Alias Systems is now offering Maya Personal Learning Edition 5 as a free download.
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 Maya Personal Learning Edition is available with online documentation, while Japanese online documentation can be obtained at the Alias Japan Web site.
For those new to 3D, the Learning Maya Beginner’s Guide package can be purchased for US$19.99 at the Alias online store. The Beginner’s Guide contains a one-hour DVD learning guide with English, French, German, Japanese and Korean language tracks, an Introduction to Maya booklet and a bonus Maya Personal Learning Edition 5 CD.