Explore the collection of tools at your disposal to tell astounding stories that leave a lasting impact.
Create 3D props, environments, and characters with powerful polygon and NURBS modeling tools.
Bring characters to life with features like keyframe, nonlinear, and motion capture animation and artificial intelligence (AI).
Create physically accurate simulations and effects like explosions and ocean surfaces with Bifrost.
Easily create multiple characters for your shot, whether it’s for an epic battle, city, or stadium crowd with Golaem, the plug-in for Maya.
View real-time scene changes, including lighting and materials, with the Arnold renderer integration.
Improve collaboration with integrated open standards like OpenUSD (Universal Scene Description).
Retopology tools
3DS MAX, MUDBOX
Reduce complex and high-resolution assets, or traditional modeling work by automatically reconstructing polygonal mesh data as clean, quad-based topology with uncompromising accuracy.
Smart Extrude
3DS MAX, MAYA
Take polygon modeling to the next level through industry-leading Smart Extrude, which enables you to interactively extrude to Add To or Take Away from the mesh to quickly create expressive content.
Mesh and surface modeling
3DS MAX, MAYA
Create parametric and organic objects with polygon, subdivision surface, and spline-based modeling features.
Comprehensive UV editing toolset
MAYA, 3DS MAX, MUDBOX
View and edit the UV texture coordinates for polygon, NURBS, and subdivision surfaces in a 2D view.
Modifier stack workflow
3DS MAX
Conceptualize, iterate, and explore design ideas using a range of industry-defining modifiers that are nondestructive and easy to use.
NEW
Machine learning deformer
MAYA
Process complex deformation systems and represent them with a fast machine learned approximation.
Character setup
3DS MAX, MAYA
Create sophisticated motion systems for rigged characters including deformations that deliver lifelike performances.
Animation curve editing
3DS MAX, MAYA, MOTIONBUILDER
Create, view, and modify animation curves using a graphical representation of scene animation.
Story Tool
MOTIONBUILDER
Switch between and combine different takes into a single animation with clip-blending and nonlinear animation.
Evaluation Manager
MAYA
Review animations faster and produce fewer playblasts with parallel evaluation, GPU accelerated deformers, and background caching.
Plug-in support
3DS MAX, MAYA, MOTIONBUILDER, MUDBOX
Extend capabilities with support for powerful third-party plug-ins.
Simulations and effects
MAYA
Use Aero, MPM, Particles, and BOSS systems to create realistic effects like combustion, snow, particles, or waves. (video: 5 sec.)
MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT COLLECTION ONLY
Crowd simulation
GOLAEM
Direct characters, whether a few or hundreds, with new artist-friendly crowd creation tools in the Golaem plug-in for Maya.
Scattering and instancing
Use expressive scattering and instancing tools to create intricate, large-scale environments for world-building or set dressing.
Ready-to-use templates
Kickstart your effects creation with a library of pre-built compounds and graphs.
Geometry nodes
Work at the lowest level of mesh creation, manage with component tags, and generate geometry within the Bifrost Graph.
Procedural USD
Non-destructively assemble, organize, and edit USD assets with the flexibility of the Bifrost Graph.
LookdevX
MAYA
Build materials that work across multiple renderers with LookdevX, Autodesk’s agnostic material authoring plug-in for Maya, supported by OpenUSD.
Arnold GPU
ARNOLD
Switch seamlessly between CPU and GPU rendering.
OpenPBR Surface Shader
ARNOLD
An artist-friendly open source shading model, OpenPBR allows you to create stunning materials that can easily be shared between different applications.
Imagers
ARNOLD
Use Bloom, Light Mixer, Noice, and OptiX denoiser imagers to control lighting effects and automatically denoise after each render.
Flexible and extensible API
ARNOLD
Integrate Arnold into external applications and create custom shaders, cameras, light filters, and output drivers.
Universal Scene Description (USD) support
ARNOLD
Maximize the power of USD with Arnold in production scenarios.
Lightning speed
MAYA
Load and edit massive data sets in a matter of seconds using USD.
Seamless import/export
3DS MAX, MAYA
Import USD data as native Maya or 3ds Max data and export native Maya or 3ds Max data as USD data.
Lightweight previews
MAYA
See quick previews of USD scene structure using the Hierarchy View window.
NEW
Open source and fully customizable
3DS MAX, ARNOLD, MAYA
The USD plug-ins are available as open-source projects for studios to customize as needed.
Python 3
3DS MAX, MAYA, MOTIONBUILDER
Create scripts and write plug-ins using Python 3.
Customization
3DS MAX, ARNOLD, MAYA, MOTIONBUILDER, MUDBOX
Customize how software looks and works to suit your pipeline.
Scene Assembly tools
3DS MAX, MAYA
Create large, complex worlds more easily and manage production assets as discrete elements.
Software security
3DS MAX, MAYA
Use scene security tools to protect your work against malicious scripts that could be part of scene files.
glTF support
3DS MAX
Publish assets from your 3ds Max scene to glTF for use in web applications, online stores, browser games, and other online outlets.
