scrubbing.

Batch Processing

Save time through the ability to batch process (offline) Maya Muscle – and then cache the processed data.