Practical Uses for Maya in Advertising

Maya and advertising are two words that most people don't ever hear together. Autodesk's Maya software is a computer program used for 3D animation and visual effects. If you've seen any of the Ice Age Movies, Avatar, or pretty much any big Hollywood movie released in the last ten years, then you have seen Maya at work. And if you've been watching TV, then you have seen it as well because it's now heavily employed by the advertising industry in commercials. 

The Basics of Editing a Commercial

A commercial is made up of three parts in the editing room: video footage, audio and graphics. Advertisers have to battle aggressively to get a viewer interested in what they are trying to sell. People tend to tune out commercials, so anything they can do to get you to watch what they have to say helps. The better their graphics, the better their chances.

Creating an Imaginative World

A program like Maya allows an advertiser to construct a world that looks very real. You can convincingly create any world you want with this program where anything can happen. The only limit here is the skill of the animator and the imagination of the creative team. One of the biggest advantages with creating a sequence animated in Maya is that this world is not bound by the laws of gravity. You can have your "camera" perform moves that would be impossible in the real world, allowing you to create visually stunning images that would have been impossible a few years ago.

Cutting Costs

Maya animating is a labor intensive process, but it's a lot more practical sometimes then shooting a scene on set. Take special effects like explosions for instance. If you're actually shooting these, then you need to spend money on permits, hire the right people to execute it, pay for a location, and hire a large team to keep a safe perimeter around the area. This costs a ton of money and might not come out as you intended. With Maya, all you need to do is pay one or two people to create the effect. It's a lot of work for them, but it costs less then doing the real thing.

Product Shots

Shooting a product can take a while because it needs to look perfect. This requires labor intensive lighting to get everything to look just right. On a one day commercial shoot, the product shot can take a lot of time out of the day when you could have been concentrating on the content of the ad. Maya allows advertisers to create the perfect product shot, which means more time can be spent on the ad itself. It also cuts costs down because the time spent on the product shot goes to overtime for the crew.