Silicon Graphics Inc. subsidiary Alias Systems announced on Monday the release of Maya Personal Learning Edition 5, a new version of the 3D graphics and animation software that’s free for non-commercial use.
Based on the most recent version of Maya Complete, Maya Personal Learning Edition 5 touts a new hardware rendering option that uses the latest graphics card technology, a unified rendering workflow, animation enhancements to constraints, forward/inverse kinematics and ghosting, Maya Paint Effects polygon conversion and more. Maya Personal Learning Edition 5 is compatible with Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.
Maya Personal Learning Edition restricts users to non-commercial use; the software displays a watermark on images and supports a non-commercial file format. It also ships without the Maya Application Programming Interface (API) and lacks support for Maya’s standard plug-ins. It’s intended for personal, non-commercial use only, as a introduction to how Maya works.
The new version of Maya Personal Learning Edition is initially available included with the Learning Maya Beginner’s Guide, which can be purchased through Alias’s online store for US$19.99. A no-charge version of Maya PLE 5 will also be available from the Alias Web site beginning this fall.
The Maya Beginner’s Guide contains a one-hour instructional DVD, an Introduction to Maya booklet, and a CD-ROM containing Maya PLE 5 with English, French, German, Japanese and Korean language tracks.
Attendees of this week’s SIGGRAPH show in San Diego, Calif. can purchase the Maya Beginner’s Guide at Alias’s booth, #3015.