Feature: 'Backstage At Autodesk'

Following up on our recent interview with Michel Kripalani, Gamasutra reports from Autodesk’s Backstage Pass event, with details on the future of Maya, 3ds Max, and Autodesk's relationship with game developers. In this excerpt, Autodesk media and entertainment division senior director of product management Michael Besner stresses the importance of interoperability of all of Autodesk's products as next-gen development goes forward: ”Besner went into detail on the concepts behind the development of Autodesk’s signature 3D tools (3DS Max, Maya and MotionBuilder) and in particular the file standard, FBX, that connects them. “Before when there was competition between Max and Maya, the only thing people could think about was competing at the feature level,” Besner commented, “but now we are able to look at our customers and ask, ‘what do we have to do for their needs?’ And because of that we have concentrated on interoperability with FBX, to make each of our products a better, more useful product for our customers.” Besner used the PS3 as an example of the need to pass data between Autodesk products easily. “When we think about ramping up to using the PS3 to its full potential, well, in two or three years when developers are, the amount of data that will be pushed will be absolutely insane.” You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, with more from Autodesk on the hi-def future, and an exclusive look at its new 'Forge' update and 'Nucleus' technology (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).