A couple of months ago, we released Maya 2016 Extension 2 and some people have asked us about Maya 2017 & MotionBuilder 2017. Now, they are here! Maya 2017 & MotionBuilder 2017 have been announced on July 26, 2016, during SIGGRAPH event. As usual, I’d like to highlight some changes/improvements on the API side.
Maya API Changes:
- There are many API improvements in Maya 2017, especially for the Rendering feature. For all the details about API changes/improvements between Maya 2016 Extension 2 and Maya 2017, please refer at “What's New in API in Maya 2017” section of online SDK help. Some more information and highlights:
- In Maya 2017 we have further improved the “Render Setup” feature. As you know in Maya 2016 Extension 2 we introduced a new feature named “Render Setup” to replace Maya's legacy Render Layers. For Maya 2017 we have made improvements and changes that will allow for better support for 3rd party renderers:
- Support for AOV setups per layer and inclusion of AOV setups in exported Render Setup templates
- Changes to render settings window callbacks to support the new workspaces UI feature
- "Interactive Sequence Rendering" - A new feature allowing artists to render a sequence directly from Maya’s UI without having to execute a batch render (including support for loading the sequence in the Renderview for review)
- One big UI change in Maya 2017 is the move to Qt 5.6 and PySide 2.0. This means if your plugins are based on the previous Qt/PySide versions, then migration work is required to make them work successfully. You can refer to the official website of Qt 5, and PySide 2.0. There are also some notes that were added by our engineer during the porting to PySide 2.0.
- Some rendering developers may be interested in the XGen feature. It provides an SDK for our renderer partners to integrate with this cool functionality and is separate from the Maya main Devkit. You can find XGen SDK at “Maya 2017 installation folder\plug-ins\xgen\devkit\". For Maya 2017, we added a new sample to show how to render the new interactive groom splines through Arnold. You can find the sample at "Maya 2017 installation folder\plug-ins\xgen\devkit\xgenSplineArnoldExtension\xgenSpline”.
- In Maya 2017 we have further improved the “Render Setup” feature. As you know in Maya 2016 Extension 2 we introduced a new feature named “Render Setup” to replace Maya's legacy Render Layers. For Maya 2017 we have made improvements and changes that will allow for better support for 3rd party renderers:
- The next thing is about the Maya Devkit, that should be downloaded from Autodesk App Store(Coming soon). In Maya 2016 Extension 2, we have re-introduced the devkit headers and libraries into the installation. This will help you to keep the correct SDK files aligned with each product release. The devkit from the app store is the complete and current one that also includes the samples. Whenever you need to review the samples, please use this one. Also note that compressed Qt headers are included with the installation as well.
- Please remember that we have three consecutive binary change releases. The three different releases are Maya 2016, Maya 2016 Extension 2 and Maya 2017. The key thing you should know is that all of them are not binary compatible, and it means if you want your plugin to support all of these 3 versions, it must be re-compiled against each different Maya version in order to be recognized. BTW, Maya 2016 Extension 1 is a normal extension of Maya 2016, and also binary compatible with Maya 2016, so you can consider it together with Maya 2016.
For MotionBuilder 2017, we have introduced several new features in all the major areas of the software.
This includes updates to Story, Animation, Character Animation, and Scripting as well as adding and improving numerous methods and properties. I won’t give all the details here, but you can go to “What’s New/ What’s Changed?” section of MotionBuilder 2017 Developer Help for more information.
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