Other applications like 3ds Max and Softimage give you more complete and more reliable control over the construction history (modifier stack) of an object.  Plus, the user experience in editing that history is better than it is in Maya.  Currently, Maya's construction history isn't very useful beyond the last-created node.   Here is a list of things we should be able to do with construction history in Maya, directly in the UI (e.g. Channel Box) Reorder operations in the history chain Easily turn an operator on/off (mute) Delete history nodes Delete "up to here" history nodes (like "Collapse To" in 3ds Max) Copy/paste history nodes Instantiate history nodes Show More

(Copied from original User Voice forum)   "If I open Maya and then go to file > open, Maya prompts me to save the empty scene it created when it opened. It also auto-saves blank scenes if I leave it open for a while. " Show More

(Copied from original User Voice forum)   Maya needs to be more procedural, like Houdini, XSI (ICE), etc.   "Integrate and improve the SOuP toolset into Maya. There is so much in there for all categories, I didn't even know which one to put it in. Include all these workflows at soup-dev.com, consult and compensate the included parties, to learn from their r&d, and further improve upon the the goal of a procedural modeling/dynamics and opendata conversion of paintfx/fluids/nparticles/nCloth/nHair/meshes and all other data within Maya."   "Having interactive bevels on selection like this video shows it's possible with the addition of some Soup nodes, would be a major improvement to Maya modeling workflow. Being able to add and subtract bevels on selected edges on the fly , would make for a 10 stars addition to Maya's modeling toolset. Please consider this!"   Some links: https://vimeo.com/146695098 Show More

 (Copied from original User Voice forum)   "First of all, I do not understand why I have to click on the node such as "addDoubleLinear" three times to get to the input attributes? Why if the attribute is already attached, it disappears from the shortcut menu??? All work in the node editor is reduced to the mad mouse clicking!  Ideas:  1) access to all (input or output) attributes inside of quick menu that appears when you try to connect to collapsed node  2) possibility to copy part of graph with connections  3) compounds Please, do something like softimage ICE inside of maya (it was piece of art!!!!).  I really want to see something like c++ maya API inside node editor (not current awful node editor), with arrays, math, visual debugging, ability to wrap graph in to compound and compile it in to node."   Show More

The Booleans workflow and tech in Maya needs updating - do something similar to Mesh Fusion or Hard Mesh (links below). Some suggestions: Booleans should be more interactive (allow users to more easily move around Boolean operands after the Boolean is executed) Boolean intersections should have beveling/chamfering options Boolean results should require less clean-up Booleans workflow should have a clean, dedicated UI for easy editing of Boolean operations and operands (like sculpting and interactive grooming tools do)   MeshFusion: http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/plugins/meshfusion/ Hard Mesh: http://www.hard-mesh.com/ LightWave: http://lesterbanks.com/2015/07/latest-meta-mesh-update-for-lightwave-looks-pretty-amazing/ Blender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIyGlkOUpH4 KTools: - https://vimeo.com/165604195 - https://vimeo.com/165630569 - https://vimeo.com/165640713 Bool: https://lesterbanks.com/2017/08/new-live-boolean-plugin-maya/   More links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-ccEk3P5g0 https://vimeo.com/117960504 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Ytc-TeOGM https://vimeo.com/153168705 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0rAcUdDdn0 https://vimeo.com/165166193 https://vimeo.com/201536219 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MozVo4zGrmA Show More

(Copied from original User Voice forum)   "More options like autocomplete, wrapping lines of code, etc"   "There should be a save button that saves the contents of the script editor... maya hard crashes or hangs = script lost. Shift tab should unindent the entire selection, not stop once a line that isn't indented is reached. Using triple single quotes in python should highlight strings like using triple double quotes.   Some sort of debug mode that displays values of variables. If my script fails, I dont want to print a bunch of variables."   "Pasting something into the script editor from another program like PyCharm should not fail... I shouldn't have to paste into notepad and recopy to be able to paste into the script editor."   "At the minimum there should be a standard font selection w/ size etc panel."   "- Double-clicking a variable name should also select the "$" at the the beginning.  - Right-click should have an option to print selected. I have hacked this in myself, but should be standard for de-bugging....or even better hover over variables to see their values like Visual Studio.  - Script editor should save contents to temporary file before execution or allow user to do a quick save without having to go through a file browser.  - Please make the Quick Help side bar re-sizable. At least increase the width so you can read the contents properly."   "- An option to collapse blocks of code  - Easier access to changing the color scheme of the script editor  - An on/off word wrap option.  -A way to arrange tabs so that they can be seen side by side instead of only being able to view one tab at a time."   "The way it works now is "scary"... How tabs and the content of them are stored in the prefs and how it retains tab orders..etc. When you have more than 1 maya open right now and if you did any tab or tab content editing.. there is a very high chance you will loose those work either in the current maya session or the content from another maya session.. Its all hit and miss and there are things you can do to prevent it. But they are really terrible turnarounds. Like closing your script editor on one maya before opening it on the other maya. Or close and reopen the script editor so it stores your changes before opening the script editor of another maya... This is the most annoying part right now. We have to get this to work much more stable.   Also, we need some kind of Auto save function for all content in the script editor.   Also a few more changes. More font options (control of default text size, choose fonts, size of fonts in the history..etc like most text editor can do), customizable hotkeys for all things in script editor, tabs can be reordered by just dragging the tabs around, better search and replace. And an additional search option for the history section."   "*Code folding  *Column/block Mode editing  *single line comment, single line UN-comment, Block comment, Block UN-comment.  *Variable highlighting  *Convert case to UPPERCASE/lowercase  *Goto-definition, refactoring, inline snippets  *Macros"   http://zurbrigg.com/charcoal-editor Show More

Maya already has some sculpting features. It would be nice if these were as advanced as Mudbox or Zbrush. Blender has these features and I don't really see a reason to have it in a seperate program. Also the possibilty to paint textures would be very nice. So often I just want to paint something up and to go to another software package, or photoshop is a bit silly. To be able to do it al in Maya would be amazing.  Show More

(Copied from original User Voice forum)   "Currently there are basic math nodes, but it would nice to have more advanced ones built in. I have seen many TD's create their own, myself included, but they are so easy why not do it yourselves? Having them built in will avoid having to compile for other platforms or distributing them, the less dependencies the better."   "http://www.cgdna.com/web/mathematic-nodes-main"   "This is what I've been cooking and re-cooking for years, as have a number of different people:  http://www.thejaco.com/wp/tools/rf_mathnodes/  Get in touch if you want the source, but frankly speaking just tell any developer over there "it's a wrap of cmath" and they will know exactly what it is, and that it only takes a couple hours to implement the lot. It's such an important yet trivial set of operations there's no reason to prioritize, all of cmath is in the standard library for a reason 🙂"   "Fixing quaternion functions (quaternions don't have cross product). Constants  E  PI  TWO_PI  INV_PI  SQRT_TWO  EPSILON  INFINITY  More... Basic Types  Float  Vector  Color  Quaternion  Matrix Basic Arithmetic Operations  Addition  Subtraction  Multiplication  Division Mathematical Functions  Nth Power  Nth Root  Modulo  Minimum  Maximum  Factorial  Exponential  Logarithm  Floor  Ceil  Truncate  Sign  Round  Absolute Geometric Functions  Sine  Cosine  Tangent  Cotangent  Secant  Cosecant  Arcsine  Arccosine  Arctangent  Arccotangent  Arcsecant  Arccosecant  Hyperbolic Sine  Hyperbolic Cosine  Hyperbolic Tangent  Hyperbolic Cotangent  Hyperbolic Secant  Hyperbolic Cosecant  Hyperbolic Arcsine  Hyperbolic Arccosine  Hyperbolic Arctangent  Hyperbolic Arccotangent  Hyperbolic Arcsecant  Hyperbolic Arccosecant Vector Functions  Cross  Dot  Normalize  Magnitude  Rotate  Rotate By Quaternion Color Functions  Clamp  Luminance  More... Quaternion Functions  Dot  Normalize  Magnitude  Conjugate  Inverse Matrix Functions  Inverse  Transpose  Determinant Conversion Functions  Euler To Quaternion  Quaternion To Euler  More... Custom Nodes  Expression  Plot (2D and 3D)" Show More

(Copied from original User Voice forum)   "The Attribute Editor allows for only one object at a time to be edited. The way to change one attribute for numerous objects is either with the Channel Box or an Attribute Spread Sheet. But neither of them holds all the attributes that you can find/modify in the Attribute Editor. Yes, there are ways to go around, including scripting, but the Attribute Editor is much simpler and efficient." Show More

As much as I like quaddraw and it's great shortcuts it feels like it's lagging behind on a few features. One of the more useful being an easy way to retopo an arm/leg/fingers etc.. like the strokes tool from 3dcoat https://streamable.com/r8okll it is also amazing for laying out base topology for eyes and edge flow and I find it better than patch tools in that regard too (patch tools are still great for filling larger areas)  Here's an example but I'm using a mouse quickly so it's messy https://streamable.com/kwj57d Show More

(Copied from original User Voice forum)   Modelers want a way to automatically retopologize a model in Maya, with an option to use guides (curves) to dictate edge flow in certain areas, similar to Mudbox Auto-Retopo.   "Adding auto-retopology would save a trip to Mudbox. Auto-Retopology with booleans Union would be very powerful for sculpting." Show More

Maya needs a non-destructive curve system. I need to be able to cut, resample, smooth, offset, etc. and go back to the top level to make edits in real time based on creative feedback. Furthermore when you make a cut the result is to create X amount of new shape nodes for each new curve element. This is very messy, and I think it's at the root of the problem with curves in Maya. Each entity seems to need it's own shape node. Show More

Maya needs a matrix-driven transform. Currently transforms can not accept matrices as input. The user is required to first decompose a matrix in to its srt( & shear) values do drive a transform. The first thing the transform does is recompose those values in to a matrix to use in its own calculations. We could skip that expensive step. A matrix input would skip that step, reduce the number of connections required between nodes, and leave srt attributes free for animation curves reducing the need for additional dag nodes in rigs. Show More

(Copied from original User Voice forum)   "Legacy Python 2.7 is starting to cause us issues in our pipeline. PySide2 is the most recent headache but many other distributions are also an issue. Additionally I would also petition Autodesk to compile Maya Python using the same MSC as the standalone Python distribution. This also causes many a headache by preventing version dependent Python modules from being used in Maya without having to recompile them." Show More

With every new project I find myself recreating the same materials over and over again (assigning textures etc..)  Materials for e.g. wood, concrete, glass, metal for use in trim sheets or tileable textures, takes a good chunk of time every time I need to set them up.  Ideally I would love if Maya included a correct pbr material library that users could enhance and add their own stuff.  I imagine opening  the hypershade and already have a wide range of materials I can just drag and drop on my models and quickly preview them in Arnold.  This could save some time for a lot of people. Show More