Maya 2023 focuses on improved usability for both seasoned Maya artists and new users alike. Experience the completely revamped Booleans Tool, the new Blue Pencil Tool, or try some of the other improvements detailed below. You’ll also notice an improved user experience with the new Application.
What is Maya?
Maya is professional 3D software for creating realistic characters and blockbuster-worthy effects.
- Bring believable characters to life with engaging animation tools.
- Shape 3D objects and scenes with intuitive modeling tools.
- Create realistic effects—from explosions to cloth simulation.
Maya 2023 improvements
Blue Pencil 2D Drawing Tools
This release adds a new set of animation tools that enhance how you animate scenes. The new Blue Pencil toolset lets you draw 2D sketches directly in the viewport over your scene in a clean and non-destructive way. Sketch poses over time, define motion arcs, mark up shots, and add annotations and comments to make animating easier.
Blue Pencil Toolset
This new toolset gives you a wide range of tools for drawing and annotating directly in the viewport. The Pencil and Brush tools include the functionality to control the hardness, stylus pressure, opacity, size, and color, as well as a transform tool for editing drawings. Use the shape tools to easily create lines, arrows, rectangles, and ellipses and the Blue Pencil Text Tool to quickly type notes in the viewport.
Blue Pencil 2D Layers System
The Blue Pencil Layer manager lets you organize drawings into layers. When drawing in the viewport with Blue Pencil, a frame is created on the current camera view. You can then create, delete, hide, rearrange, and move layers between cameras. Blue Pencil allows for multiple layers per camera, letting you separate different images and stack them in a non-destructive way.
USD across Maya’s toolset
Channel Box support for USD prims
The Channel Box now supports the visibility, translation, rotation, and scaling of USD attributes. Just as with Maya data, you can now easily drag values for USD attributes in the Channel Box to enact changes in the viewport, speeding up the editing process for layout and assembly workflows.
USD attribute locking
Edit attributes faster and preserve changes using the new locking feature for USD attributes in the Maya Attribute Editor, Channel Box, and via MEL scripting.
Support for USD prims in the Attribute Editor
The Attribute Editor now has improved support for USD prims, making it easier to visualize your workflows. When focused on a prim, the Attribute Editor states the USD data model clearly to distinguish it from the Maya data model. USD attributes are also displayed in order of derived schema, including applied schemas, and connected attributes and array attributes are clearly differentiated.
Credit: autodesk.com
