Maya nHair
Create stunning, highly realistic hair and other curve-based dynamics with the new Maya® nHair module for the Maya® Nucleus unified simulation framework.

• Create complex simulations with multiple dynamic entities all working together, with the ability to interact bidirectionally with both Maya® nCloth and Maya® nParticles.
• Use a common system of fields, forces, and constraints for all Nucleus modules.

Viewport 2.0 Enhancements
Evaluate your work in a higher fidelity interactive environment in order to make better creative decisions. Viewport 2.0 now offers a more functionally complete high-performance, high-quality viewport, featuring:

• High-quality depth sorting
• Support for image planes and animation ghosting
• The ability to use the same hardware rendering technology to batch render larger-than-screen-size frames, producing high-quality animatics and previsualizations in less time

New Node Editor
Create, edit, and debug node networks more easily with the new Node Editor.

• Choose from three levels of detail.
• Rewire nodes in a more intuitive environment than the Connection Editor with drag-and-drop connection editing.
• Distinguish different data types at a glance through color coding.

Bullet Physics
Simulate both soft and rigid bodies in a single system, with the high-performance, open source AMD Bullet Physics engine.

• Create highly realistic simulations of cloth, rope, deformable objects, and ragdoll skeletons.
• Take advantage of discrete and continuous 3D collision detection.

*Available on Microsoft® Windows® (64-bit only), Linux®, and Mac OS® X operating systems; OpenCL acceleration on Windows and Linux offers additional performance benefits on those platforms.

Heat Map Skinning
Enjoy a more accurate initial binding of geometry to skeletons in Maya 2013, thanks to a new Heat Map Skinning method that:

• Is better able to assign skin to the intended bone as opposed to an adjacent but unrelated one
• Requires less manual refinement

Trax Clip Matching

• Visualize how Trax clips overlap in Maya 2013 to build complete character performances from individual animations.Clip Ghosts enable you to view the start and end frames of clips as skeletal wireframes in the 3D view.
• Match clips with the help of these visual cues, or automatically, using a choice of options for translation and rotation.

Alembic Caching

Read and write the Alembic open source computer graphics interchange framework format, initially developed in 2010 by teams from Sony Pictures Imageworks and Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd.

• Distill complex animated and simulated data into application-independent baked geometry.
• Reduce the overhead and loss of interactivity associated with transferring fully editable scene data between disciplines.

ATOM Animation Transfer
Transfer animation between characters via the new ATOM (Animation Transfer Object Model) offline file format, in order to repurpose existing animation data as new characters are created. ATOM natively supports keyframes, constraints, animation layers, and Set Driven Keys.

3D Modeling
Autodesk Maya software offers a rich feature set for 3D modeling, including NURBS, Subdivision Surfaces, and an extensive Polygon toolset.

Polygon and Subdivision Mesh Modeling
Autodesk Maya provides a production-proven and intuitive toolset for creating and editing polygon meshes, including:

• Bridge, poke, cut, wedge, bevel, extrude, chamfer vertex, extrude along a curve, mirror cut, edge loop, edge ring, slide edge, and pick-walk tools
• The ability to preview or render smoothly subdivided meshes while editing a lower-resolution proxy or cage (subdivision meshes support variable creasing)
• True soft selection, preselection highlighting, and camera-based selection culling
• Polygon reduction, data cleanup, blind data tagging, and level-of-detail tools for scene optimization
• The ability to transfer UV, color-per-vertex, and vertex position information between polygon meshes of differing topologies

Surface Modeling
Maya offers two methods for creating mathematically smooth surfaces that can be shaped using relatively few control vertices: NURBS and hierarchical Subdivision Surfaces.

• Subdivision Surfaces can have different levels of detail in different regions, enabling you to add complexity only where needed.
• NURBS Surfaces can be attached, detached, aligned, stitched together, extended, filleted, or rebuilt with a high degree of control over parameterization and continuity.
• NURBS and Subdivision Surfaces can be converted to polygon meshes, and vice versa.
• Precise spline-based curve and surface construction tools include lofting, birail, beveling, extrusion, trim, boundary, offset, Booleans, rounding, and square.

UVs, Normals, and Color-Per-Vertex
Beyond the position of vertices that define their shape, meshes can carry essential data for software, interactive, or in-game 3D rendering. To manage this, Maya offers:

• A streamlined workflow for creative texturing—including UV creation and editing, auto-projection, interactive relaxation, layout, lattice, and smudge tools
• Multiple UV sets that support separate texture coordinates for separate texture channels
• Per-instance UV sets that enable a single mesh to be used to represent multiple objects, reducing scene overhead
• Multiple sets of animatable color-per-vertex (CPV), prelighting, user-defined normals, and normal map generation suitable for game design

General Animation Tools
Autodesk® Maya® 3D animation software delivers a broad range of specialized tools for keyframe, procedural, and scripted animation, including:

• A highly controllable, nondestructive animation layering system that works with any attribute
• Trax Nonlinear Animation Editor for nondestructive mixing, blending, and editing of poses and animation clips
• A comprehensive assortment of generalized constraints
• A powerful and intuitive Set Driven Key tool that enables you to keyframe complex relationships between animated parameters
• Graph and Dopesheet Editors that provide more powerful, precise function curves to control how animated attributes change over time
• A full set of deformers for static modeling or animation
• Editable motion trails that enable you to fine-tune motion animation directly in the viewport

Character Creation
Create, skin, rig, and pose believable characters with realistic deformations in less time. Maya 3D animation software includes:

• Built-in Spline IK, Spring IK, and single chain and lightweight 2-bone solvers
• An IK system for natural articulation of biped and quadruped models
• Nondestructive live retargeting workflow to reuse, correct, and enhance motion capture and other animation data
• Maya Muscle advanced deformation tools for realistic or highly stylized muscle and skin motion
• Substitute Geometry tool to transfer skinning information between models
• Nondestructive workflow that enables you to insert, move, delete, connect, and disconnect joints on a bound skeleton

Camera Sequencer
Accelerate previsualization and virtual moviemaking production with the Camera Sequencer.

• Lay out and manage multiple camera shots in a single animation sequence.
• Start laying out shots in Maya, or import an EDL in FCP or AAF formats from editorial with associated movie, audio, and time code information.
• Use the Sequencer Playlist to reorder clips, edit In and Out points, and change camera assignments.
• Use Playblast to playback and review the sequence before optionally re-exporting an EDL to editorial for further refinement.

Dynamics and Visual Effects
Engineered with the input of leading research scientists, Autodesk® Maya® 3D animation software offers innovative dynamic simulation features to help you create stunning visual effects.

Maya nParticles
Enjoy an intuitive, efficient workflow for simulating a wide range of complex 3D visual effects with Maya nParticles, including liquids, clouds, smoke, spray, and dust.

• Create pouring liquids and sloshing liquids in containers.
• Self-collision enables nParticles to accumulate within volumes.
• Map shading attributes, such as radius, color, opacity, and incandescence over time (or over age, radius, speed).
• Flexible nConstraints provide an extra degree of control without the need to write complex expressions.
• Use geometry instancing to replace particles with objects.
• Bidirectional interaction with Maya nCloth and Maya nHair enables particles to affect cloth and/or hair, and hair and/or cloth to affect particles simultaneously.

Maya Fluid Effects
Simulate and render highly realistic atmospheric, explosive, viscous liquid, and open water effects using Maya Fluid Effects.

• Select from presets for clouds, smoke, snow, steam, fog, nuclear explosions, flames, lava, mercury, mud, ocean swells, calm oceans, rough seas, rippling ponds, white caps, and foam.
• Use 2D fluids to create distinctive animated textures.
• Integrated with other parts of Maya: for example, a simulating fluid can act as a force on particles; objects can affect a fluid as they move through it, such as a character walking through thick smoke; and boats can create wakes on oceans.

Maya nCloth
Create realistic clothing and other deformable materials using the integrated Maya nCloth toolset.

• Convert any polygon mesh model into an nCloth object.
• Paint cloth attributes like bend, stretch, shear, and dent.
• Make 3D objects stiff, viscous, or flowing.
• Use topology-independent constraints to attach buttons, tear cloth, and control movement.
• Simulate cloth-on-cloth, such as a shirt over pants.
• Use self-collisions to achieve highly realistic results without self-interpenetration errors.
• Blend multiple cached simulations together to achieve complex effects.
• Bidirectional interaction with Maya nParticles and Maya nHair enables cloth to affect particles and/or hair, and hair and/or particles to affect cloth simultaneously.

Hair and Fur Visual Effects
Create realistic hair and fur with natural-looking movement using integrated Maya Hair and Maya Fur toolsets that feature:

• Presets for Hair styles and Fur types such as pigtail, bun, dreadlocks, grass, sheep, and wet Labrador
• Constraints enabling the simulation of effects, such as ponytails and hair clips
• Paintable attributes for localized effects and fur “combing”
• Dynamic and keyframable controls for motion and collisions
• Ability to use Hair to make a NURBS curve dynamic, for a wide range of effects such as ropes, chains, and dynamic lofted surfaces, as well to create advanced character rigs

Rigid and Soft-Body Dynamics
Create convincing simulations of multiple rigid and flexible objects.

• Connect rigid-body objects with constraints: Nail, Hinge, Barrier, Pin, and Spring.
• Use soft-body objects to create secondary motion effects, such as muscle jiggle and floppy hats, with paintable goal-weights.
• Simulate the motion of natural forces with dynamic fields: Air, Drag, Gravity, Newton, Radial, Turbulence, Uniform, Vortex, Volume Axis, and Volume Curve.
• Control attributes such as Friction, Bounciness, Damping, Mass, Velocity, Spin, and Torque.
• Use the multi-threaded NVIDIA® PhysX® engine* to create static, dynamic, and kinematic rigid-body simulations directly in the Maya viewport, and gain the ability to match a runtime solution.
• Create highly realistic shattering simulations with multiple interacting materials using the Digital Molecular Matter plug-in from Pixelux Entertainment™.

Flexible 3D Rendering and Imaging
Achieve breathtaking 3D with Autodesk Maya 3D software using an extensive range of rendering and imaging tools.

Integrated Renderers
In addition to the native Maya software renderer, Maya provides:

• Integrated mental ray® for Maya, with advanced photorealistic features: global illumination, final gathering, caustics, ambient occlusion, blurry reflections and refractions, motion-blurred particles, and image-based lighting
• Five licenses of mental ray® for Maya Batch* and 8 licenses of mental ray® for Maya Satellite
• A vector renderer, to turn 3D content into 2D content for the web or print, with output to Macromedia® Flash® and Adobe® Illustrator® software
• A hardware renderer, to generate high-quality images faster
• The ability to override the viewport with a third-party or proprietary renderer

*Feature available only with network license.

Rendering Features
Among a wealth of rendering, shading, and camera features, Maya offers:

• A flexible stereo camera rig that features in-viewport stereo viewing
• A multi-threaded Interactive Photorealistic Renderer (IPR) that quickly updates final-rendered-quality imagery as edits are made to the scene
• HyperShade and Visor tools for designing and editing shading networks, with bins for sorting and organizing rendering nodes
• The ability to create and edit node-based representations of render passes directly within Maya, in order to verify and refine them prior to handing them to the compositor, or to perform certain simple compositing tasks
• The Transfer Map feature that enables you to transfer normal, displacement, diffuse, shaded, ambient occlusion, and custom mental ray® shader information between models of differing topologies
• A library of 80 Substance procedural textures that enable you to achieve a vast range of look variations, and can be exported to certain game engines via the Substance Air middleware offering (available separately from Allegorithmic SAS), or converted to bitmaps for rendering

Maya Composite
Maya® Composite is a fully featured, high-performance, high dynamic range (HDR)-capable compositor that provides Maya users with a highly efficient, collaborative compositing environment.

• Enhance rendered passes from Maya and incorporate them into live-action footage.
• Work interactively with visual media regardless of bit-depth or image size.
• Take advantage of advanced tools for keying, color correction, camera mapping, spline-based warping, motion blur, and depth of field.
• Perform complex rotoscoping workflows with both raster and vector paint and integrated tracking.
• Work in a full 3D compositing environment that incorporates tools to support stereoscopic productions.

Painting in Maya
With Maya Paint Effects and 3D Paint tools, you can create realistic natural detail and painterly effects as 3D scene geometry or as 2D textures with the stroke of a brush.

• Select, edit, and blend between 500 editable, pressure-sensitive, preset brushes, including trees, grass, flowers, crystals, feathers, barbed wire, lightning, rain, star fields, fireworks, fire, sparks, airbrushes, oil paint, chalk, pastels, pencils, watercolors, wet brushes, and markers.
• Use built-in animation to simulate effects like plants growing, unfurling, or swaying in the wind.
• Draw fully rendered strokes during interactive painting and get immediate feedback.
• Paint color, bump, displacement, transparency, and other textures directly on surfaces.

Toon Shader
Transform 3D scenes into compelling cartoon animations rendered with non-photorealistic styles, such as hand-drawn, traditional cartoon, comic book, and Japanese manga/anime.

• Work in 3D to create complex transitions and camera moves, or incorporate simulated effects that would be extremely difficult in 2D.
• Use Maya Paint Effects brushes to create outlines with an extensive range of painterly effects and precise control over line style, placement, and width.
• View interactive previews in near real time.
• Render the results in mental ray® for Maya or the Maya software or hardware renderers.

Professional Camera Tracking
Extract accurate 3D camera and motion data from live action video and film sequences and insert CG elements seamlessly into a scene using Autodesk® MatchMover™ software.

• Push-Button Matchmoving provides advanced automatic 3D tracking; this easy-to-use feature can be used with supervised tracking to handle complex shots.
• Precision manual controls enable you to create a unique 3D reference system for your camera and 3D content.
• Advanced workflows can be based on filtering and fine tuning of tracking parameters, tracking from multiple footage and stills, tracking of moving objects, and 3D tracking constrained by motion-control data.

Scripting and API
Autodesk Maya 3D animation software is a highly extensible application. You can create scripts and write plug-ins to increase efficiency, customize features, and create competitive differentiation.

• Choose from the artist-friendly Maya Embedded Language (MEL) or the highly-extensible Python® scripting language.
• Write Maya plug-ins and stand-alone applications that run from the Maya command line in C++ or Python.
• Develop new types of Maya objects, including file translators, hardware shaders, surface shapes, manipulators and locators, and scriptable commands.
• Create interface components for proprietary tools with Qt Designer and load them directly into Maya.

2D and 3D Integration
Maya offers streamlined workflows for working with industry-leading 2D paint, vector, editorial, and certain compositing applications.

• Use Render Layers to manage multiple passes within a single scene and export to your compositor of choice, or as Adobe® Photoshop® (PSD) or Adobe® Flash® (SWFT) software output.
• Generate and update a compositing tree from within Maya based on the render layers in the scene.
• Import an EDL in Apple® Final Cut Pro® application program, XML, or AAF formats, change shot timings in the Camera Sequencer, and re-export.
• Create and edit bevels on Adobe® Illustrator® software files, while maintaining the ability to update the original.

Data and Scene Management Tools
Maya software provides tools and workflows to efficiently manage large data sets.

• View and edit node relationships with the powerful dependency graph architecture.
• Segment scenes using assets and file referencing to manage collaborative, iterative workflows, and to improve performance by offloading scene elements until needed.
• Group nodes into containers and create custom and user-specific views.
• Extensively modify modeled data without rebuilding, using editable and animatable construction history.
• Replace scene elements with a simple, low-resolution mesh, and load pretranslated data only when required for rendering using the mental ray® Render Proxy.

Entertainment Creation Suites Workflow
The Autodesk Maya Entertainment Creation Suites 2013 deliver the power of a world leader in 3D animation technology in a choice of software suites at a cost savings of up to 45%*.

• The Standard suite includes Maya with Autodesk Mudbox 3D sculpting and painting software, Autodesk MotionBuilder real-time virtual production and motion capture editing software, and Autodesk SketchBook Designer concept art software.
• With the Premium option, get additional access to the innovative creative toolsets in Autodesk Softimage software.

Integrated through enhanced single-step interoperability workflows and more consistent user interfaces, the Suites help increase productivity and provide enhanced creative opportunities.