Let’s talk about Autodesk for a second. I love Maya. It’s my main DCC, no doubt. Maya’s tools have been the backbone of high-end productions and the entertainment industry for years. With it, I have access to everything that AAA game studios and VFX houses are using. It’s the industry standard, plain and simple. If you’re serious about 3D content creation—especially character art and animation—Maya is the tool you need under your belt.

Maya's project-based workflow just works. I can author entire projects within it, using industry-standard tools like XGen for grooming, a solid renderer that natively supports shader graphs, all the necessary polygon and NURBS modeling tools, and still-relevant simulation capabilities. And when something’s missing, Maya’s Python API and scripting flexibility let me automate and extend things however I need.

But here’s the thing—while Maya is still the top choice for many, Autodesk is starting to slip, especially in terms of technological advancements like AI. And that lag is becoming harder to ignore, especially given how fast things are progressing.

Autodesk is Falling Behind

Take UV unwrapping and packing, for example. Maya’s tools have been really good for a long time, but in 2024, "really good" just isn’t enough anymore. You still can’t pin a UV island and pack everything else around it. That’s a crucial feature, especially when you need to optimize UV layouts without sacrificing space. And Maya's UV tools still aren’t multicore. In contrast, tools like RizomUV are running laps around Maya in terms of speed and efficiency. Autodesk hasn’t updated these tools in what feels like forever, and the performance difference is painfully obvious.

Quad-Draw? Absolute joy to use. Retopology in Maya with Quad-Draw is practically meditative. The results are reliable, and the process feels smooth. But why stop there?

It's 2024, and we still don’t have a machine learning-powered Quad-Draw that can suggest topology on the fly. Imagine hovering over a high-poly mesh and seeing AI-generated suggestions for edge flow or geometry. With today’s multi-core processors, fast GPUs, and massive amounts of RAM, Autodesk could easily integrate AI into this tool. They’ve got decades of user data to work with—they could create something game-changing here.

Animation Tools Need More Love

Maya’s animation tools are still very good for creating feature-level animations and handling retargeting and mocap data through their HIK middleware. But animators have been crying out for native versions of Animbot features. Why hasn’t Autodesk built these essential tools directly into Maya yet? No animator is asking for yet another Gaussian smoothing algorithm. What they do want is something closer to Cascadeur’s keyframe animation features paired with Animbot’s utility scripts.

Unreal Engine has been eating Autodesk’s lunch in this area too. When Autodesk finally announced their ML Deformer and Motion Matching tools, I couldn’t help but give a sad, half-smile. Epic set the bar more than a year ago, using Maya to train deformation models and running them in near real-time within Unreal Engine. Meanwhile, Autodesk hasn’t seemed to put enough resources into developing these kinds of features—features that could deliver huge benefits for everyone if done right.

And then there’s Motion Matching—this next-gen animation concept has been around for years in R&D. Some smart folks took it to the next level with Autodesk MotionBuilder, and then Epic made the tech accessible to everyone. It’s frustrating seeing Autodesk react to these advancements instead of leading the charge.

Autodesk is Reacting, Not Innovating

Here’s the crux of the problem—Autodesk seems to be playing catch-up, and it all feels reactionary. Epic showed us what AI could do with character animation, and suddenly Autodesk is scrambling to keep up. They’ve been so focused on maintaining their industry-standard status that they’ve forgotten to innovate where it really matters.

We all know Autodesk has the resources, the data, and the community to develop groundbreaking tools. But instead, it feels like they’re always a step behind, implementing features years after the rest of the industry has already moved forward.

Maya is Still King, But for How Long?

I still love Maya—don’t get me wrong. I don’t see myself shifting my character design workflow to Houdini anytime soon. But Autodesk needs to pick up the pace if they want to stay relevant in the next wave of digital content creation. The industry is evolving fast, and it’s not waiting for anyone, not even Autodesk.

We’re living in an era where large language models are getting smarter by the second, hardware manufacturers are pushing the limits, and programming languages are becoming easier to work with. Information is instant, and in just a few years, we could be talking about AGI, with predictions integrated into our daily lives. We’re approaching a point where assistants and agents will handle the complicated stuff for us—and that’s the optimistic view of things.

I make a living using the tools available to me, and I don’t plan on jumping ship anytime soon. But Autodesk needs to stop playing it safe. They need to get ahead of the curve—not just in machine learning and AI, but in all the areas where they’ve been coasting on their legacy. The potential is there, but they need to act before the competition leaves them in the dust.