What's New in Basics

A new option in the Modify > Convert menu lets you convert selected geometry to bounding boxes. Converting geometry to bounding boxes is useful for quickly reducing the level of detail in your scene.

Convert Geometry to Bounding Box options let you bake the animation of original geometry into bounding box, assign color, and more.

Convert complex production assets to bound boxes and use them as simple, low resolution representations in Scene Assembly workflows.

• Modify > Convert > Geometry to Bounding Box
• Use a bounding box as a representation

The new File Path Editor (Window > General Editors > File Path Editor) lets you manage your scene's file paths directly in Maya. The File Path Editor lists and diagnoses the resolution state of all file paths being used in Maya and provides you with tools to repair pathing issues. The Repath window, Replace String tool, Auto Resolve window, and Actions Preview window let you repath files and preview pathing changes before they occur.

In addition, the File Path Editor can also be used as a scene preparation tool. If you are preparing a scene for use by someone with a different directory structure or platform, you can path to non-existent files.

• File Path Editor
• Manage file paths

New improvements to the Node Editor allows you to easily customize the view of the nodes, for example, by filtering their attributes or customizing their colors.

In addition, creating connections is now simpler, and you can view assets in the Node Editor.

Several hotkeys have also been added to simply your workflow.

• Adding selected nodes to an existing graph
• Connect nodes by dragging connection lines
• Connection colors in the Node Editor
• Customizing background color in the Node Editor
• Displaying connections
• Expand or collapse all children of a compound node
• Filtering of attributes in the Node Editor
• Grid background in the Node Editor
• Hiding the node names in the Node Editor
• Node colors in the Node Editor
• Pickwalking in the Node Editor
• Pinning a node to the Node Editor view
• Regraphing in the Node Editor
• Removing nodes in the Node Editor
• Restore previous node graph
• Selecting upstream or downstream nodes in the Node Editor
• Toggling the node swatch size in the Node Editor
• To obtain the list of nodes displayed in the Node Editor
• Viewing assets in the Node Editor
• Viewing long node names
• Window > Settings/Preferences > Color Settings
• Node Editor Hotkeys
• Node Editor
• Node Editor menu and toolbar
• Node Editor marking menus
• Node Editor preferences

Watch: New Node Editor improvements

The new layout of the Outliner, Asset Editor, and Graph Editor provides better readability and in addition is more compact so as to minimize the need for horizontal scrolling.