New Plug-Ins Key to Maya 2022

If you haven’t yet made the leap to Autodesk Maya 2022, you should know that it has a lot to do with plug-ins and the best news is that these will definitely better serve you as an artist or technical lead. There are, of course, other cool new features (covered in a companion blog), but let’s devote this one to the plug-ins, because frankly, they’re pretty cool all by themselves.

USD

Initially developed by Pixar Productions and adopted early on by Animal Logic, Universal Scene Description (USD) has been quickly adopted across media and entertainment. Consequently, both of these studios released open-source plug-ins using the power of USD in Maya. These plug-ins serve as a baseline for Maya’s USD plug-in, which has also been implemented as an open-source project. The pre-built Maya USD open source plug-in is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, enabling you to work seamlessly with USD in conjunction with Maya workflows. Basically an extensible scene description and file format, Maya’s USD facilitates the creation, editing, working in, working with, and collaborating on USD data.

Bifrost 2.2.1.0

The Bifrost 2.2.1.0 plug-in includes new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements How would you like to enhance your simulation workflows by resuming a simulation from a cached frame on disk? How about spawning new particles in a simulation or refining a low-res Aero simulation? Bifrost 2.2.1.0 makes it happen. It also improves terminals by enabling selective evaluation, which allows you to wait until render time to perform heavy computations.

Rokoko Motion Library

Now, this is pretty ingenious. Autodesk partnered with Rokoko to offer a motion capture library inside Maya. The Rokoko Motion Libray plug-in allows you to drag and drop professional mocap assets into your scenes without the need for expensive gear and a state-of-the-art studio. For example, you can use the actual assets built for major Hollywood movies in your own projects.

MtoA 4.2.1 (Arnold for Maya 4.2.1)

MtoA 4.2.1 introduces Arnold 6.2.0.1, a feature release that brings light mixing, bloom and interactive denoising through imagers, better USD support to improve your experience working with USD in Maya, an improved layout to the Arnold Render View, and OSL syntax highlighting to the OSL shader.

That’s it for the plug-ins, but be on the lookout for this blog’s companion piece on more new features in Autodesk Maya. For a deeper dive, visit Maya support and learning.

And remember, if you’re upgrading to Maya 2022, it may also be time to upgrade your workstation. In order to optimize Maya’s unique features, visit our systems page for the latest systems built specifically for Maya 3D modelling, animation, and rendering, or call a BOXX performance specialist at 01256378098 or boxxuk@centerprise.co.uk