Autodesk Maya is now more accessible with a new upgrade to the user onboarding experience. Whether artists are new to Maya, learning 3D or getting up to speed with the latest update, Maya has an improved, personalised startup experience, interactive tutorials and a tool for easily navigating the UI.

“Redesigning the Maya user experience has been an ongoing pursuit to help improve onboarding, and help artists start creating projects faster,” Trevor Adams, Experience Design Manager at Autodesk. “Our goal is to help users feel oriented in the UI more quickly, while learning how to find the essential tools within the first minutes of starting up the program.”

New Maya features include a simpler, personalised startup experience with a navigable welcome screen that connects artists to learning content, communities, documentation and recent projects.

A new search feature aims to save time by making it easier to find tools, commands and scene objects. Artists can also now add their own keywords to tools and commands in the search engine, making it easier to customise workflows.

A new gamified interactive experience comes pre-loaded in Maya and teaches first-time users the basics of 3D and Maya’s UI, including navigating a scene and moving, rotating and scaling objects. Further tutorials on modelling, animation, lighting and shading are available for artists to download on AREA. More advanced users can also access a reusable framework to create customised interactive tutorials to share with new team members, students and the wider creative community.

Also for more advanced users, the new Quick Tour initiates a walkthrough of Maya’s main concepts and tools. Though it only lasts two minutes, each step includes a link to detailed documentation so that artists can find more in-depth information on features as needed.

This new Maya update is now available as a standalone subscription or with the Autodesk Media & Entertainment Collection. www.autodesk.com