What's New in Animation for Maya 2016 Extension 1

Updated Character Controls

The Character controls window has been reorganized to simplify workflows and reduce redundancy. For example, in the Character Controls menu, HIK Definition has been renamed Edit Character Definition and the Show/Hide menu has been moved to the Edit Skeleton menu and renamed Show Labels to clarify the process.

Also, the Definition tab toolbar buttons have been reorganized so that Create Custom Rig Mapping and Create Control Rig are moved to the end of the row, after the garbage can icon.

Increased Evaluation Manager support for dynamics

In addition to Bifrost and Bullet dynamics, Maya's Evaluation Manager now supports Nucleus dynamics.
Note: Support for Nucleus dynamics is disabled by default in the Evaluation Manager. To benefit from this new support, you must first run a command to activate it. See Enable dynamics support in the Evaluation Manager.

Additionally, a new mel script is available to identify dynamics nodes that are disabling the Evaluation Manager. See Identify dynamics nodes that inhibit performance.

For detailed information about improving performance with Parallel Evaluation, see Maya animation performance whitepaper.