We are pleased to announce the release of Kevin Rig v1.0, a fully flexible character rig for Autodesk Maya with lot of advanced. Alias/WaveFront Material (.mtl.

Well for starters, it's the first time maya has released 'crippleware', in an attempt to curb rampant pirating. Secondly, it's an unlimited time use licence, unlike other time-limited demos. This means that for the casual user who might want to try out their software, now they can, without dealing with a download of the pirated version that stopped at 96% after an excruciating 6 hour download.

Maya also can collect user data on their previous piraters, which provides them with valuable marketing data, who, who knows, may possibly lead to a $150 'consumer' version that sits between the two versions offered right now. Of course, this won't stop the hard core 1337 warez d00dz from downloading it and making hard core pornos of dr. Aki ross and a cgi version of themselves, but more than anything, thiw will allow maya to reach out to the 'casual', non uber-geek user, or aspiring female technophobe artist in middle school, and once again, provide valuable marketing data. It's basically like free heroin. They're pushing it as a way for students to be exposed to Maya (free of charge) and get ramped up on it.and of course not being able to work without it. They want to expose people to Maya.

It's definitely more complex than a drawing app, so a demo of a product like this is mighty helpful. This is all with the hope of increasing sales down the road obviously.

It's also a counter to Discreet's gMAX offering. The Maya PLE is a crippled Maya Complete setup. The file format is proprietary to this version, most plug-ins won't work (some web export stuff *may* work), and of course the watermark is there in rendered images. I don't think it's a bad idea, but they have an uphill battle increasing sales. For one thing, it's hard to find a discounted price (Maya Complete is usually $6,500). For another, the Mac version is pretty much a revision behind their other platform offerings (v3.51 for the Mac, v4 for Win2k/WinNT/Linux; v3.51 is an enhanced v3).

Cisco 3750 Software Upgrade Procedure For Mitel. They also have next to no free plug-ins for the Mac version (commercial version), yet they have dozens for the WinNT/Win2k version. Why even bother with the Mac version, really? (Getting off-topic) I wanted to buy Maya Complete for game development, but held off at the last minute. I found that between Cinema4D/BodyPaint and LightWave, I have a slew of tools and plug-ins at a lower cost. (Getting more off-topic) IMHO, if you want to work with video production (any CG work), Maya is a good bet. If you're looking for good renderings and/or game work, LightWave and C4D are a better route. This is assuming you want to stay on the Mac.

I do not think it is meant to be an evaluation version (or just that), but rather a way for more exposure -- get more people using Maya in a non-commercial environment so that they are more likely to recommend Maya to others (friends, the company they work for, etc.) or even buy Maya themselves. It also hurts the competition -- are you as likely to buy [eovia.com], [cinema4d.com], or [corel.com] now that you can get Maya Personal Edition for free?