Autodesk has announced Maya 2025.1 including many improvements across modelling, animation, rendering, and other areas.
In modelling, the Smart Extrude feature includes a new icon that appears above the manipulator in the viewport when Smart Extrude is active, distinguishing it from the Move tool. Additionally, Smart Extrude is now accessible from the poly modelling toolkit, and improvements have been made to manipulator and pivot inheritance from the Move, Rotate, and Scale tools. Performance, reliability, and stability have also been improved. Users can quickly activate Smart Extrude through the Poly Modelling shelf or the Modelling Toolkit.
Animation improvements include a cursor-centered zoom in the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet Editor, making navigation easier in scenes with dense keys. The default zoom behavior now centers on the cursor location, but users can revert to previous settings if preferred. Playblasted animations now support exposure and gamma adjustments via the color management buttons on the panel toolbar, although these settings are not yet supported for Stereo Cameras and the Camera Sequencer. Additionally, color-coded keys in the Time Slider no longer obscure frame numbers, enhancing visibility.
The Dope Sheet Editor has received multiple updates, including support for multiple audio tracks, cursor-centered zoom, and several selection improvements. Users can shift-select multiple keys, enter values to update them simultaneously, and work with dense keys more precisely. The move tool selection issue has been resolved, allowing individual attribute selection. A new Time Snap option enables or disables snapping keys to the nearest integer time unit. A Bake Channel option allows for baking keys in a user-defined range, and channel sets can now be imported and exported as JSON files. The Evaluation Manager now supports key manipulation, accelerating key adjustments.
The Universal Scene Description for Maya 0.28 plug-in introduces layer locking, allowing artists to prevent accidental edits in the wrong layers. Administrators can enforce system-level locks via scripts, providing further control.
Bifrost 2.10.0.0 introduces a Node Library for easier node management, new nodes for rigging workflows, and updated SDKs for integration and geometry manipulation. This version also includes new nodes and sample graphs.
LookdevX for Maya 1.4.0 now features a node library, the ability to hide input nodes, a material assignment menu in the Outliner and Viewport, and support for volume shaders. Arnold materials can now be displayed in the viewport, improving the visual workflow.
The Arnold for Maya 5.4.1.2 update includes improved denoising with Intel Open Image Denoise, improved snapshot workflows in the Arnold Render View, and new MaterialX node definitions for better usability. Additional improvements include updated denoising performance, improved support for USD cameras, and more intuitive tooltips.
Lastly, Substance 3.0.0 introduces an open-source Substance 3D Connector technology, allowing for seamless shader transfers from Substance 3D Sampler to Maya. This update also includes stability fixes.
For more information, visit the Maya documentation.
It apparently has the features that the 2 devs on the job couldn’t merge in time for 2025.0 release date set by marketing dept that doesn’t give a sh!t about software quality.
Haters gonna hate. Autodesk is not cool but Max and Maya are awesome.
Depends what you are doing with them. Modeling, fine, else, crap.
Everything serves the marketing strategy. Continuous small updates are more conducive to the subscription model. If you look at what Adobe is doing, it’s the same strategy. and I hate this.
Adobe is doing more aggressive and better. Have you looked at their 3D Substance package and online library yet? Every year when you see the updates from Autodesk, you feel like it is an insult. Also, look up the subscription pricing from Autodesk, way more expensive than Adobe.
The substance online library existed before Adobe. What Adobe did was to split the functions from one all-in-one product into multiple product families with single functions. This is just a business strategy to make the “subscription model” appear more cost-effective. Not a good thing for users. If Adobe owned Houdini, you would see Houdini Modeling, Houdini VFX, Houdini Animation, Houdini Procedural… You think the products have become richer, but in fact it is just an illusion. You think “subscribing” is more cost-effective than buying all the products one by one, and that’s what they want you to think.
As for why Autodesk’s subscription model is more expensive? Just because they are different products.
Subscription is an old topic. Everyone does it now. If you have complained it for years, just don’t use subscription products, to see what you can do. Nothing else you can change.
Welcome to the rental life! Someday, everything will be available by subscription: houses, cars, water, etc. You won’t own anything, perhaps not even your body.
Yeah! Can you imagine renting an apartment or a car? Now that’s a world I don’t want to live in.
Sounds like you can’t see the forest for the trees… The problem is that you won’t be allowed to own houses or cars with this model, because there is NO option to buy them.
Precisely Jumanji
Anemic…
“cursor-centered zoom in the Graph Editor”
Lol, this is wild. Only been waiting foreva for this. If only they could fix the selection toggle switch bug that’s been around for 10+ years. I dislike being on the hater train, but these are such basic UX/UI things that should just work.
Indeed, 25 years later they are still fixing stuff that should work same way everywhere.
After 25 years, well a bit more in 3D industry, software evolution has been an heavy disappointing while hardware have improved more than i was expecting.
When they made their new viewport current tool values UI, the digit values didn’t fit properly the UI, it was obvious that it was broken. Yet they never fixed it for years and till last time I tried, that’s how far their commitment for quality reaches the bottom of the sewers.