Maya

Accelerated workflows

Maya’s powerful tools help you iterate faster so you can focus on creativity and meet deadlines.

Deliver stunning visuals

Add fine details to characters and scenes, and deliver quality work that keeps clients coming back.

Scale for complexity

Top artists in the industry rely on Maya to create the most complex shots, characters, and worlds.

Bifrost visual programming environment

Create physically accurate and incredibly detailed simulations in a single visual programming environment.

Simulations

Deliver natural looking effects like smoke, snow, or particles with Aero, MPM, and Particles systems. 

Scattering

Use Bifrost’s scatter nodes to procedurally scatter objects like trees or stones. 

Snowy mountains covered in trees

Ready-to-use graphs

Create great-looking effects, such as explosions and dust storms, right out of the box with prebuilt graphs. 

Interactive hair grooming

Use powerful interactive groom tools to create realistic hair and fur for your characters. Learn more

Physics and effects

Create highly realistic rigid, soft-body, cloth, and particle simulations. 

Lighting speed

Load and edit massive data sets in a matter of seconds using USD in Maya.

Seamless import/export

Import USD data as native Maya data and export native Maya data as USD data.

Lightweight previews

See quick previews of USD scene structure using the Hierarchy View window.

Native USD support

Work directly with USD data in common Maya editors, such as the Outliner, Attribute Editor, and Channel Box.

USD in the viewport

See USD natively alongside Maya data in the viewport.

Bifrost procedural USD

Procedurally create and manipulate USD data with visual programming.

Open source and fully customizable

The Maya USD plug-in is available as an open-source project for studios to customize as needed.

Fast playback

Review animations faster and produce fewer playblasts with cached playback in Viewport 2.0. 

Unreal Live Link for Maya

The Unreal Live Link plug-in lets you stream animation data from Maya to Unreal in real time. Whether working between the two in a virtual production environment or building your next game, you can now work on character assets in Maya and see your work reflected immediately in Unreal as you make changes.

Two round robot characters look at each other through a window

Time Editor

Make high-level animation edits with a nondestructive, clip-based, nonlinear editor. 

User interface of Time Editor in Maya featuring 3D animation of a figure standing next to a motorcycle

Graph Editor

Create, view, and modify animation curves using a graphical representation of scene animation. 

Ghosting Editor

Precisely visualize movement and the position of animated objects over time.

Blue pencil toolset

Sketch poses over time, define motion arcs, mark up a shot, or add comments and annotations to your scene.

Deformation effects

Enhance character and object animation with powerful deformation effects. 

Native Motion Library plug-in

Access high-quality motion capture data right in Maya. 

Character setup

Create sophisticated skeletons, IK handles, and deformers for characters that deliver lifelike performances. 

Skinning

Seamlessly bind any modeled surface to a skeleton using skinning. 

Retargeting

Easily transfer animation between skeletons that have the same or different skeletal structures. 

Polygon modeling

Create 3D models using geometry based on vertices, edges, and faces. Learn more

Character model of a caveman

NURBS modeling

Construct 3D models from geometric primitives and drawn curves. 

UV editing and toolkit

View and edit the UV texture coordinates for polygon, NURBS, and subdivision surfaces in a 2D view.

Sculpting toolset

Sculpt and shape models more artistically and intuitively.

OpenSubdiv support

Accelerate performance with interactive workflows. 

Integrated Arnold renderer

Use Arnold Render View to view scene changes in real time, including lighting, materials, and cameras. 

GPU and CPU rendering

Use Arnold for production rendering on both the CPU and GPU. 

Standard Surface Shader

Model materials such as car paint, frosted glass, and plastic, and preview renders in the viewport. 

Look development with Hypershade

Build shading networks by creating and connecting rendering nodes, such as textures, materials, and lights. 

Color management

See accurate previews of final colors in the viewport and Render View. 

MASH procedural effects

Use MASH to create versatile motion design animations with procedural node networks. 

3D Type

Create branding, flying logos, title sequences, and other projects that require text. 

Adobe Live link

View a scene in both Maya and Adobe After Effects at the same time. 

Python 3

Create Maya scripts and write plug-ins using Python 3. 

Customization

Customize how Maya looks and works to suit your pipeline. 

Scene Assembly tools

Create large, complex worlds more easily and manage production assets as discrete elements.