Update: Autodesk 3ds Max & Maya v2023.1 – Lots of Enhancements

Autodesk has updated 3ds Max and Maya to version 2023.1 adding lots of enhancements and improvements.  Autodesk continues to focus on bringing you powerful solutions and more artist-friendly experiences.

What’s new in Maya 2023.1?

• New Options for Boolean Operations – Several updates to the new Boolean workflow give you more control when creating complex models.
• Vertex Color Changes – Display RGB channels individually or as a greyscale on meshes for better visual feedback on the color of your objects. The Paint Vertex Color Tool has also been improved to restrict painting to individual RGB channels and display specific color channels as greyscale, preventing the accidental painting of other channels.
• Improved USD Integration – Several enhancements and important bug fixes bring you a smoother experience when working with USD in Maya. Benefit from improvements to material handling with extended support for MaterialX and increased support for native Maya shaders such as color correction and AMD’s MaterialX Library. Additional updates include more accurate intensities for default lights, UI enhancements and general robustness for Maya Reference workflows and “Edit as Maya”.
• Capabilities in Arnold – Arnold brings increased stability, performance, and bug fixes offering you a more user-friendly experience and compatibility with Maya when rendering your projects.
• Operator SDK in Bifrost (requires seperate download) – Work faster with customizable tools in Bifrost. The first public SDK for the Bifrost graph allows existing C++ libraries to be brought into Bifrost and used as first-class citizens of the graph. You can now perform last-mile visual programming to customize those systems or build your own systems on top of those.
• Other capabilities in Bifrost (requires seperate download)
  • Colored Aero Simulations
    From plumes of brightly colored powder mingling in the air to explosions where dirt, sooty smoke, and steam blend together – Bifrost can now simulate colored gasses mixing in the air to be rendered artifact-free in Arnold. Colors can be sourced from raw data such as painted color sets, particle colors, or fields defining colors in space.
  • Improved MPM Diagnostic
    MPM has new diagnostics and diagnostic controls enabling you to better understand what is happening in your simulations.
  • Bifrost 2.5 is not included with Maya 2023.1 and requires a separate download here.

Maya 2023.1 release notes

Biforst 2.5 Release Notes

What’s new in 3ds Max 2023.1?

• Spline Extrude – Spline objects are an important part of many modeling workflows within 3ds Max as they let you easily create and augment 3D content for games, film, graphic design, and visualization. A new Spline Extrude functionality enables you to extrude or extend segments as well as open spline vertices on any Line, Editable Spline, or Edit Spline modified object – directly from the Viewport. This will greatly reduce mouse movement fatigue and improve overall productivity.
• Morpher Modifier Performance – The Morpher modifier, which is widely used to create realistic morph target-based animations, brings significant animation performance improvements that enhance the Viewport playback of any morph animation. This will considerably benefit your ability to review and iterate upon your work.
• Skin Modifier Performance – Improvements to the Skin modifier provide a noticeable boost to the Viewport playback framerate of Skin deformed objects, and further enhance your ability to review and iterate upon your work.
• Material Library – Save to Previous – Material Libraries are an important part of many production workflows as they enable you to share material data between scenes and projects. This update features improved support and compatibility to save newly created or edited Material Libraries to the current or previous versions* of 3ds Max using a new “Save as type” option found in the Material Editor.
  *Version 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023
• File Merge Performance – Improved file merge performance enables you to share and reuse data more efficiently when merging large amounts of data from one scene to another inside of 3ds Max.

• Zoom Extents on Isolate – A new “Zoom Extents on Isolate” mode has been added to the Isolate Selection Tool below the Time Slider in 3ds Max. When activated, 3ds Max will isolate the selected objects in the scene and perform a Zoom Extents Selection on the result. When exiting from Isolate Mode, 3ds Max will return to the previous Zoom level in the Viewport. This will enhance how you use the Isolate Selection tool to focus on a specific object selection across workflows.
• Alembic 1.8.3 – Alembic has been updated to version 1.8.3 inside of 3ds Max providing a range of bug fixes and improvements including faster read times of Alembic files.
• Turbosmooth Performance – Turbosmooth is a popular modifier in 3ds Max used to perform non-destructive, sub-divisional surface modeling and to aid in look development. Enhancements to Turbosmooth performance allow you to apply and see results much faster.
• Chamfer Updates – Chamfer operations performed through the Chamfer modifier and Editable Poly now include an enhanced retriangulation algorithm which reduces the chance of long and thin edges, or misaligned edges from occurring and potentially causing visual distortions on the geometry.
• Vertex Paint – You can now capture any existing Vertex Color information that exists below the VertexPaint modifier on the modifier stack for an easier method to further edit and manipulate Vertex Color data.
• Unfold3D Relax – When using Unfold3D Optimize option to relax UV data, you can now pass an active UV component selection to this operation to limit the Unfold3d relax to be applied to the selected area only.
• Perspective Match – The Perspective Match tool has been improved with a new “Allow Distorted View” option that enables the view to be distorted in a non-uniform way to better match the image that is being used.
• Spline Vertex & Segment Type Change – When working with the Editable Spline or an Edit Spline modifier, changing a Spline Vertex type to Smooth, Bezier, or Bezier Corner will automatically adjust the adjacent Spline Segments to a Curve type.
• Smart Extrude Face Generation Enhancements – Smart Extrude now includes an improved algorithm to detect overlap or cut through between a pair of faces and to form replacement faces when dealing with concave information. Other improvements have also been made to help with face generation, face triangulation for colinear and concave corners, and hidden edge visibility.

3ds Max 2023.1 release notes