Optimize your scene for playback

Display and UI Elements

Tip: Hiding components (selection handles, locators, entire objects and so on) can increase the scene’s interactive speed. To hide components, use the options in the Display > Hide menu.

Close any unnecessary windows	Close all Maya editors and windows you are not currently working with, especially the Graph Editor and Dope Sheet (which update during playback). Close all windows from other applications. Close any DOS windows or Terminals.
Hide UI Elements	Select Windows > UI Elements > Hide All UI Elements. This hides all panes in the Maya main window except for the scene views.
Use alternate shading modes for your view	In the Panel menu bar, select alternate shading modes from the Shading > Interactive Shading menu. The performance of different shading modes from best to worst is: Bounding Box Points Wireframe Shaded High Quality Rendering
Use default lighting	In the Panel menu bar, turn on Lighting > Use Default Lighting. When Use Default Lighting is on, a checkmark appears beside its menu item.
Turn off hardware texturing and back face culling	In the Panel menu bar, do the following: Turn off Shading > Hardware Texturing Turn off Shading > Back Face Culling When Hardware Texturing and Back Face Culling are off, checkmarks do not appear beside their menu items.
Turn on fast interaction	Turn on Display > Object Display > Fast Interaction. When Fast Interaction is on, a checkmark appears beside its menu item. In this mode, objects are drawn at a resolution that is based on their screen size. In other words, the further an object is from the camera, the lower its drawn resolution.
Put non-moving objects in Template mode	Select the non-moving object you want to template. Select Display > Object Display > Template. Templated objects are not redrawn during playback. Also, templated objects will always be drawn in wire mode, even when the current view is shaded. It is therefore useful to put large, currently insignificant objects in the scene into template mode while working on other objects in the scene.
Turn off grid display	Select Display > Grid. When the Grid menu item is off (no checkmark), the grid does not appear in the scene view.
Hide Time Slider	Select Windows > UI Elements > Time Slider. When the Time Slider menu item is off (no checkmark), the Time Slider does not appear in Maya’s main interface.
Turn off Time Slider ticks	Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences. The Maya Preferences windows appears. In the Categories column, select Time Slider. In the Time Slider section, set Key Ticks to None.
Set playback Update View to Active	Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences. The Maya Preferences windows appears. In the Categories column, select Time Slider. In the Playback section, set Update View to Active.

Modeling

Remove invalid geometry

Select File > Optimize Scene Size > .
In the Optimize Scene Size Options, turn on NURBS Surfaces + Curves, and then click the Optimize now button next to the option.

Remove unused geometry

In the Optimize Scene Size Options (File > Optimize Scene Size > ), turn on NURBS curves and Locators, then click Optimize.

Reduce evaluations of NURBS objects

Use the Display > NURBS menu to reduce the number of evaluations along each span of a NURBS object.

Hull mode is the fastest to draw. The Rough, Medium, and Fine modes can be quickly accessed using the 1, 2, and 3 keyboard hotkeys. For more information, see NURBS Modeling in the Maya NURBS Modeling Guide.

Skeletons

Turn off joint display

Select Display > Hide > Hide Kinematics > Joints.

Skinning

Remove unused skin influences

Select your skinned object.
In the Rigging menu set, select Skin > Edit Influences > Remove Unused Influences.
This disconnects all zero-weighted skin influences from your skinned geometry.

Disable deformation of skin’s user normals

Select your smooth skinned object and open the Attribute Editor.
Select the skinCluster node’s tab.
In the Smooth Skin Attributes section, turn off the Deform User Normals attribute.

Display skinned geometry as wireframes

In the Panel menu bar, select Shading > Wireframe.

This is useful when your skinned object is not triangle based.

Animation

Remove unused animation components	In the Optimize Scene Size Options (File > Optimize Scene Size > ), turn on: Animation Curves Animation Clips Poses Cached Data Deformers Expressions Constraints Pair Blends Click Optimize.
Delete all flat animation curves	Select Edit > Delete by Type > Static Channels.

Advanced tips

Maya contains many advanced analysis tools to let you optimize your animation for playback. These tips require running some quick tests on your animation files to let you locate areas that may be cause slowdowns.

Increase the scene's evaluation speed	Use the Evaluation Manager to distribute computation among the available CPU and GPU computation resources. Switch Evaluation Modes in the Animation (Settings) preferences. (See Increase performance with the Evaluation Manager for more on using the the Evaluation Manager.) Note: Use the Evaluation Toolkit to analyze evaluation modes. This window contains advance features that let you manipulate all aspects of the Evaluation Manager, and includes debugging modes and output.
Profile the scene to locate data blocks	Analyze your scene for performance bottlenecks using the Profiler.
Cache your scene	If you are playing back your scene many times and making slight changes each time to tweak your result, caching your animation saves time by excluding computation on any portion of the animation that is unchanged. See Create an animation cache to increase playback speed.