In the latest release of Autodesk Maya 2023.1, significant enhancements have been made to the spline stretching workflow within the Max environment, along with incremental improvements to key modifiers for 3D modeling, texturing, and character animation. This comprehensive suite of tools is designed to serve professionals in animation, environmental design, motion graphics, virtual reality, and character creation.

One of the standout features is the new spline stretching function, which allows users to extrude spline segments or vertices directly in the viewport. This feature supports editable splines and spline objects, enabling users to clone spline segments while using transformation tools like move, rotate, and scale. Additionally, when editing splines or using spline修饰符, changing vertex types to smooth, Bezier, or Bezier corner automatically segments adjacent splines into curves.

3D modeling has been bolstered with intelligent extrude, chamfer, and TurboSmooth updates. The intelligent extrude system now better handles concave surfaces, and the chamfer modifier has been refined to reduce the likelihood of elongated or misaligned edges. The TurboSmooth modifier has seen a performance boost, providing twice the speed for subdividing geometry.

Keyframe modifiers for texturing and character animation have also been updated, with vertex color retrieval now possible from the modifier stack below. In the Unwrap UVW modifier, the relax tool can now be restricted to selected UV components using the unow3d optimization method. Performance enhancements for character animation are evident through deformers and skin modifiers, although specific numbers are not provided in the release notes.

Other updates include a new isolate selection "single maximize" mode, perspective match tool enhancements, and material library compatibility with earlier versions of 3DS Max. The user interface now features improved progress bar behavior.

Among the new features in Maya 2023.1 are a new HumanIK interface template, updates to boolean modeling and vertex rendering, and a new Operator SDK for customizing Bifrost through C++ programming. The Bifrost 2.5 update introduces new nodes for simulating multi-color phenomena with the Aero solver, such as colored smoke, paint, and ink mixing in water.

The USD integration plugin for Maya has been updated to improve support for MaterialX open standard materials and appearance development data. The update includes support for AMD's free MaterialX material library and displays MaterialX materials on macOS. Additionally, the MaterialX colorCorrect node has been exposed to better support Maya's native shaders.

Minor updates have also been made to the Autodesk Arnold renderer integration and the Substance Integration plugin, enhancing the overall workflow and performance for users.