Maya coming to the Mac is undoubtedly one of the greatest events for the Mac 3D user, and likewise for the whole Mac community.
It’s proof that an industry leader sees the Macintosh as a viable 3D platform. Maya (on other platforms) created a lot of the 3D effects you see in motion pictures, such as Star Wars — Episode I and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Now that Maya has come to Mac OS X, how good is it really, and how can you justify the $7,500 price tag? Maya is damn good — in the right hands, it can pay for itself overnight.
Maya is based on (according to the manual) "nodes with attributes that are connected.” Huh? Nodes are representations of different aspects of 3D, such as the 3D object, its shape and surface, and the lights that illuminate a 3D scene. Each node has specific attributes, which you tweak to define an object’s appearance. Color and texture, for example, are two different attributes of a surface node. The interconnection of these attributes and nodes constitutes the framework of Maya. The program’s documentation emphasizes the importance of understanding this holistic concept — once we got it, Maya made a lot more sense.
Maya is based on MEL (Maya Embedded Language), a scripting language that lets you create tools and execute often-used commands. MEL works much like AppleScript; It automates complex tasks by assigning a sequence of functions to a single button. The MEL Script Editor logs every step you perform. You can select any of these actions or sets of actions from the editor and simply drag your selection to the Shelf..., where it becomes a push-button tool. Now that is freakin’ awesome.
Maya uses the same basic modeling conventions (such as lofting, lathing, and spline curves) found in other 3D tools like LightWave 3D and Cinema 4D, as well as the two basic types of modeling methods: polygonal and NURBS. Polygonal modeling is based on shapes with distinct faces (facets), while NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) is based on the calculation of curves —eitherway, Maya affords an incredible amount of control.
As you work — creating, scaling, bending, positioning, stretching, and otherwise tweaking objects — Maya records a history of those little tweaks in the Attribute Editor. You can go back to any one of those attributes and change it without affecting the node’s other attributes. This backlog of data history is crucial to efficient production, and you won’t find it in any other program — at least not to the degree that Maya offers. You also have an unlimited number of undos for linear, step-based corrections.
Maya has a built-in physics engine, which means objects can carry weight, collide, and deform. A good example of physics in action is a handkerchief object landing on a ball. Without simulated physics, the handkerchief object would simply pass right through the ball because no concept of mass exists In the scenario. In Maya, you can give mass to the objects, turn the handkerchief into a soft object, then add gravity and friction, so the handkerchief can not only land on a ball and conform itself to the bairs shape, but also slide off as it would in real life. All this is calculated on the fly, so you can view the effects from different angles without having to stop the animation or render the scene.
Maya’s built-in particle engine creates realistic atmospheric effects (including smoke, fire, sparks, and liquid), and you can apply particle dynamics to objects — for example, shattering glass into bits. You can also integrate particle dynamics into more-complex projects, such as creating a windblown field of grass and flowers, or building a crowd of walking people.
Paint Effects is unique to Maya, and it’s an amazing, interactive method of painting 2D and 3D elements into your scene. Imagine assigning a sunflower, complete with stem and leaves, to a paintbrush, and simply stroking across an empty plane to plant a row of flora. You can create an entire field of flowers this way. Thanks to the particle engine, these flowers react to natural dynamics, like wind, just as real flowers would.
If Maya has an Achilles heel, it’s the rendering engine. The quality of rendered output is very good — sufficient for most production needs — but it renders on the slower side, even on dualprocessor Macs, because Maya isn’t optimized for multiple processors.
Early adopters, buy your copy now. Maya is very stable for a first-time release (we experienced no crashes, just occasional slowdowns), so you can get right to work. Yes, Maya is expensive, but it’s an incredible tool — a great investment if you want to learn an industry standard application but don’t have (or want) an NT or SGI machine to run it on. Becoming a Maya guru can get your foot into many a 3D-studio door. Big-time Hollywood studios use Maya for a good reason — there’s no better off-the-shelf application with such ease of use, customizability, and detailed tweaking. And that $7,500 is chump change compared to the return studios get for their money.
Tokuda, Andrew. (December 2001). Maya for Mac OS X. MacAddict. (pgs. 40-41).
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maya305_learning.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
QEMU
