Introducing new crowd tools, AI, and connected workflows for incredible storytelling 

We kicked off this month celebrating the best in storytelling—the moments that inspire and stay with us. Dune: Part Two took home the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, a testament to the power of great stories, passion, talent, and the right tools. Now, as the month wraps up, we’re focused on making the next wave of stories easier to bring to life. 

Some of these stories will demand hundreds of characters—so we’re making crowd tools more accessible. Others will push the limits of time and resources—so we’re integrating AI to drive efficiency, taking mundane tasks off your plate so you can focus on creating great art. And as you grow, the tools you love should too—so we’re making them stronger. 

“We’re breaking down long-standing technical barriers to get artists into the creative zone faster,” says Ben Fischler, Autodesk’s director of product management for content creation. “With new crowd simulation, AI-powered tools, and Flow-connected workflows, our latest updates help you reach that last 80%—where the real fun begins, and you can focus on making your shot work for the story.” 

Crowd tools made more accessible

Creating large-scale crowd scenes—whether it’s a stadium full of cheering fans or soldiers on a battlefield—can be complex. To make it easier, we’ve added the Golaem plug-in for Maya to the Media & Entertainment Collection, so you can say yes to projects that require filling 3D worlds with multiple animated characters. 

“Crowd simulation has long been a challenge, and our mission has always been to make it accessible to all”, shares Nicolas Chaverou, Golaem co-founder and principal technical product manager at Autodesk. “Now, as part of Autodesk’s M&E Collection, we’re thrilled that Golaem is in the hands of more studios and can empower more artists to create stunning, large-scale scenes with ease.”  

French animation studio, Fortiche Production, used Golaem on the second season of Arcane to populate scenes with anything from a handful of characters to hundreds. Golaem’s Layout tool allows studios like Fortiche to adjust and customize characters directly in the Maya viewport without altering simulations. And its built-in procedural animation engine helps you control multiple characters at once. 

Once your simulation is set up in Maya, you can transfer it to 3ds Max, Houdini, Unreal, or Katana using Golaem’s dedicated plug-ins. Golaem for Maya supports major industry formats, including OpenUSD, so you can work seamlessly across different tools. 

Golaem joins a powerful lineup in the Media & Entertainment Collection, which includes Maya, 3ds Max, Arnold, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, and 15 Bifrost simulation nodes in one cost-efficient package. And with the ability to run Arnold on up to 5 machines with the collection, rendering your crowds is faster and less costly for your studio. 

AI tools that work for you

Your day should be driven by passion, not bogged down by repetitive tasks. You entered this field for the magic of creation, so we’re focused on helping you craft animation more interactively. 

Take the Machine Learning Deformer in Maya, for example. Powered by Autodesk AI, it tackles the issue of sluggish interactivity when working with complex characters. The latest update to Maya brings major improvements to the ML Deformer for animators and layout artists, with speed, quality, and ease of use now at the forefront. Load times are now 40 times faster, and disk space usage has been reduced by 80% to keep you focused on building the elements that tell an extraordinary story. 

More scene context with connected workflows

Animators often get assigned tasks with little to no scene context—just a shot with no sense of what comes before or after. That makes it harder to craft performances that truly fit the story. We’re changing that. 

With Flow Animating in Context, surrounding shots from Flow Production Tracking (formerly ShotGrid) are brought directly into Maya’s timeline. Now, animators and layout artists can scrub between their work and the shots around it, making informed creative choices that improve cut continuity. 

Flow Animating in Context also lets you switch between different pipeline steps, whether its layout or FX – to further pinpoint the part of the cut you need to focus on. The result is faster production and better storytelling. 

Strengthened modeling, FX, and OpenUSD

The tools you rely on every day should be fast and enjoyable to use. The latest updates to Maya and 3ds Max include hundreds of enhancements and fixes to bring you closer to undisrupted creative flow. 

Modeling improvements – The powerful Volume Booleans tool is now available in Maya and 3ds Max, creating a more unified Boolean engine between the two tools. This update makes it easier to explore freeform shapes and build complex organic forms from simple primitives. 

Liquids – Bifrost’s new liquid simulation feature is now available directly within the Bifrost graph. The new FLIP solver offers adaptive resolution for efficient computation, particle-based foam, and improved velocity estimation. You can also emit and blend colored liquids. It is perfect for large-scale, non-viscous fluids. 

OpenUSD enhancements – Improvements continue across both Maya and 3ds Max OpenUSD, with added support for axis and scale adjustments in Maya and recently, an Attribute Editor in 3ds Max. A long-requested feature, Light Linking, is also now available in both tools, giving you greater control over rendering. 

OpenPBR integration – OpenPBR is now the default shading option in both Maya and 3ds Max, bringing enhanced artistic controls, more accurate material representation across tools and improved interchange with other software.

For a complete list of new features, visit the Maya, 3ds Max, Arnold, and Flow Production Tracking What’s New pages. 

Start your free trial of the Golaem plug-in for Maya as part of the Media & Entertainment Collection.