Maya 2026.1 Released With AI-Based Animation Tool MotionMaker

The headline feature in Maya 2026.1 is MotionMaker, a new generative AI-driven system designed to create movement animations for both biped and quadruped characters. By setting key positions for a character's start and end points or by drawing a guide path directly in the viewport, users can have MotionMaker automatically generate the in-between motion.

Maya 2026.1 also introduces the new Rigging Module Framework in Bifrost. It provides a flexible structure and data types for assembling individual rig parts into complete, production-ready rigs. Since it's fully integrated with Maya, users can interact with module inputs and outputs directly in the Maya scene, and rigs created in Bifrost can be converted into native Maya controls, joints, and attributes. Please note that this release is not backward-compatible with earlier versions of the toolset.

In addition to the new Modular Rigging Framework, Bifrost brings several other notable improvements, including liquid and foam simulation updates and batch execution for easier generation of cache files. Users can now edit Bifrost parameters directly within Maya's Attribute Editor, convert Bifrost strands into native Maya curves, and create UVs from projection planes.

FBX now supports OpenPBR, allowing the export and import of the OpenPBR material to and from other DCCs that also support OpenPBR, such as Autodesk 3ds Max. USD for Maya also gets updates, adding support for Animation Curves for camera attributes in exports.

As for Arnold, it brings faster scene initialization, USD improvements, and upgraded third-party components. Learn more about Maya 2026.1 changes here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.