What's New in Maya 2024

Welcome to Maya 2024! Read on to learn about the new features and updated workflows you'll find in this release. For technical details including What's Fixed, see the Maya 2024 Release Notes.

For more on the evolution of Maya over the years, check out the Maya timeline on Autodesk AREA.

Modeling Updates

Updates to the Retopologize, Make Live, Quad Draw, Boolean, and Unsmooth workflows include interface and usability improvements that let modelers produce better results.

New Graph Editor Curve Sculpting tools

New tools have been added to the Graph Editor to give you a quick and intuitive way shape keys and curves.

This release provides important stability fixes and feature updates for workflows such as relative pathing and using display layers with the updated Universal Scene Description (USD) plug-in for Maya.

LookdevX Technology Preview

LookdevX for Maya is a new look-development tool that lets you create USD shade graphs and author custom materials in Maya.

What's New in Character Animation

Several updates have been made to Character animation workflows, from a tool for changing rotation order, support for multiple skin clusters, and a new way to view skin weights numerically.

Graph Editor Improvements

New tools have been added based on customer feedback to improve commonly-used Graph Editor workflows.

Animation Performance improvements

This release contains significant animation performance improvements, especially when playing back animation on complex rigs.

Time Slider Redesign

Maya Time Slider and Range Slider updates have brought several changes, from the way audio is shown, to new color defaults for keys.

Bifrost 2.7.0.0

Bifrost 2.7.0.0 introduces MPM gel simulations, improved volume rendering in the viewport, and many other new and improved features.

Arnold for Maya 5.3.0

Maya 2024 ships with MtoA 5.3.0, which introduces Arnold 7.2.0.0 and is a major feature release bringing improvements to volume shading and viewport rendering, support for Apple Silicon, and a more flexible physical sky that allows for separate sky and sun lights.

What else is new?

This release of Maya also includes the following changes and improvements.

Standard Surface replacing Lambert as default material	The initial shading group now assigns a Standard Surface (standardSurface1) to all newly created objects by default. Viewport lighting levels have been adjusted to accommodate the change in material. The default lighting can be changed in the Hardware Renderer 2.0 Settings. Note: For backward compatibility, scene files saved from versions preceding Maya 2024 will continue to use lambert1 as the default material. XGen, PaintFX strokes, and meshes generated by converting PaintFX to polygons will also use old materials (Lambert, Phong, Blinn, and Ramp Shaders). The old materials may look too bright due to viewport lighting being adjusted for the Standard Surface material. Consider adjusting the lighting and or materials to produce the desired look.

New FBX Import option	A new FBX import option, Smoothing Groups, has been created to address problems where exported FBX polygon objects with smooth edge normals would reimport with incorrect normal information. Now, to preserve shading, activate the Smoothing Groups FBX Export option, and on import, activate the new Smoothing Groups import option.

GPU Support for SoftMod deformer subsets	You can now use the SoftMod deformer on geometry subsets when the Soft Modification options Falloff Mode is set to Volume and still benefit from GPU support.

GraphViz for macOS update	Graphviz, an opensource graph visualization software, is no longer bundled with Maya on macOS. You can install locally from the Graphviz website.

Support for 119.88 frame rate	Maya now lists 119.88 among supported frame rates in the Settings Preferences. This frame rate is useful for exporting motion capture data from Vicon or MotionBuilder to Maya.

New Preference for Time Editor Audio	Previously, problems occurred where playblasted audio from the Time Editor changed pitch or become cut off. Now, you can prevent this from happening by selecting your audio file frequency in the new Input Audio Rate menu in the Time Editor area of the Animation (Settings) Preferences.

New option for Orthographic camera clip planes	A new Auto-adjust orthographic camera clip planes checkbox has been added to the Cameras preferences. When on, orthographic cameras automatically adjust their position and clipping plane when framing objects.

Support for Bullet v3.24	The version of Bullet has updated from 3.0.0.0282 to 3.24. See Bullet 3.0.
Drag and drop text field population	You can now drag a file from the file browser and drop it into a text field to update the file path with the file name. To do this, drag a file from the File Browser to the Attribute Editor Image Name or Notes fields, or the Window Text and Scroll fields. See Change attribute values in the Attribute Editor

Customize Node Traversal depth	A new Traversal Depth option has been added to the Node Editor Preferences to let you specify a depth value for moving through the graph. This is particularly helpful when working with complex structures like rigs. The default is Unlimited. See Traversal Depth in Node Editor Preferences.

Blue Pencil improvements	This update contains updates to the Blue Pencil tool to enhance your drawing experience: Added Falloff curve settings so you can create custom stroke profiles. Improved the open and save time of scenes containing BP frames. Added a Blue Pencil option to the Show panel menu, so you can turn drawings off or on. You can delete camera layers by right-clicking the camera name in the Layer Manager. Addressed multiple inconsistencies with stroke size and appearance. New Profiler support for performance tracking.

New Preference for Time Editor Audio	Previously, problems occurred where playblasted audio from the Time Editor would change pitch or become cut off. Now, you can prevent this from happening by selecting your audio file frequency in the new Input Audio Rate menu in the Time Editor area of the Animation (Settings) Preferences. See also Add Audio to the Time Editor and Audio pitch changes when Playblasting in the Troubleshoot the Time Editor topic

Color Management	Maya now uses OpenColorIO version 2.1.1 for color management. In addition, the default Format for Floating Point Render Target is now R16G16B16A16_Float on macOS systems.

Panel Menu: Show	The Show menu in the viewport has been updated for visual clarity. Show menu items are now grouped into categories, and the items your wish to show/hide can be saved into presets.