What's new in 2025 ?

[stephenkmann]

I'm not sure this was supposed to be published just yet.. 

youtube: Whats new in Autodesk 2025

https://youtu.be/MEIK9jprJDg

-=s

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[SEQUENZ | Gerstenmaier]

Thanks, Stephen. Good to see that the dinosaur Maya is till alive! Time to play with USD + MaterialX + V-Ray 6.2. 

Lars

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[joiec...@gmail.com]

In fact, I'm wondering if MaterialX is supposed to emerge as a new standard for shading in the industry?

I mean, it looks like it has lots of potencial, but hard to learn too, and maybe too technical also. It worths the effort?

[Steve Davy]

Seriously, is anyone still using Maya in production for anything except character animation at this point? Even in my last job – which was still using Maya – they had eyes firmly on transitioning away from it (probably to Unreal) as soon as possible.

Even the 3D jobs I now see advertised seem to prefer apps such as Blender and Houdini....

I wonder what the long-term viability of Maya as a product can possibly be.

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Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2024 11:58 AM
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Subject: Re: [maya_he3d] What's new in 2025 ?

 

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[sid]

I was a full time Maya generalist from 2006-2017. I picked up Houdini
in around 2011 to do some small bits and pieces, and eventually
started using it full time from 2017 onwards. Cameras, rigging,
animation and basic layout still tend to be done in Maya and exported,
but Houdini is becoming an enticing option for all of these as well,
particularly since KineFX and the new H20 animation tools.

I can't see Maya being around in 3-5 years, really!

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/maya_he3d/IA1PR11MB77560B87AB591E89E00F271BDD3D2%40IA1PR11MB7756.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.

[Anthony Rosbottom]

I stopped using Maya full time in 2011. Have paid for maya indie a couple of times since. 

The problem I see is that Blender is just objectively better to model in than Maya. 

I’ve modelled in Maya from version 2.5 to 2018 and Blender is just better at modelling and with the cycles real-time viewport, is a more pleasant modelling and texturing experience than Maya. 

So IMO the start of the 3d process is better in blender and it seems from what I’m hearing, that the latter stages of the 3d process are better in Houdini.

So that only leaves the character animation ‘better’ in Maya. So if you’re not an animator or a company department doing animation, you’re going to look at better options. 

Cheers,

Anthony Rosbottom

www.anthonyrosbottom.com

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[matt estela]

Feels like Maya is still the default tool for previs, layout, rigging and animation. There's so much muscle memory in those roles, and so much reliance on legacy scripts/toolkits in animation and rigging, they'll be hard to shift.

Anecdotal evidence is that Blender's anim and rigging tools are still not quite up to the task for heavy production assets. The handful of riggers I know will occasionally compare mGear+Animbot to Blender, quickly scurry back to Maya. You see more and more Blender rigging tests pop up on linkedin, but I wager no-one is willing to bet a commercial or a show on Blender rigging right now. Maybe improvements in 4.1/4.2 will change that.

Doesn't feel like any other alternatives are ready either. Houdini and Apex are still a bit too early, I don't know of anyone who's adopted Cascadeur or Rhumba. XSI is properly dead dead (took ages!), I don't think there's any other serious options around.

You'd hope Autodesk are paying attention, but I fear what's happening is the unfortunate expected result of Alias -> Alias Wavefront -> Discreet Logic -> Autodesk company swallowing/rebranding. The Maya division is so small compared to the rest of the archivs/engineering sectors, any shouting for dev or leadership is getting ignored, Maya is unfortunately stagnating. 

I don't bear Maya any bad vibes, I *want* them to succeed and blow us all away with innovations. Competition is good! But all I've heard is complaints from users saying 2025 is a really underwhelming release, or making huge bitchy rants on linkedin about all the bugs that haven't been fixed since v2.

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[matt estela]

Yeesh, I just speed-watched that 'whats new in 2025' video. Man, that's the very definition of underwhelming.

[Anthony Rosbottom]

I was shocked and dismayed with how Autodesk are treating Mudbox. There is a Mudbox 2025 but it has no new features. Just bug fixes. 

With people like me who are very wary of jumping into ZBrush now that they are owned by Maxon who have made ZBrush an expensive subscription, you’d think the time is right to hoover up all those new customers that want a dedicated sculpting app instead of relying on Blender. 

I like sculpting in Blender but I like more, the layer system in Mudbox. 

Cheers,

Anthony Rosbottom

www.anthonyrosbottom.com

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[matt estela]

Nomad sculpt on desktop due pretty soon... :)

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[Anthony Rosbottom]

Ooh nice! I have Nomad Sculpt on my iPad but haven’t had a chance to get into it yet!

Cheers,

Anthony Rosbottom

www.anthonyrosbottom.com

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[matt estela]

I'm the worlds biggest superfan for nomad. The latest update has just gone to the appstore for approval, this one adds exoside quad remesher as an in app purchase, facegroups, uv's for all primitives, ton of other great features. 

The only thing missing is displacement map export (it already does diffuse/rough/metal/normal/opacity map export), once that lands, it'll remove the last thing I use zbrush for. Hell, even then I use marmoset whenever I can or blenders displacement baker.

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[joiec...@gmail.com]

I really don't know if all this is an Autodesk strategy to close itself, but if you see the "What's new in 3ds MAX 2025" kind of video, it doesn't feels like they don't put so much love on MAYA, but also on MAX too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31w9ffFPVw0

[SEQUENZ | Gerstenmaier]

After all those comments, I feel like a dinosaur as we still using mainly Maya besides Houdini and some breezes of Blender ;-) But I guess AI will change the way of 3D work so fundamentally, that it will be more essential which company / software will have the most advanced AI functions. 

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[Anthony Enos]

I held on to my perpetual license and mostly work in C4D these days, but I still jump back into Maya for jobs that require more modeling/rigging or that are more VFX heavy versus Motion Design. The 2022 version has been fine for that, and it's been great to have around. For Character Animation, I still think Maya has too much of a stronghold to give up to another traditional 3D software, but an AI enabled tool with a completely new way of animating could finally unseat it. I think we could be looking at the last generation of "traditional" 3D character animators/riggers at this point.

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[stephenkmann]

REZA has a little more info on the 2025 update.   https://youtu.be/c8Y0qJNX7qY

We should see a big speed update with the UI using pyside 6 

Which has allowed for a lot of other things. like the dopeSheet update (speed)

and adding the channel "cubes" in the time line (which I haven't found a real good use for yet) 

parentMatrix should be a nice speed improvement as well 

and while I don't do a lot of modeling , the bevel updates do look nice

we shall see ....

 -=s

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[joie]

The kind of procedural bevel is like a dream come true. I still wonder if it is really procedural though. So much to test.

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[stephenkmann]

My issue is my brain doesn't work that way :) 

I do like it though

btw .autodesk just bought Golaem as well.  Curious to see how this manifests 

but 2 days ago Bruce Lee put out some tutorials using it    https://youtu.be/_JOL1p8mlN0

 

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[joiec...@gmail.com]

BTW are you still using the "two versions older" kind of rule, and work in 2023 instead of 2025?
Which is the most reliable MAYA version of the 20s releases?
For me, the best of all time is still 2018.5 though LOL

[stephen mann]

I generally use the 3rd dot release 

 So yes with 2025 for my personal work 

But I’m on two shows right now , one uses 2022 and one uses 2024 

-=s

On Aug 22, 2024, at 1:03 AM, joiec...@gmail.com <joiec...@gmail.com> wrote:

BTW are you still using the "two versions older" kind of rule, and work in 2023 instead of 2025?

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[matt estela]

If its any consolation, the latest houdini v20.5 release is getting reports of being the buggiest in years, a lot of folk are hanging back in v19 or earlier.

Everyone is suffering. ;)

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[Jason Stansbury]

My people are still using Maya 2019/2020 and I’m on Houdini 19.5

Jason Stansbury

jasonstansbury.com

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[joiec...@gmail.com]

I'm not using latest versions just for the lack of any way to export glTFs..., the official BabylonJS plugin was deprecated in 2023 because, they said, Autodesk was developing their own MAYA export plugin. So, since Autodesk is doing NOTHING, we now don't have any way to export glTFs, damn it!

[matt estela]

Ugh, don't get me started. Sidefx don't take gltf seriously either, I found the only way to do it properly and reliably is to use Blender.

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[joie]

Yep, Blender seems the way to go, but honestly, converting a scene with complex mechanical rig and animation to Blender is not easy at all.

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Visita mi blog: 3djoie.blogspot.com

[SEQUENZ | Gerstenmaier]

Unbelievable that AD is not capable of adding a glTF exporter for Maya since years! Seems that they want to push USD only and don’t care about those „low-level“ web stuff. What an arrogant behavior! 

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[matt estela]

I'm sure its not malice or arrogance, just unaware of the need. I wager most people try, fail, see blender is good enough, and use that instead of reporting it to autodesk/sidefx/maxon.

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[SEQUENZ | Gerstenmaier]

I just remind them once again ;-)

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[Panupat]

They're scared that if they don't push for USD, the rigging/animation will move to Houdini too I guess lol. What will Maya be used for in studios then.

[joie]

BTW, do you know of any good resources for creating a full workflow using USD?

I mean from modeling, to shading, going through rigging and animation.

I've seen USD used for shading and rendering mainly, but I'm curious to know if it can be used for the full pipeline and see if it will work the same in Houdini, Blender or whatever DCC.

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[stephen mann]

In my brief encounters with USD. It can’t handle any rigging or animation that can be edited.    

 So really only useful at the layout or send to render stage for me.  

 So sadly not much different than using alembic. Or good ole referencing  

-=s

On Aug 29, 2024, at 6:42 AM, joie <joiec...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[matt estela]

Half baked opinions and rambles...

It sits somewhere between alembic, maya referencing, fbx, maybe .ass/rib. 

GEO FORMAT LIKE ABC

At its core is a modern geo caching format, a starting point for a lot of folk is to swap abc for usd; it supports more geo types, geo properties.

LAYERING LIKE MAYA REFERENCES

A studio I used to work at would use maya referencing per department, and references on references. We'd have char.mb, set.mb, fx.mb per shot. Maybe set.mb would reference other high level maya scenes, lighting would apply changes, they'd be tracked as maya reference edits. In that way sets and animation could update, and the lighting+assembly edits would float on top. Great when it worked, a nightmare when it didn't, abusing maya references in this way doesn't work at scale. USD has this concept of layering built into its core, and supports going as low or as high as you want; sets can be made up of hundreds of individual usd files for every separate tree, chair, prop, brick etc, it all gets composed very quickly, and if you use it properly, versions of files can be dynamic; you don't hard code to a given file path, but say 'give me the latest animation, but lock the set to v004' for example. Similar to the reference editor you can turn on and off references, references can layer and override each other, its very powerful. It can be hard to get your head around, but to me the 'its maya reference editor++, but platform agnostic' was a good analogy

SCENE DESCRIPTION LIKE FBX

It can describe a full scene. Alembic is just geo, maaaaybe cameras. Fbx can do more, but is limited due to its age (basic polygon meshes, no volumes, no curves/hair, no material graphs). USD as the name implies is a full scene description, so polys, curves, volumes, material graphs, multiple light types, and also things you might not at first think about like all your render settings.

RENDER FORMAT LIKE ASS/RIB

Because it contains everything required to render a scene, renderers can ingest it natively; it doesn't have to be translated via a DCC. Arnold for example can load alembic directly via a procedural, but it can also load an entire usd set via a procedural, or in a lot of cases, not even via a procedural; you can just go 'usdrender foo.usd', (paraphrasing!) and if the usd file says 'render me with arnold', it will do that.

AND  ALSO

-It has a rich python api, so almost anything you would usually open Maya for to edit a scene, you can do in code, in a platform agnostic way, great for TDs.

-It's extendable in various ways, you can define your own data types if you need them, tag metadata on stuff easily

-It has built in concepts of things having different representations based on use case, so an asset can have lowres vs render representations, has a very fast high performance instancer built in

-Lets you view 3d scenes in a standalone viewer like an RV but for 3d scenes, 

BUT UNFORTUNATELY

-It is VERY cache focused. As Steve said, that means you can't store rigs in it, or do much procedural 'live' construction history graphs. There's plans to include that, but its not here yet. 

-Direct load into renderers is variable; they all handle geo pretty reliably now, but USD doesn't impose rules on lights and materials. That means you're not creating 'universal' lights, but arnold lights, you're not really defining 'universal' materials, but redshift materials. Again there's plans to try and unify this, but its taking a while, and renderer devs are opinionated enough that it may never get there.

-It's a word salad. It can be daunting and confusing at first, primpaths references sublayers opinions delegats geomsubsets omg so many words, combo of internal pixar concepts that are now external, and I think trying to find terms that don't show allegance to any particular DCC.

-There's no clear 'this is the way to do it'. USD by design supports a lot of different ways of working, often folk new to it will ask 'so whats the best way to use it?' and get the annoying answer 'whatever you want it to be'. Then folk will try and find their own way, find its slow or difficult, and be told 'oh jeez, don't use it like that'. There's more guides and reference implementations now than there used to be, which is nice

-The cool version stuff I mentioned earlier requires work. Much like a asset manager like shotgun or a web query, you require an asset resolver to sit in the middle of everything so that if a renderer asks 'where do i find the latest chair?', it tells it 'its at /server/assets/char/chair_v06.usd'. Because this asset resolver has to potentially answer queries from every artist in the building, every render blade, answer millions of queries a second, it has to be high performance, and is non trivial to write, there's only a small set of reference implementations lying around.

So in terms of 

"can be used for the full pipeline and see if it will work the same in Houdini, Blender or whatever DCC"

It depends on what your expectations and current use cases are. If you write out alembics and use them in other packages, and what more stuff to be able to appear, yes USD can do that. If you're expecting to make an animation rig in Maya and be able to animate and adjust keyframes in Blender, no, USD can't do that.

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[Steve Davy]

Is that the same "unaware" that has stopped them from fixing 20 year old bugs, Matt? 😜

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[SEQUENZ | Gerstenmaier]

Thanks Matt for your in-depth statement! Great abstract about USD.

We also work on a simple USD workflow for our small studio. But as you wrote: Simple and USD are like heaven and hell. Using V-Ray as renderer makes it more difficult, as the USD support of V-Ray is always one version behind of Maya. Same with MaterialX support - even in Maya it is still work in progress and if it will be ever fully compatible across different renderers/DCC seems to be very uncertain.

But it is amazing how fast a complex scene is loading compared to a reference based scene. 

Another aspect of USD: As NVIDIA claims it should become the standard format for this ominous technical metaverse. Today our clients get images, movies and perhaps a WebGL model - will they ask for a USD model in the future?

There is a OpenUSD session at the AU mid October:

https://conferences.autodesk.com/flow/autodesk/au2024/sessioncatalog/page/inperson/session/1714160753312001ctzj?utm_campaign=6661919meme-au-email-campaign&utm_id=6661919003&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nur-event&__mktvar002=6661919003%7CEML

AD advertising, I know, but we are thankful for any information about USD.  

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[joie]

Thanks for all that information.

My expectations includes rigging, so no USD help for me then. We will see if it fits in the future or it is best to stick to regular MAYA way of doing things. At least for me, referencing and arnold standins is the way to go.

Libre de virus.www.avast.com

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[Carlos Rico Adega]

Yes, thank you Matt for your insight on this matter. Cheers!

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