• Autodesk, encore une fois, frappe fort et nous présente MotionMaker, un nouvel outil d’animation IA intégré à Maya, qui prétend réduire les temps de production de manière spectaculaire. Mais sérieusement, sommes-nous vraiment censés applaudir cette pseudo-révolution technologique ? Il est temps de mettre les choses au clair !

    Tout d'abord, qu'est-ce que cette annonce dit sur notre industrie ? Nous, animateurs, avons toujours été fiers de notre savoir-faire, de notre art, de notre capacité à insuffler la vie à des personnages animés grâce à notre créativité et notre patience. Et maintenant, voilà qu'Autodesk nous dit que tout cela peut être remplacé par une machine ? C'est une insulte à notre passion et à notre profession ! MotionMaker n'est pas une solution, c'est une aberration qui met en péril l'authenticité de notre art.

    Parlons de ce que cela signifie réellement pour les créateurs. La promesse d’une réduction spectaculaire des temps de production semble séduisante en surface, mais à quel prix ? En remplaçant l'authenticité de l'animation par une formule standardisée, Autodesk ne risque-t-il pas de nous plonger dans un océan de créations uniformes et sans âme ? Nos personnages, qui devraient refléter notre vision et notre émotion, finiront par devenir des clones, sans aucune personnalité. C'est une direction catastrophique !

    Et puis, il y a cette prétention d'utiliser l'intelligence artificielle pour "révolutionner" notre manière d'animer. Qui a besoin d'une IA pour faire ce que nous avons appris à faire pendant des années ? Les animateurs sont des artistes, pas des techniciens qui appuient sur des boutons. En fait, ce genre de technologie ne fait qu'aliéner les véritables créateurs. Au lieu de nous donner les outils pour améliorer notre art, cela nous entraîne vers une dépendance à la technologie qui peut nous coûter notre créativité.

    On ne peut pas ignorer non plus l'impact sur l'emploi. En réduisant le temps de production, Autodesk joue avec le feu. Si les studios peuvent produire plus rapidement grâce à MotionMaker, cela signifie moins d'emplois pour les animateurs. Une fois de plus, la rentabilité prend le pas sur l'humain. Il est temps que nous nous levions contre cette tendance dévastatrice et que nous défendions notre place en tant que créateurs.

    En somme, MotionMaker est loin d'être la solution miracle qu'Autodesk prétend qu'elle est. C'est un affront à notre art, un outil qui menace notre créativité et nos emplois. Nous devons résister à cette pression technologique et affirmer que l'animation doit rester un domaine d'expression humaine, et non un champ de bataille pour les machines.

    #MotionMaker #Animation #IA #Autodesk #Créativité
    Autodesk, encore une fois, frappe fort et nous présente MotionMaker, un nouvel outil d’animation IA intégré à Maya, qui prétend réduire les temps de production de manière spectaculaire. Mais sérieusement, sommes-nous vraiment censés applaudir cette pseudo-révolution technologique ? Il est temps de mettre les choses au clair ! Tout d'abord, qu'est-ce que cette annonce dit sur notre industrie ? Nous, animateurs, avons toujours été fiers de notre savoir-faire, de notre art, de notre capacité à insuffler la vie à des personnages animés grâce à notre créativité et notre patience. Et maintenant, voilà qu'Autodesk nous dit que tout cela peut être remplacé par une machine ? C'est une insulte à notre passion et à notre profession ! MotionMaker n'est pas une solution, c'est une aberration qui met en péril l'authenticité de notre art. Parlons de ce que cela signifie réellement pour les créateurs. La promesse d’une réduction spectaculaire des temps de production semble séduisante en surface, mais à quel prix ? En remplaçant l'authenticité de l'animation par une formule standardisée, Autodesk ne risque-t-il pas de nous plonger dans un océan de créations uniformes et sans âme ? Nos personnages, qui devraient refléter notre vision et notre émotion, finiront par devenir des clones, sans aucune personnalité. C'est une direction catastrophique ! Et puis, il y a cette prétention d'utiliser l'intelligence artificielle pour "révolutionner" notre manière d'animer. Qui a besoin d'une IA pour faire ce que nous avons appris à faire pendant des années ? Les animateurs sont des artistes, pas des techniciens qui appuient sur des boutons. En fait, ce genre de technologie ne fait qu'aliéner les véritables créateurs. Au lieu de nous donner les outils pour améliorer notre art, cela nous entraîne vers une dépendance à la technologie qui peut nous coûter notre créativité. On ne peut pas ignorer non plus l'impact sur l'emploi. En réduisant le temps de production, Autodesk joue avec le feu. Si les studios peuvent produire plus rapidement grâce à MotionMaker, cela signifie moins d'emplois pour les animateurs. Une fois de plus, la rentabilité prend le pas sur l'humain. Il est temps que nous nous levions contre cette tendance dévastatrice et que nous défendions notre place en tant que créateurs. En somme, MotionMaker est loin d'être la solution miracle qu'Autodesk prétend qu'elle est. C'est un affront à notre art, un outil qui menace notre créativité et nos emplois. Nous devons résister à cette pression technologique et affirmer que l'animation doit rester un domaine d'expression humaine, et non un champ de bataille pour les machines. #MotionMaker #Animation #IA #Autodesk #Créativité
    Autodesk dévoile MotionMaker : un outil d’animation IA qui réduit le temps de production dans Maya
    Autodesk bouleverse le monde de l’animation avec le lancement de MotionMaker, un nouvel outil intégré à Autodesk Maya, alimenté par l’intelligence artificielle, qui promet de révolutionner la manière dont les animateurs vont animer leurs personnages.
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  • Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production

    Saturday, June 14th, 2025
    Posted by Jim Thacker
    Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production

    html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ";

    The Gnomon Workshop has released Practical Lighting for Production, a guide to VFX and cinematics workflows recorded by former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham.
    The intermediate-level workshop provides four hours of training in Maya, Arnold and Nuke.
    Discover professional workflows for lighting a CG shot to match a movie reference
    In the workshop, Cunningham sets out the complete process of lighting and compositing a shot to match a movie reference, using industry-standard software.
    He begins by setting up a basic look development light rig in Maya, importing a 3D character, assigning materials and shading components, and creating a turntable setup.
    Next, he creates a shot camera and set dresses the environment using kitbash assets.
    Cunningham also discusses strategies for lighting a character, including how to use dome lights and area lights to provide key, fill and rim lighting, and how to use HDRI maps.
    From there, he moves to rendering using Arnold, discussing render settings, depth of field, and how to create render passes.
    Cunningham then assembles the render passes in Nuke, splits out the light AOVs, and sets out how to adjust light colors and intensities.
    He also reveals how to add atmosphere, how to use cryptomattes to fine tune the results, how to add post effects, and how to apply a final color grade to match a chosen movie reference.
    As well as the tutorial videos, viewers of the workshop can download one of Cunningham’s Maya files.
    The workshop uses 3D Scan Store’s commercial Female Explorer Game Character, and KitBash3D’s Wreckage Kit, plus assets from KitBash3D’s Cargo.
    About the artist
    Graham Cunningham is a Senior Lighting, Compositing and Lookdev Artist, beginning his career as a generalist working in VFX for film and TV before moving to Blizzard Entertainment.
    At Blizzard, he contributed to cinematics for Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal, Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Overwatch 2, many of them as a lead lighting artist.
    Pricing and availability
    Practical Lighting for Production is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials.
    Subscriptions cost /month or /year. Free trials are available.
    about Practical Lighting for Production on The Gnomon Workshop’s website

    Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X. As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.
    Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.

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    Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production
    Master professional CG lighting workflows with former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham's tutorial for The Gnomon Workshop.
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    Older Posts
    #tutorial #practical #lighting #production
    Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production
    Saturday, June 14th, 2025 Posted by Jim Thacker Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "; The Gnomon Workshop has released Practical Lighting for Production, a guide to VFX and cinematics workflows recorded by former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham. The intermediate-level workshop provides four hours of training in Maya, Arnold and Nuke. Discover professional workflows for lighting a CG shot to match a movie reference In the workshop, Cunningham sets out the complete process of lighting and compositing a shot to match a movie reference, using industry-standard software. He begins by setting up a basic look development light rig in Maya, importing a 3D character, assigning materials and shading components, and creating a turntable setup. Next, he creates a shot camera and set dresses the environment using kitbash assets. Cunningham also discusses strategies for lighting a character, including how to use dome lights and area lights to provide key, fill and rim lighting, and how to use HDRI maps. From there, he moves to rendering using Arnold, discussing render settings, depth of field, and how to create render passes. Cunningham then assembles the render passes in Nuke, splits out the light AOVs, and sets out how to adjust light colors and intensities. He also reveals how to add atmosphere, how to use cryptomattes to fine tune the results, how to add post effects, and how to apply a final color grade to match a chosen movie reference. As well as the tutorial videos, viewers of the workshop can download one of Cunningham’s Maya files. The workshop uses 3D Scan Store’s commercial Female Explorer Game Character, and KitBash3D’s Wreckage Kit, plus assets from KitBash3D’s Cargo. About the artist Graham Cunningham is a Senior Lighting, Compositing and Lookdev Artist, beginning his career as a generalist working in VFX for film and TV before moving to Blizzard Entertainment. At Blizzard, he contributed to cinematics for Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal, Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Overwatch 2, many of them as a lead lighting artist. Pricing and availability Practical Lighting for Production is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost /month or /year. Free trials are available. about Practical Lighting for Production on The Gnomon Workshop’s website Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X. As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects. Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon. Latest News DreamWorks Animation releases MoonRay 2.15 Check out the new features in the open-source release of DreamWorks Animation's production renderer. used on movies like The Wild Robot. Sunday, June 15th, 2025 Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production Master professional CG lighting workflows with former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham's tutorial for The Gnomon Workshop. Saturday, June 14th, 2025 Boris FX releases Mocha Pro 2025.5 Planar tracking tool gets new AI face recognition system for automatically obscuring identities in footage. Check out its other new features. Friday, June 13th, 2025 Leopoly adds voxel sculpting to Shapelab 2025 Summer 2025 update to the VR modeling app expands the new voxel engine for blocking out 3D forms. See the other new features. Friday, June 13th, 2025 iRender: the next-gen render farm for OctaneRenderOnline render farm iRender explains why its powerful, affordable GPU rendering solutions are a must for OctaneRender users. Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 Master Architectural Design for Games using Blender & UE5 Discover how to create game environments grounded in architectural principles with The Gnomon Workshop's new tutorial. Monday, June 9th, 2025 More News Epic Games' free Live Link Face app is now available for Android Adobe launches Photoshop on Android and iPhone Sketchsoft releases Feather 1.3 Autodesk releases 3ds Max 2026.1 Autodesk adds AI animation tool MotionMaker to Maya 2026.1 You can now sell MetaHumans, or use them in Unity or Godot Epic Games to rebrand RealityCapture as RealityScan 2.0 Epic Games releases Unreal Engine 5.6 Pulze releases new network render manager RenderFlow 1.0 Xencelabs launches Pen Tablet Medium v2 Desktop edition of sculpting app Nomad enters free beta Boris FX releases Silhouette 2025 Older Posts #tutorial #practical #lighting #production
    Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production
    Saturday, June 14th, 2025 Posted by Jim Thacker Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" The Gnomon Workshop has released Practical Lighting for Production, a guide to VFX and cinematics workflows recorded by former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham. The intermediate-level workshop provides four hours of training in Maya, Arnold and Nuke. Discover professional workflows for lighting a CG shot to match a movie reference In the workshop, Cunningham sets out the complete process of lighting and compositing a shot to match a movie reference, using industry-standard software. He begins by setting up a basic look development light rig in Maya, importing a 3D character, assigning materials and shading components, and creating a turntable setup. Next, he creates a shot camera and set dresses the environment using kitbash assets. Cunningham also discusses strategies for lighting a character, including how to use dome lights and area lights to provide key, fill and rim lighting, and how to use HDRI maps. From there, he moves to rendering using Arnold, discussing render settings, depth of field, and how to create render passes. Cunningham then assembles the render passes in Nuke, splits out the light AOVs, and sets out how to adjust light colors and intensities. He also reveals how to add atmosphere, how to use cryptomattes to fine tune the results, how to add post effects, and how to apply a final color grade to match a chosen movie reference. As well as the tutorial videos, viewers of the workshop can download one of Cunningham’s Maya files. The workshop uses 3D Scan Store’s commercial Female Explorer Game Character, and KitBash3D’s Wreckage Kit, plus assets from KitBash3D’s Cargo. About the artist Graham Cunningham is a Senior Lighting, Compositing and Lookdev Artist, beginning his career as a generalist working in VFX for film and TV before moving to Blizzard Entertainment. At Blizzard, he contributed to cinematics for Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal, Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Overwatch 2, many of them as a lead lighting artist. Pricing and availability Practical Lighting for Production is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, which provides access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost $57/month or $519/year. Free trials are available. Read more about Practical Lighting for Production on The Gnomon Workshop’s website Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects. Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon. Latest News DreamWorks Animation releases MoonRay 2.15 Check out the new features in the open-source release of DreamWorks Animation's production renderer. used on movies like The Wild Robot. Sunday, June 15th, 2025 Tutorial: Practical Lighting for Production Master professional CG lighting workflows with former Blizzard lighting lead Graham Cunningham's tutorial for The Gnomon Workshop. Saturday, June 14th, 2025 Boris FX releases Mocha Pro 2025.5 Planar tracking tool gets new AI face recognition system for automatically obscuring identities in footage. Check out its other new features. Friday, June 13th, 2025 Leopoly adds voxel sculpting to Shapelab 2025 Summer 2025 update to the VR modeling app expands the new voxel engine for blocking out 3D forms. See the other new features. Friday, June 13th, 2025 iRender: the next-gen render farm for OctaneRender [Sponsored] Online render farm iRender explains why its powerful, affordable GPU rendering solutions are a must for OctaneRender users. Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 Master Architectural Design for Games using Blender & UE5 Discover how to create game environments grounded in architectural principles with The Gnomon Workshop's new tutorial. Monday, June 9th, 2025 More News Epic Games' free Live Link Face app is now available for Android Adobe launches Photoshop on Android and iPhone Sketchsoft releases Feather 1.3 Autodesk releases 3ds Max 2026.1 Autodesk adds AI animation tool MotionMaker to Maya 2026.1 You can now sell MetaHumans, or use them in Unity or Godot Epic Games to rebrand RealityCapture as RealityScan 2.0 Epic Games releases Unreal Engine 5.6 Pulze releases new network render manager RenderFlow 1.0 Xencelabs launches Pen Tablet Medium v2 Desktop edition of sculpting app Nomad enters free beta Boris FX releases Silhouette 2025 Older Posts
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  • Autodesk adds AI animation tool MotionMaker to Maya 2026.1

    html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ";

    A still from a demo shot created using MotionMaker, the new generative AI toolset introduced in Maya 2026.1 for roughing out movement animations.

    Autodesk has released Maya 2026.1, the latest version of its 3D modeling and animation software for visual effects, games and motion graphics work.The release adds MotionMaker, a new AI-based system for generating movement animations for biped and quadruped characters, especially for previs and layout work.
    Other changes include a new modular character rigging framework inside Bifrost for Maya, plus updates to liquid simulation, OpenPBR support and USD workflows.
    Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya for smaller studios.

    MotionMaker: new generative AI tool roughs out movement animations

    The headline feature in Maya 2026.1 is MotionMaker: a new generative animation system.It lets users “create natural character movements in minutes instead of hours”, using a workflow more “like giving stage directions to a digital actor” than traditional animation.
    Users set keys for a character’s start and end positions, or create a guide path in the viewport, and MotionMaker automatically generates the motion in between.
    At the minute, that mainly means locomotion cycles, for both bipeds and quadrupeds, plus a few other movements, like jumping or sitting.
    Although MotionMaker is designed for “anyone in the animation pipeline”, the main initial use cases seem to be layout and previs rather than hero animation.
    Its output is also intended to be refined manually – Autodesk’s promotional material describes it as getting users “80% of the way there” for “certain types of shots”.
    Accordingly, MotionMaker comes with its own Editor window, which provides access to standard Maya animation editing tools.
    Users can layer in animation from other sources, including motion capture or keyframe animation retargeted from other characters: to add upper body movements, for example.
    There are a few more MotionMaker-specific controls: the video above shows speed ramping, to control the time it takes the character to travel between two points.
    There is also a Character Scale setting, which determines how a character’s size and weight is expressed through the animation generated.
    You can read more about the design and aims of MotionMaker in a Q&A with Autodesk Senior Principal Research Scientist Evan Atherton on Autodesk’s blog.
    According to Atherton, the AI models were trained using motion capture data “specifically collected for this tool”.
    That includes source data from male and female human performers, plus wolf-style dogs, although the system is “designed to support additionalstyles” in future.

    Bifrost: new modular character rigging framework

    Character artists and animators also get a new modular rigging framework in Bifrost.Autodesk has been teasing new character rigging capabilities in the node-based framework for building effects since Maya 2025.1, but this seems to be its official launch.
    The release is compatibility-breaking, and does not work with earlier versions of the toolset.
    The new Rigging Module Framework is described as a “modular, compound-based system for building … production-ready rigs”, and is “fully integrated with Maya”.
    Animators can “interact with module inputs and outputs directly from the Maya scene”, and rigs created with Bifrost can be converted into native Maya controls, joints and attributes.

    Bifrost: improvements to liquid simulation and workflow
    Bifrost 2.14 for Maya also features improvements to Bifrost’s existing functionality, particularly liquid simulation.
    The properties of collider objects, like bounciness, stickiness and roughness, can now influence liquid behavior in the same way they do particle behavior and other collisions.
    In addition, a new parameter controls air drag on foam and spray thrown out by a liquid.
    Workflow improvements include the option to convert Bifrost curves to Maya scene curves, and batch execution, to write out cache files “without the risk of accidentally overwriting them”.

    LookdevX: support for OpenPBR in FBX files
    LookdevX, Maya’s plugin for creating USD shading graphs, has also been updated.
    Autodesk introduced support for OpenPBR, the open material standard intended as a unified successor to the Autodesk Standard Surface and Adobe Standard Material, in 2024.
    To that, the latest update adds support for OpenPBR materials in FBX files, making it possible to import or export them from other applications that support OpenPBR: at the minute, 3ds Max plus some third-party renderers.
    LookdevX 1.8 also features a number of workflow improvements, particularly on macOS.
    USD for Maya: workflow improvements

    USD for Maya, the software’s USD plugin, also gets workflow improvements, with USD for Maya 0.32 adding support for animation curves for camera attributes in exports.Other changes include support for MaterialX documents and better representation of USD lights in the viewport.
    Arnold for Maya: performance improvements

    Maya’s integration plugin for Autodesk’s Arnold renderer has also been updated, with MtoA 5.5.2 supporting the changes in Arnold 7.4.2.They’re primarily performance improvements, especially to scene initialization times when rendering on machines with high numbers of CPU cores.
    Maya Creative 2026.1 also released

    Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya aimed at smaller studios, and available on a pay-as-you-go basis.It includes most of the new features from Maya 2026.1, including MotionMaker, but does not include Bifrost for Maya.
    Price and system requirements

    Maya 2026.1 is available for Windows 10+, RHEL and Rocky Linux 8.10/9.3/9.5, and macOS 13.0+.The software is rental-only. Subscriptions cost /month or /year, up a further /month or /year since the release of Maya 2026.
    In many countries, artists earning under /year and working on projects valued at under /year, qualify for Maya Indie subscriptions, now priced at /year.
    Maya Creative is available pay-as-you-go, with prices starting at /day, and a minimum spend of /year.
    Read a full list of new features in Maya 2026.1 in the online documentation

    Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X. As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.
    #autodesk #adds #animation #tool #motionmaker
    Autodesk adds AI animation tool MotionMaker to Maya 2026.1
    html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "; A still from a demo shot created using MotionMaker, the new generative AI toolset introduced in Maya 2026.1 for roughing out movement animations. Autodesk has released Maya 2026.1, the latest version of its 3D modeling and animation software for visual effects, games and motion graphics work.The release adds MotionMaker, a new AI-based system for generating movement animations for biped and quadruped characters, especially for previs and layout work. Other changes include a new modular character rigging framework inside Bifrost for Maya, plus updates to liquid simulation, OpenPBR support and USD workflows. Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya for smaller studios. MotionMaker: new generative AI tool roughs out movement animations The headline feature in Maya 2026.1 is MotionMaker: a new generative animation system.It lets users “create natural character movements in minutes instead of hours”, using a workflow more “like giving stage directions to a digital actor” than traditional animation. Users set keys for a character’s start and end positions, or create a guide path in the viewport, and MotionMaker automatically generates the motion in between. At the minute, that mainly means locomotion cycles, for both bipeds and quadrupeds, plus a few other movements, like jumping or sitting. Although MotionMaker is designed for “anyone in the animation pipeline”, the main initial use cases seem to be layout and previs rather than hero animation. Its output is also intended to be refined manually – Autodesk’s promotional material describes it as getting users “80% of the way there” for “certain types of shots”. Accordingly, MotionMaker comes with its own Editor window, which provides access to standard Maya animation editing tools. Users can layer in animation from other sources, including motion capture or keyframe animation retargeted from other characters: to add upper body movements, for example. There are a few more MotionMaker-specific controls: the video above shows speed ramping, to control the time it takes the character to travel between two points. There is also a Character Scale setting, which determines how a character’s size and weight is expressed through the animation generated. You can read more about the design and aims of MotionMaker in a Q&A with Autodesk Senior Principal Research Scientist Evan Atherton on Autodesk’s blog. According to Atherton, the AI models were trained using motion capture data “specifically collected for this tool”. That includes source data from male and female human performers, plus wolf-style dogs, although the system is “designed to support additionalstyles” in future. Bifrost: new modular character rigging framework Character artists and animators also get a new modular rigging framework in Bifrost.Autodesk has been teasing new character rigging capabilities in the node-based framework for building effects since Maya 2025.1, but this seems to be its official launch. The release is compatibility-breaking, and does not work with earlier versions of the toolset. The new Rigging Module Framework is described as a “modular, compound-based system for building … production-ready rigs”, and is “fully integrated with Maya”. Animators can “interact with module inputs and outputs directly from the Maya scene”, and rigs created with Bifrost can be converted into native Maya controls, joints and attributes. Bifrost: improvements to liquid simulation and workflow Bifrost 2.14 for Maya also features improvements to Bifrost’s existing functionality, particularly liquid simulation. The properties of collider objects, like bounciness, stickiness and roughness, can now influence liquid behavior in the same way they do particle behavior and other collisions. In addition, a new parameter controls air drag on foam and spray thrown out by a liquid. Workflow improvements include the option to convert Bifrost curves to Maya scene curves, and batch execution, to write out cache files “without the risk of accidentally overwriting them”. LookdevX: support for OpenPBR in FBX files LookdevX, Maya’s plugin for creating USD shading graphs, has also been updated. Autodesk introduced support for OpenPBR, the open material standard intended as a unified successor to the Autodesk Standard Surface and Adobe Standard Material, in 2024. To that, the latest update adds support for OpenPBR materials in FBX files, making it possible to import or export them from other applications that support OpenPBR: at the minute, 3ds Max plus some third-party renderers. LookdevX 1.8 also features a number of workflow improvements, particularly on macOS. USD for Maya: workflow improvements USD for Maya, the software’s USD plugin, also gets workflow improvements, with USD for Maya 0.32 adding support for animation curves for camera attributes in exports.Other changes include support for MaterialX documents and better representation of USD lights in the viewport. Arnold for Maya: performance improvements Maya’s integration plugin for Autodesk’s Arnold renderer has also been updated, with MtoA 5.5.2 supporting the changes in Arnold 7.4.2.They’re primarily performance improvements, especially to scene initialization times when rendering on machines with high numbers of CPU cores. Maya Creative 2026.1 also released Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya aimed at smaller studios, and available on a pay-as-you-go basis.It includes most of the new features from Maya 2026.1, including MotionMaker, but does not include Bifrost for Maya. Price and system requirements Maya 2026.1 is available for Windows 10+, RHEL and Rocky Linux 8.10/9.3/9.5, and macOS 13.0+.The software is rental-only. Subscriptions cost /month or /year, up a further /month or /year since the release of Maya 2026. In many countries, artists earning under /year and working on projects valued at under /year, qualify for Maya Indie subscriptions, now priced at /year. Maya Creative is available pay-as-you-go, with prices starting at /day, and a minimum spend of /year. Read a full list of new features in Maya 2026.1 in the online documentation Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X. As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects. #autodesk #adds #animation #tool #motionmaker
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    Autodesk adds AI animation tool MotionMaker to Maya 2026.1
    html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" A still from a demo shot created using MotionMaker, the new generative AI toolset introduced in Maya 2026.1 for roughing out movement animations. Autodesk has released Maya 2026.1, the latest version of its 3D modeling and animation software for visual effects, games and motion graphics work.The release adds MotionMaker, a new AI-based system for generating movement animations for biped and quadruped characters, especially for previs and layout work. Other changes include a new modular character rigging framework inside Bifrost for Maya, plus updates to liquid simulation, OpenPBR support and USD workflows. Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya for smaller studios. MotionMaker: new generative AI tool roughs out movement animations The headline feature in Maya 2026.1 is MotionMaker: a new generative animation system.It lets users “create natural character movements in minutes instead of hours”, using a workflow more “like giving stage directions to a digital actor” than traditional animation. Users set keys for a character’s start and end positions, or create a guide path in the viewport, and MotionMaker automatically generates the motion in between. At the minute, that mainly means locomotion cycles, for both bipeds and quadrupeds, plus a few other movements, like jumping or sitting. Although MotionMaker is designed for “anyone in the animation pipeline”, the main initial use cases seem to be layout and previs rather than hero animation. Its output is also intended to be refined manually – Autodesk’s promotional material describes it as getting users “80% of the way there” for “certain types of shots”. Accordingly, MotionMaker comes with its own Editor window, which provides access to standard Maya animation editing tools. Users can layer in animation from other sources, including motion capture or keyframe animation retargeted from other characters: to add upper body movements, for example. There are a few more MotionMaker-specific controls: the video above shows speed ramping, to control the time it takes the character to travel between two points. There is also a Character Scale setting, which determines how a character’s size and weight is expressed through the animation generated. You can read more about the design and aims of MotionMaker in a Q&A with Autodesk Senior Principal Research Scientist Evan Atherton on Autodesk’s blog. According to Atherton, the AI models were trained using motion capture data “specifically collected for this tool”. That includes source data from male and female human performers, plus wolf-style dogs, although the system is “designed to support additional [motion] styles” in future. Bifrost: new modular character rigging framework Character artists and animators also get a new modular rigging framework in Bifrost.Autodesk has been teasing new character rigging capabilities in the node-based framework for building effects since Maya 2025.1, but this seems to be its official launch. The release is compatibility-breaking, and does not work with earlier versions of the toolset. The new Rigging Module Framework is described as a “modular, compound-based system for building … production-ready rigs”, and is “fully integrated with Maya”. Animators can “interact with module inputs and outputs directly from the Maya scene”, and rigs created with Bifrost can be converted into native Maya controls, joints and attributes. Bifrost: improvements to liquid simulation and workflow Bifrost 2.14 for Maya also features improvements to Bifrost’s existing functionality, particularly liquid simulation. The properties of collider objects, like bounciness, stickiness and roughness, can now influence liquid behavior in the same way they do particle behavior and other collisions. In addition, a new parameter controls air drag on foam and spray thrown out by a liquid. Workflow improvements include the option to convert Bifrost curves to Maya scene curves, and batch execution, to write out cache files “without the risk of accidentally overwriting them”. LookdevX: support for OpenPBR in FBX files LookdevX, Maya’s plugin for creating USD shading graphs, has also been updated. Autodesk introduced support for OpenPBR, the open material standard intended as a unified successor to the Autodesk Standard Surface and Adobe Standard Material, in 2024. To that, the latest update adds support for OpenPBR materials in FBX files, making it possible to import or export them from other applications that support OpenPBR: at the minute, 3ds Max plus some third-party renderers. LookdevX 1.8 also features a number of workflow improvements, particularly on macOS. USD for Maya: workflow improvements USD for Maya, the software’s USD plugin, also gets workflow improvements, with USD for Maya 0.32 adding support for animation curves for camera attributes in exports.Other changes include support for MaterialX documents and better representation of USD lights in the viewport. Arnold for Maya: performance improvements Maya’s integration plugin for Autodesk’s Arnold renderer has also been updated, with MtoA 5.5.2 supporting the changes in Arnold 7.4.2.They’re primarily performance improvements, especially to scene initialization times when rendering on machines with high numbers of CPU cores. Maya Creative 2026.1 also released Autodesk has also released Maya Creative 2026.1, the corresponding update to the cut-down edition of Maya aimed at smaller studios, and available on a pay-as-you-go basis.It includes most of the new features from Maya 2026.1, including MotionMaker, but does not include Bifrost for Maya. Price and system requirements Maya 2026.1 is available for Windows 10+, RHEL and Rocky Linux 8.10/9.3/9.5, and macOS 13.0+.The software is rental-only. Subscriptions cost $255/month or $2,010/year, up a further $10/month or $65/year since the release of Maya 2026. In many countries, artists earning under $100,000/year and working on projects valued at under $100,000/year, qualify for Maya Indie subscriptions, now priced at $330/year. Maya Creative is available pay-as-you-go, with prices starting at $3/day, and a minimum spend of $300/year. Read a full list of new features in Maya 2026.1 in the online documentation Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.
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  • See how MotionMaker, Maya’s new AI animation tool, works

    The Autodesk toolset combines AI, motion capture and keyframing inside of Maya.

    The post See how MotionMaker, Maya’s new AI animation tool, works appeared first on befores & afters.
    #see #how #motionmaker #mayas #new
    See how MotionMaker, Maya’s new AI animation tool, works
    The Autodesk toolset combines AI, motion capture and keyframing inside of Maya. The post See how MotionMaker, Maya’s new AI animation tool, works appeared first on befores & afters. #see #how #motionmaker #mayas #new
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    See how MotionMaker, Maya’s new AI animation tool, works
    The Autodesk toolset combines AI, motion capture and keyframing inside of Maya. The post See how MotionMaker, Maya’s new AI animation tool, works appeared first on befores & afters.
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