New Modeling Features

The character assembly helps you manage the complex structure of a typical character, with bones, meshes, and their associated IK chains and animation controllers.

Character assembly with character helper object below it

In conjunction with character assemblies, the Merge Animation feature has been improved and expanded.

Bone tools, available from the new Character menu, provide a single, modeless dialog for doing the adjustments that fit a skeleton.

Bones for an octopus

The Named Selection Sets dialog has been improved, and is accessible from the toolbar as well as the Edit menu.

The editable polygon user interface has been redesigned, and features have been added or improved. The major enhancements are Settings dialogs for Extrude, Bevel, Outline, Inset, and other tools; a new Quickslice tool; extrusion along a spline; Hinge From Edge; constraints; and the ability to grow or shrink a selection.

Adding geometry with the hinge from edge feature

Soft selection colors now display at all sub-object levels, not just the Vertex level.

Soft selection colors in a shaded view

The Skin, Unwrap UVW, HSDS, and Morpher modifiers have all been enhanced.

Skin Modifier

The Skin modifier has improved in speed and usability. A new spreadsheet-like Weight Table lets you view and manage the influence of vertices.

Linking skin to bones (above), then using back transform (below) to avoid applying transforms twice

Unwrap UVW Modifier

Unwrap UVW has been enhanced in a variety of ways to improve usability.

A biplane and its unwrapped textures

Morpher Modifier

The Morpher modifier now supports “progressive morphing,” which lets you specify intermediate shapes that give you more control over how the morph interpolation proceeds.

Progressive morphing with intermediate shapes

Three new modifiers are provided: Symmetry, Vertex Weld, and Edit Normals.

Symmetry Modifier

The Symmetry modifier is for creating a symmetrical model such as a human head. You can edit the original object half, and interactively view the results on its mirrored counterpart.

Creating symmetrical horns

Vertex Weld Modifier

The Vertex Weld modifier is for cleaning up objects that have close or coincident vertices that aren't welded.

Progressively welding vertices

Layers are a tool for organizing your scene, based on the practices of architectural modeling.

Organizing objects by layer