Maya programmers debug faster with MWatch!

Octopus Graphics MWatch™ for Maya® is a debugging tool for programmers who develop plug-in software using the Alias|Wavefront Maya® API. It works with all Maya releases from 4.0 onward, and Microsoft Visual C++ 6 or 7.

As processors have become more and more powerful over the last 30 years (thanks to Moore's Law) computational problems which would have been impossible a handful of years ago are now not only possible, but being done. One of the most obvious applications of this increased computation power is the creation of ever-more complex and dynamic graphics. Humans are visual creatures, and the vast majority of us get bored very easily, so we are always looking for something new and different. In fact, the latest neurological research shows that this tendency to become easily bored is built into our nervous system.

However, the latest generation of graphics "accelerators" (as dedicated processors which do nothing but process graphics are now called) can not only produce pretty pictures, they have the processing power and memory capacity to render images in 3 dimensions, using software commands! This removes a major amount of the graphics creation load off of the main processor, leaving it free to do more non-graphics work, which results in a noticable overall increase in system performance.

However, as graphics accelerators (processors) have become increasingly more powerful, they have also become increasingly more complex to program efficiently! This is where products like MWatch for Maya come in. They provide the tools necessary to program graphics efficiently.