Special effects program used in Hollywood comes to the Mac

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by Gregg Wrenn

(IDG) -- It helped sink the Titanic, it's chronicling the further adventures of Anakin Skywalker, and by early next year it should run on a Mac. It's Maya, one of the preeminent professional applications for modeling, animating, and rendering 3-D images, as well as a key player in the digital effects revolution that has engulfed Hollywood.

Until now, Maya ran only on Windows NT and SGI IRIX systems. But Alias Wavefront plans to produce an OS X version of its special effects program used in such movies as Titanic, Men in Black, and the upcoming Star Wars Episode II.

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Maya Complete, the first Mac incarnation slated for release in 2001, will match the features in the NT and SGI versions, says director of technology Richard Kerris. Don't expect to load Maya onto your iMac, though. Not only do the program's demands require nothing less than a Power Mac G4, but Maya falls in that select group of software that costs more than the machine running it -- about $7,500 if Alias Wavefront sticks to the same pricing scheme as the NT version's.

Still, landing Maya is a big win for the Mac platform. Graphics professionals using tools like Adobe Photoshop have long preferred Macs, but the platform has had limited appeal for 3-D users and developers. Maya gives those high-end users a powerful new Mac tool.

Kerris credits the vocal demands of Mac users for Maya's arrival. "There has been an amazing amount of demand for this product," he says. "People have posted Web pages about it and we're inundated by requests at every trade show we do."

To Mac, and Beyond?

Don't expect Buzz Lightyear to start sporting an Apple logo on his lapel, though. Interest in a Mac version of Maya will more likely come from smaller animation houses and individual users, not big-name studios such as Industrial Light & Magic and Pixar, which have already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and proprietary applications.

"Pixar uses its own in-house software for almost all of the animation production process," says Darwyn Peachy, Pixar's vice president of research and development. "However, we have used Maya to sculpt the shape of some sets, props, and characters."

Those who work at small companies, such as San Francisco's SuperGenius Animation, are taking a wait-and-see approach. SuperGenius uses Macs for pre- and postproduction. It used the SGI version of Maya to animate Bowlin' fer Souls, an award-winning animated movie that features the Devil cruising freeways in a tricked-out convertible.

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"Our small crew probably could not have finished Bowlin' in the time we did without Maya," says director O.D. Wolfson. But Wolfson isn't sold on the Mac version just yet, adding that he'll base any purchase decisions on affordability and compatibility.

Kerris doesn't expect every animation company to ditch its existing hardware for Maya, but he says, "There is still a great business case for bringing it to the Mac. We're looking at a lot of new users, graphics professionals that are already using Photoshop and that want to get into 3-D."

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