Updates: Autodesk Updates Maya, 3ds Max, Flame to 2024.2

Modeling

Modeling Improvements – Several Retopologize updates, including a new version of ReForm and symmetry improvements.

Rigging and Animation

Deformation Improvements – Bake Deformer tool improvements and a new Snap Proximity Wrap Bind option

Time Slider Enhancements – Several Time Slider key selection fixes

Graph Editor Improvements – Graph Editor improvements like using curve sculpting tools to move keys in Time and Value

Skin Cluster Improvements – Unbind all individual skin clusters and support for multiple skin clusters in Bake Deformer Tool (new in 2024.1)

Proceduralism & Simulation (Bifrost)

MPM Rubber – New MPM Rubber for simulating rubber joins the MPM Materials family with MPM Gel (introduced in 2.7)

Component Tags – Procedurally tag and manipulate model elements

NanoVTT – New default renderer for volumes in the viewport (introduced in 2.7, 2024)

Look Development

LookdevX Enhancements – New features to Maya’s agnostic, node-based material editor (introduced in Maya 2024), like the ability to drag and drop images from an external file browser

Technologies

USD Improvements – New features such as saving USD files relatively, SDK improvements, and important bug fixes

Apple Silicon – Native support for Apple Silicon and Intel architectures

Modeling

Conform Modifier – Conform or wrap Spline or Geometric Mesh onto the surface of one or more target meshes in a scene

Retopology – 30% faster processing times for ReForm in Retopology

Boolean Modifier

• 35% faster processing of mesh-based Boolean operations
• Enhancements to VDB Meshing and increased support for Normals, Smoothing Groups, and improved Coplanar support

Volume Select Modifier – New options to animate the Smoothing Group or MaterialID value to select different component data at different points in the animation timeline with a 10% performance boost

Rigging & Animation

Motion Command Panel – Updates to the Assign Controller bring improved performance and new UI enhancements such as expanded menus

Transform List Controller – New options for ”Append” and “Assign” make it easier to add a new entry and adjust the assigned controller

CAT and Biped – Improved stability for CAT and Biped along with updated defaults when saving a .BIP file

Rendering

Color Management –

OCIO improvements for the color picker, editable input rules, OCIO environment mode, and bitmap color management

Material Switcher – Manage the display of multiple variants and apply them to objects with the new Material Switcher node. (2024)

Technologies

USD Improvements – Feature updates to the USD export for a more seamless workflow
across plugins (2024.2 (0.5))

Shapes, Lights, and Cameras

Improved Global Light Sampling

• Lower noise levels in areas behind lights when using Quad and Disk Lights, with speedups of up to 5%.
• Scenes with multiple mesh lights also have a lower time to the first pixel, up to 20%

GPU Rendering – A new, more efficient sampling technique in GPU Rendering allows for the overall contribution of all lights together to be computed in a single setting. (7.2.3)

Shading & Texture

Better Contour Lines for Toon – Improved technique for drawing Contour Lines in Toon Shade

Enhanced Distance and State Shader – Enhanced multiple output support to expose more parameters on Distance and State Shader nodes. (7.2.3)

Technologies

Universal Scene Description (USD) – Improved support for MaterialX Node Definitions, Shaders, Material Bindings, and Arnold attributes.

Color Management – MaxtoA fully supports the newly added Color Management workflows in 3ds Max 2024. (7.2.0)

Apple CPU Support – Native support for Maya, C4D, and Houdini running under Apple M series CPUs with rendering speed gains of 20%. (7.2.0)

Artist-Friendly Improvements

Improved Interactivity – Improved responsiveness when modifying large scenes interactively. (7.2.2)

Improved Texture Files Workflow – Improved automatic generation of optimized TX textures from source textures as part of the rendering process (7.2.0)

Visual Effects & Finishing

Subtitling Toolset for Timeline – Create, add, and edit subtitles directly in Timeline with
new subtitling workflow

MP4 Export Capabilities – Support for MP4 movie format export

Meta Overlay Enhancements – Metadata Overlay enhancements (introduced in Flame 2024) display clip information in the Player and more (2024.1)

Resize Tool Enhancements – New Adaptive and Scaling modes to quickly select a new destination resolution based on source information and more (2024.1)

Batch Paint Improvements – User interface enhancements, updates to Paint Strokes, an integrated tracker, and a slew of new Paint node features (2024)

Start Frame Improvements – Support for definable VFX shot Start Frame metadata (2024)

Cloud Deployment

Deployment on AWS – New Rocky Linux 8.7 AMI (2024)

Hardware

Next-Gen Architecture – Move from OpenGL to next-generation graphics API: Vulkan (Linux) and Metal (macOS) (2024.1)

Qualified Hardware – The Dell Precision 7865 workstation joins a growing list of qualified workstations (2024.1)

Apple Silicon Support – Native support for Apple Silicon and Intel architectures (2024)