The high-performance viewport introduced with Maya 2011 now offers full-screen effects: motion blur, depth-of-field, and ambient occlusion, enabling artists to evaluate their work in a higher fidelity environment and without needing to render or export to a game engine.

Edit animation directly in the viewport without the need to switch context to the graph editor, with new editable motion trails that provide a faster and easier method for fine-tuning motion animation.

Achieve a vast range of look variations with a new library of 80 Substance procedural textures. These dynamic, resolution-independent textures have a tiny disk space footprint, and can be exported to certain game engines via the Substance Air middleware offering (available separately from Allegorithmic SAS).

Extensive simulation tools for creating high-quality, realistic fluid, particle, cloth, fur, hair, rigid and soft-body dynamics.

3D editorial capabilities with the Camera Sequencer, which features a Sequencer Playlist, support for multi-track audio, and interoperability with popular non-linear editing (NLE) applications like Apple Final Cut Pro software.

Access considerably more memory to handle larger and more complex scenes with the new 64-bit executable on Mac OS X

Achieve significantly faster frame rates with a new interactive viewport display option—especially useful for level editors and others working with large scenes and many textures. Texture loading for interactive display is also significantly faster for BMP, JPEG, PNG, and Targa formats.

Accelerate pre-visualisation and virtual moviemaking production with new 3D editorial capabilities in Maya. Lay out multiple camera shots directly in Maya, or import an edit decision list in Apple Final Cut Pro XML or AAF formats. Then change the timings of shots, create alternate versions, and use Playblast to playback and review.