Supercharge your workflow with Maya - Media and Entertainment

Maya brings enhanced tools so you can focus on your most important tasks and devote time on being creative. New options for controlling Proximity Wrap driver behaviour enable you to stay productive, while new settings for manipulating left-drag behaviour help reduce friction points in your workflow. Maya also comes with latest version of the USD plugin and Arnold for an optimized artist experience.

Global Scaling for Proximity Wrap

Stay productive with new ways of controlling Proximity Wrap driver behavior:

The new Use Transform As Deformation option specifies whether the transform of the driver is used for deformation or whether it is kept separate.
The Driver Cluster Matrix attribute can be used to better preserve rotation and scaling.

Optimized left-drag behavior

Reduce friction points in your workflow with a new setting added to the Animation preferences to control left-drag behavior. When Left-dragging moves selected keys is enabled, you can drag to move selected keyframes in the Graph Editor with a single click. When off, left-clicking only selects keys. This is useful if you don’t want to move keys accidentally when working with dense curves.

Hypershade preferences

Customize your Hypershade work area with a new Hypershade preferences section added to the Preferences window which allows you to set default grid visibility, grid snapping, display modes, and swatch sizing.

Autodesk Translation Framework (ATF)

Autodesk Translation Framework (ATF) importer now supports Catia V5-6R2022 and Alias 2023 models for seamless data and file transfer.

Improvements to USD and Arnold

Enjoy the latest version of the Maya for USD plugin and integrated Arnold version. These updates increase overall stability and bring you a smoother experience.

Bifrost 2.6 (requires separate download)

Open Source Bifrost-USD

Bifrost-USD is now available as an open-source USD ecosystem within Maya or as a standalone project on GitHub. The Bifrost-USD project includes wrapped USD types that flow in the graph, ability to monitor USD low-level operators, translation tables to handle integration with the host DCC, compounds that expose Bifrost-USD functionality to users, documentation, tests to ensure all components are functioning correctly, and custom USD tools and builds to improve pipeline flexibility and scalability.Bifrost-USD is now available as an open-source USD ecosystem within Maya or as a standalone project on GitHub. The Bifrost-USD project includes wrapped USD types that flow in the graph, ability to monitor USD low-level operators, translation tables to handle integration with the host DCC, compounds that expose Bifrost-USD functionality to users, documentation, tests to ensure all components are functioning correctly, and custom USD tools and builds to improve pipeline flexibility and scalability.

Redesigned Backdrops and Sticky Notes

A complete overhaul of backdrops introduces more functional and aesthetic annotations. Backdrops enable teams to outline, identify, and separate notable areas in graphs, while sticky notes are ideal for annotating comments and instructions for more efficient communication among teams.

Enhanced UI Editing

Widgets like sliders, color pickers, and a new combo box can now be added to your compounds without requiring any coding.

Upgraded MPM Simulation

Introduction of new collider stickiness makes it easier and more intuitive for you to create a snowball impact with the desired amount of snow left clinging to the wall. Additionally, new per-particle activation supports complex disintegration effects, as well as location-based activation for efficient footstep simulations in large environments.

Streamlined Simulation Diagnostics and Scopes

To streamline physics simulations, a unified set of diagnostic tools have been added to MPM and Aero, allowing you to visualize velocities, temperatures, and more, and explore the solver’s internal state to understand the physics behind the effects.

Low-Overhead Evaluation

Various overheads have been reduced to improve performance, including arrays of input data that increased the speed to run a graph by 30-fold. These improvements are most important for the Bifrost Board node, but also apply to the Bifrost Graph Shape node.

Bifrost Geometry, Property Transfer and Alembic Improvements

To simplify creating complex geometry algorithms from scratch, new property transfer helps teams streamline use of custom properties, while creating a first bath of procedural geometry compounds in the process. This includes basic compounds – such as delete and filter points, faces, and strands – each able to preserve UVs, normal, and any user data. It also includes separate mesh, detach faces, and add points. Additionally, Bifrost’s Alembic implementation new features improved performance with indexed properties, including UVs and face vertex normals to better preserve user data. A one-click solution also now converts Bifrost data into a Maya mesh.

Find the Bifrost-USD project on GitHub

Learn more in the Bifrost 2.6 release notes

Check out the Maya 2023.3 Release Notes for more information.

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