Autodesk has announced a suite of enhanced feature sets for its 2012 entertainment creation software, including Maya, Max, Mudbox, Flame, Flare and Smoke, that current and new subscribers can use in their animation, modeling and finishing workflows. The Advantage Packs will be available for download, either via the software interface itself or online at Autodesk’s Subscription Center, in September. Features inside past Advantage Packs, often a preview of broader improvements to come, have traditionally appeared in subsequent releases of the off-the-shelf versions of the software. Flame subscribers will now get to work with a set of stereoscopic viewing modes and Max users get a new render pass system, as well as faster ways to render using the cloud.

The new tools for Maya subscribers include support for the open-source Alembic point cache format developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks and Lucasfilm to better manage complex scenes across every software environment in the pipeline but also to cut down on the huge overhead costs associated with the transfer of complex and editable scene data. A new Node editor aimed at artists and TDs was created to give them an easier way into the often buggy and complicated node network. And AMD’s Bullet Physics Engine, also open source, comes to Maya for creating more realistic dynamic simulations with both soft and rigid bodies. Bullet lets you quickly add, for example, secondary animation to a character in an already complex scene.Max tools for subscribers only include a much better render pass system and improved interoperability with Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, something many users have been requesting for some time. One of the cooler features inside the Advantage Pack for Max is ActiveShade rendering for iray, a kind of bridge to interactive rendering in the cloud. NVIDIA, who developed the technology, is giving a demo of what it can do at its booth during the show. Watch NVIDIA’s Michael Kaplan, product manager on the Mental Ray team, explain how iray uses the cloud to constantly update any changes made to cameras, lighting, materials and geometry during interactive rendering sessions.More on what the new tools can do is at Autodesk Area here.