Maya 2024

SOFTWARE REVIEW

- Paul Hatton

PRICE £250/$235 monthly / £1.970/$1,875 annually COMPANY Autodesk WEBSITE autodesk.co.uk/products/maya/features

Across Autodesk's range of software such as 3ds Max, Mudbox, Arnold and indeed Maya, new features and improvements are made public at around Easter time every year.

In Maya 2023 we saw the Grease Pencil superseded with Blue Pencil, improved Bifrost USD support, an updated Boolean modelling workflow, and a new Live Link with Unreal Engine. The 2024 update lacks any major new feature, but includes a wide range of improvements and updates. We'll take a look at some of the more notable ones.

GRAPH EDITOR IMPROVEMENTS

First up, Maya now has a set of cool brushes that can be used for easily adjusting animation curves. Options include Grab, Smooth or Smear and provide a natural option for controlling keyframes across the graph.

These come in particularly useful for complex animations and where there are a dense number of frames. Rather than having to move each individual frame in a sequence and risk poor results, animators can now brush across the timeline to create much more organic results. This will make the animating process more seamless and enable animators to clean up their work with a few simple strokes.