Alias|Wavefront will have its first public showing of the new OpenFlight translator for Maya at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) Nov 26-29.
Maya is the award winning 3D animation and visual effects software for film, broadcast, video and game development. It’s available for Windows NT and SGI IRIX workstations, as well as Mac OS X.
The OpenFlight translator is a plug-in that allows for the importing and exporting of OpenFlight Format data into Maya software. OpenFlight is MultiGen-Paradigm’s visual database that’s pretty much the standard format in the visual simulation industry. OpenFlight’s logical, hierarchical scene description file format informs the real-time image generator what, when and how to render, resulting in real-time 3D scenes with unmatched precision and reliability.
“Over 10 years of creating software for the real-time 3D graphics market has left us well positioned to develop technology for the Vis-Sim marketplace,” Mike Wilson, director of 3D interactive technology at Alias|Wavefront, said in a statement. “With the Maya Open Flight translator plug-in, those producing content for Vis-Sim applications will be able to reuse legacy data and exploit the productivity advantages of Maya such as its innovative user interface and efficient 3D workflow. Moreover, Maya’s modeling history, MEL scripting language and open API are all features that will prove highly valuable to this growing community.”
Until recently the Vis-Sim market was solely based upon highly proprietary hardware and software platforms, he said. The advent of low cost 3D hardware and technology improvements that have come from the mass-market computer game industry in the past couple of years have caused parts of this market to re-tool around less expensive, personal computer-based technologies, Wilson said.
The Maya Open Flight translator is due next spring and will support OpenFlight files versions 14.2 and onwards and export of OpenFlight files version 15.7.