Looking to the future of game development, Autodesk is advancing its toolset for indie game makers with innovative updates to its Stingray Game Engine and Maya LT 2016 3D animation and modeling software.
Unveiled this week at Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2016, Stingray v1.2 adds support for new VR platforms and improvements that speed up common tasks within the engine. Maya LT Extension 3, coupled with Stingray v1.2, integrates several modeling, UV creation, rigging and animation improvements, and includes an updated exporter to simplify the creation of visually compelling characters.
Stingray v1.2 Highlights:
— Expanded VR Support: Compatibility with the HTC Vive VR Platform and Oculus Rift SDK v0.8.
— Multi-core Compilation: Faster project and asset import with multi-CPU compiling.
— Workflow Improvements: Entity support in story enables the shading environment to be animated with global illumination, fog, depth of field and more; a unit component editing tool moves, rotates or scales and animates sub-components of units; improved UI flexibility helps snap, move, or maximize/minimize Stingray tools independently of each other and use multiple monitors in development; and rendered outline highlights make it easier to find lost objects within large scenes.
Maya LT 2016 Extension 3 Highlights:
— Rigging Advances: New quick rig tool allows for the automated creation and placement of bipedal character rigs, while HumanIK support for up to five roll bones per limbs distributes model deformations during an animation.
— Improved Modeling and UV Toolsets: New shape authoring toolset and shape editor as well as blendshape deformer and sculpting enhancements; a robust mesh mirroring command and expanded tool symmetry; a new brush-based Symmetrize UV Tool, multi-object support for Unfold and improved layout and auto-seam features; and poly modeling enhancements.
— Updated Game Exporter: Users can now select objects in the viewport, create a named set with a single click and view it in the game exporter as an object to be exported; click-drag workflow facilitates scrolling through key frames in animations to choose the clip’s start and end times.
Sam Abbott, COO at Compulsion Games, recently shared, “We chose Maya LT because it is affordable and has pretty much everything we need for asset creation (modeling/texture baking). Subscribing to Maya LT allows us to equip a growing team more easily and always have the most up-to-date tools available. And, Maya LT is probably the best quality for cost software in the industry right now, and we’re really happy using it.”
Stingray v1.2 has just become available for subscription customers to download and runs $30 US MSRP per month. Maya LT 2016 Extension 3 will be available for download to customers on subscription April 18, 2016, and includes access to Stingray v1.2 in the monthly subscription fee.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More