TOOLS // AUTODESK | BUILD
seen come out of developers that are under that 25,000 cap is more than adequate for what we see these smaller developers will need. There are a couple of other things – like the
particle effects and the hair that indie studios aren’t really using – that we pulled out, but we decreased the price by a tremendous amount, so we needed to keep that differentiation there between our full tools and LT.
Will we see LT updates in tandem with new Maya releases, or are the products more separated than that? The nice thing about Maya LT is that it’s on a totally separate release schedule, and updates will be coming a lot more regularly than with Maya, because the way things are moving with indie development is so fast. We have a really nimble team of ninjas internally working on this, adding in new features, workflows and integrations that are built specifically for indie games makers. We’re trying to create a really customised tool specifically for this audience of small teams.
Does Autodesk have any sense that LT could serve as an introduction to Maya for studios that may grow and one day need the full Maya product? We hope that happens with Maya LT. We’re really trying to cater the learning materials as well, for people who are less familiar with our products, and see LT as something that could be an on-ramp for people looking to get further into games development – perhaps people that are moving from 2D to building 3D assets for their games. And LT and Maya
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
are comparable in many ways. LT spits out FBX, which can be used on any of our larger tools, for example. The pipelines are completely interoperable, but it stays within the limitations of FBX to start with.
And what about indies new to Autodesk products. How have you made LT welcoming to them? We’re working on materials specific to people who are newer to Maya, who are using
We really want to embrace this notion
of indie artists as a very specific part of the indie developer community.
Greg Castle, Autodesk
specific workflows, for example, with Unity or even fully-2D game engines. We are working on plenty of very focused learning materials for those guys.
And you’re already working with select partner indies in building Maya LT? Absolutely. We’ve had a beta that has been out there for maybe five months, and there’s a lot of different developers out there on that beta that are working with the product. We’ve been taking under consideration a lot of feedback that they’ve given us.
At launch, and shortly thereafter, we’ll start
to feature works that are built using Maya LT, so you’ll start to see what’s possible. But right now all of the projects already using Maya LT are completely under wraps.
With so many tools integrating with Maya, could Maya LT encourage even more middleware outfits to start to embrace indies? And on that note, have you made the job of supporting indies easier now, and could you have done it sooner? Let’s be honest. This has been a long time coming, and I would have liked us to have had this out there a while ago. We are definitely with Maya LT, as I mentioned before, working on a new approach, where we are really trying to support integration with the tools community, and it is a real opportunity to do so. Yes, we are doing it, but, again, it’s a little early for saying too much more. I have beers with the Project Anarchy guys on almost a weekly basis now, and we work with the Unity guys too. We’re really trying to integrate as much as possible and provide the best end user experience for everyone, so they don’t have to choose one thing or another; we want everything to work for everyone. On a related note, we’re really trying to take our Area website to the next level for the indie artist. We really want to embrace this notion of indie artists, as a very specific part of the indie developer community, and so we’re providing lots of resources and support specifically for the indie artists. We’re really banking on that community being a part of Maya LT and its success.
area.autodesk.com
Putting the Autodesk tech into the hands of small teams with Maya LT (main images, left and right) could serve to encourage more middleware to adapt to support indies, suggests Greg Castle (above)
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