What's New in Maya 2012
New features in Maya 2012 include:
- Viewport 2.0 Enhancements: Evaluate your work in a higher fidelity environment with full-screen effects in the
highperformance viewport.
- Node-Based Render Passes: Create and edit node-based representations of render passes directly within Maya, to verify and refine your work.
- Editable Motion Trails: Edit animation directly in the viewport without the need to switch context to the graph editor.
- Sequencer Enhancements: Reorder clips, edit In and Out points, and change camera assignments in the new
Sequencer Playlist.
- Substance Procedural Textures: Achieve a vast range of look variations with a new library of 80 Substance
procedural textures.
- Craft Animation Tools: Easily create believable, complex camera movements that mimic real-world setups, with 4 new camera rigs from the Craft Director Studio™ animation tool.
- Enhanced, Consistent Graph Editor: Enjoy some of the best features from the f-curve editors within each of the products in the Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suites 2012, combined into a toolset that offers more consistent functionality and terminology.
- New Simulation Options: Create compelling dynamic visual effects in less time, with new simulation options that
incorporate industry-leading technology into Maya.
- Single-Step Suites Interoperability: Take advantage of the focused toolsets in the Autodesk® Maya® Entertainment Creation Suites 2012 , with new single-step interoperability between the products found in the suites.
- HumanIK Enhancements: Working with characters is now easier in both Maya 2012 and MotionBuilder 2012, with an
 enhanced interface and unified solver for HumanIK® technology (formerly implemented as FBIK in Maya).
- Vector Displacement Map Support: Use mental® ray to render complex high-resolution details created in Autodesk® Mudbox® software or certain other packages on low-resolution geometry.
- Motion Capture Samples: Leverage the advanced motion retargeting capabilities of Maya 2012, with 70 motion capture samples that provide useful starting points for creating previsualizations and developing character animations.
- Python API Enhancements: Enjoy easier and more powerful ways to extend and customize Maya, thanks to an
improved Python® API that offers more idiomatic (pythonic) command writing capabilities, and is up to three times faster.