Maya is an award-winning software and powerful, integrated 3D modeling, animation, visual effects, and rendering solution. Because Maya is based on an open architecture, all your work can be scripted or programmed using a well-documented and comprehensive API (application programming interface), or one of two embedded scripting languages, the Maya Embedded Language (MEL) or Python. This level of openness, combined with an industry-leading suite of 3D visual effects, computer graphics, and character animation tools, enables you to realize your creative vision for your film, television, game development, and design projects.

Adaptive foam in Bifrost
Add froth, foam, and bubbles (“whitewater”) to liquid simulations, creating even more realism and detail in scenes with oceans, beaches, lakes, and stormy seas. Create high-resolution simulations close to the camera, where detail is essential, while lowering the computation of foam particles in other areas. The result: shorter simulation times.

Faster, easier-to-use XGen
An all-new presets workflow enables you to quickly share looks between meshes by applying premade grass or hairstyles to the meshes for an improved starting point. The XGen library now includes presets previously included for Maya Fur, and allows you to build a library of descriptions with custom thumbnails. So you don't have to rebuild them from scratch every time.

Guided simulation in Bifrost
Drive the behavior of liquids using a cached simulation or an animated mesh object. With a guided simulation, use a full-depth, low-resolution simulation to guide a high-resolution simulation on the liquid's surface. Use guided simulation for carefully art-directed hero waves and similar effects. You can perform multiple iterations at high resolution while retaining the basic look and motion of the underlying guiding simulation.

Adaptive Aero solver in Bifrost
Create atmospheric effects such as smoke and mist. Aero produces simulations of higher detail and greater physical accuracy than Maya Fluid Effects. As with guided simulation, low resolution aero solves can drive higher resolution detail. The added benefit of adaptivity means that you can define regions of high resolution within a massively large computational domain.

Parallel rig evaluation
Increase the speed of character rig playback and manipulation. This new, multithreaded system distributes computation amongst existing cores and graphics processors in your computer. A new GPU-based mechanism performs deformations on your graphics hardware within Viewport 2.0. Create customized GPU-accelerated deformers with the provided APIs, and understand and target bottlenecks in scenes and plug-ins with the integrated performance profiler.

Delta Mush deformer
Smooth deformation to help guide the final result closer to the original geometry. Use Delta Mush in many different workflows, such as paint-free skinning, smoothing of coarse simulation results, and shot post corrections. A popular user request.

New sculpting toolset
Sculpt and shape models more artistically and intuitively. The new sculpting toolset represents a huge upgrade over previous editions. The new sculpting tools offer more detail and resolution. The brushes feature Volume and Surface falloff, stamp images, sculpting UVs, and support for vector displacement stamps.

Enhanced game engine workflows
Move from Maya to game engines such as Unity, Unreal, or Autodesk Stingray with simplified and streamlined game exporter workflows.

Enhanced look development workflow
We've made building and editing materials in the Hypershade more artist-friendly and intuitive, with simpler workflows and a revamped user interface. A rebuilt node-editing interface makes it easier to connect, arrange, and work with shading components. New workflows enable you to visualize and diagnose complex shading graphs. Customize your UI for the way you work; new layout tabs allow you to work with shading graphs in a far more organized way.

Color management
Preserve creative intent throughout lighting and rendering workflows with a sophisticated color management system. Use the simple linear workflow provided out of the box, or customize the system to suit your color pipeline. Image handling is consistent and color-safe across The Foundry's NUKE software, Photoshop, Autodesk Creative Finishing solutions, and other applications.