Top 34 Maya Plugins for Fast Production

Today, we are going to talk about 34 of the best plugins that you can use with Autodesk Maya to help you do things that can’t be done using the software or to become more productive.

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34_KTools

KTools is Booleans Toolkit and collection of scripts intended to improve current booleans workflow in Autodesk Maya. 

The toolset will allow you to more easily and directly in viewport manipulate objects after you make boolean operation and move/rotate/scale, edit on component level, and even use modeling tools like Bevel, MultiCut, Extrude..etc while at the same time still keeping boolean operation active. 

33_Radeon ProRender

ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine. it can simultaneously use and balance the capabilities of multiple GPUs and CPUs – on the same system, at the same time.

Radeon ProRender is a free rendering plugin that comes with a library of materials you can use for free within Maya.

32_pull down it

Pulldownit is a dynamics plugin intended for destruction effects as well as massive rigid body simulations. By using its technology digital artists are able to shatter objects in different styles and simulate easily the fracture of 3D models. It allows for computing thousands of objects in dynamics in a stable and realistic way.

The technology of fracture inside PullDownit is great. It allows fracturing of any kind of brittle material like stone, glass, stucco, and so on. 

31_Realflow

Realflow can be used for liquids and many other things such as granular, viscous, viscoelastic, rigid, elastic materials, soft bodies, and meshes.

It was used by a lot of studios to work on some of the popular feature films such as 300, The X-men, and The Lord of The Rings just to name a few.

It was also used for video game cinematics such as Ryse: Son of Rome, Uncharted, and God of War as an example.

30_Modit

Modi will support and speed up your hard surface Workflow with the automaton of simple and repetitive tasks like Primitives creation, duplicate merge, and so on.

This modeling tool for Maya is going to save you a lot of time with the different ways it can shortcut the modeling process.

For instance, you can use it to add small and repetitive pieces such as screws, nuts, bolts, or any other type of geometry that needs to be inserted with the base mesh you originally created.

29_Iray

NVIDIA Iray is a Maya Plugin for rendering accelerated on the GPU featuring photorealistic and physical precision. When combined with the parallel processing power of Nvidia graphics cards it reaches speed levels that reduce the iteration time of the scenes during the creative process.

Iray is good when it comes to ease of use during the configuration of the scenes with results of greater photographic realism and high interactivity.

Iray offers three rendering modes, which support a wide range of design needs and workflows.

28_Qualoth

Qualoth is a Maya plug-in, that takes polygon meshes as input. Then Those input meshes are triangulated internally for dynamic cloth simulation.

Qualoth is being widely used for the production of 3D feature animations and visual effects for digital doubles in movies.

Some famous feature animations from world top class animation studios are using Qualoth for cloth simulation.

Though it is not aimed at real-time applications like games, Qualoth has been used for numerous game cinematics.

27_Maya Structures

This is a MAYA plugin for creating procedural buildings and generating cities in a very short period of time using Maya. You can use ready to use building blocks or any other custom model you prefer for the project at hand.

Structures is a python script for generating procedural structures, buildings, machines, and many other things in Maya. Works in Maya 2013 and up. NOT compatible with Maya LT. 

26_Overlapper

Overlapper is a tool created by Dmitrii Kolpakov which can make overlapping action type of animation easier by eliminating all the work that animators need to make overlapping actions believable.

Overlapper doesn’t use dynamics, which means that the script is more stable for a wider range of use-cases. The animation tool can also automatically find controls in a hierarchy, so it works equally well with simple and complex rigging systems in Maya.

25_Maxwell Render

Maxwell Render is an unbiased 3D render engine, developed by Next Limit Technologies. This render engine comes as a stand-alone application also as a plugin for Maya, it is used in the film, animation, and VFX industry, as well as in architectural and product design visualization

24_Quad Remesher

Exoside’s Quad Remesher is an automatic Remeshing tool available for Maya. From what can see quad Remesher is very good at changing the topology of any type of mesh whether it be a simple 3D text or a complex model that has millions of polygons.

The tool processes the source meshes composed of triangles or a mixture of polygon types and converts them to evenly spaced quads suitable for animation.

23_Physics tools

Maya Physics tools allow you to spend more time on creating appealing poses that better show human emotions and movements rather than technical issues that Animators usually spend most of their time on, like how to achieve great physics, overlapping actions, switch control space, manage time, visualize the geometry, create animation layers.

22_Krakatoa

KRAKATOA was specifically designed to process and render millions and even billions of particles and adapt its memory footprint to the requested rendering features.

Krakatoa is a unique plugin because it does deal with a huge number of particles using a single computer which is great for studios that can’t afford expensive hardware.

21_Advanced Skeleton

Advanced Skeleton can create rigs with unlimited body configurations. Not only creatures, but you can also rig props, vehicles, and just about anything. You can at any time go from Advanced Skeleton, back to the Fit Skeleton, make changes, and rebuild.

It was used in feature animated films such as Happy Feet and The Legend of the Guardians. They developed Advanced Skeleton to make character creation a much more efficient process.

20_Miarmy

Miarmy is a Human Logic Engine plugin that works in Maya for crowd simulation, AI animation, creature physical simulation, and rendering.

Using this plugin you can create all types of simulations, crowds, animals, objects you name it, your imagination is the limit.

Miarmy has been utilized by many projects globally from films to animations from commercials to Olympic game simulations.

19_Particle Flocker

Particle Flocker is a nice particle simulation plugin that can be really effective for some of the common behavior of flocks especially in nature like fish or birds.

During the simulation, particles will attempt to avoid colliding with one another by keeping a set distance away from neighboring particles.

Particles will attempt to get as near as possible to the center of the flock. This ensures flocks stay together and act as a cohesive group.

Particles attempt to match the velocities of their neighbors by continually comparing their own velocity with that of their neighbors.

generally speaking, this plugin gives the ability to control how the flock of particles move and behave.

18_TweenMachine

TweenMachine was originally developed by Justin Barrett and used extensively throughout the animation and visual effects industries for years. Then development was taken over by Alex Widener in February 2018.

This tool allows you to break down shots on stepped curves and gradually break them down and do the in-betweens without losing control of the curves.

17_Massive

Massive is a great plugin if you want to create crowds, small or large, for your projects – not only as a visual effects artist but also if you work in engineering or architecture. There are few options out there for generating crowds but Massive for Maya is one of the best-known and it is now fully integrated into Maya.

To create crowd simulations you need to create a terrain, places some agents and run the simulation to see some action.

Also, there is a possibility of using lanes to guide to movement of crowds during the simulation.

16_Speedcut

speedCut is a modeling toolset for speeding up boolean operation in Maya.

Some of its features are

– Non-Destructive workflow,

– easy to re-adjust shape,

– easy to bake cutter and restore.

Speedcut is similar to the other modeling tools on this list because it allows you to create complex hard surface models like mechanical machines, robots, weapons, or any other complex and highly detailed complex hard surface geometry.

15_Golaem Crowd

Golaem gives you the power to quickly populate your scenes with smart and directable digital characters. This plugin is probably the best option for crowds simulations, it is good for avoiding repetitive animation tasks, also it helps generate more variety for more realistic shots.

Golaem Crowd simulations were used to work on some of the most popular TV shows such as Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Falling Skies, War, and Peace.

Also, feature films such as Independence Day, Dracula Untold, Hercules just to name a few. Video Game cinematics such as Halo Wars, and War Hammer.

14_FumeFX

FumeFx is a powerful fluid dynamics plugin for Maya, designed for simulation and rendering of realistic fire, smoke, explosions, and other gaseous phenomena. It has the ability to capture the subtlety and complexity of fluid gas behavior. It is favored among visual effects artists, game developers, visualization professionals, and anybody else who wants to generate amazing effects.

FumeFX has been used in visual effects for a long period of time and it was used in some of the most popular feature films like a lot of Marvel movies, also DC movies, and others such as Ghost Raider, Star Trek, 2012 to name a few.

13_MGTools

MG Tools can save time and create a more efficient workflow. This plugin has a number of features that aim to make things simpler and easier for Maya animators.

I think that what these tools have to offer is interesting and useful because they help you do the things that are time-consuming, or hard to do manually as an animator.

12_Keyshot

To render Maya scenes using keyshot there is a plugin for Autodesk Maya that allows real-time 3D rendering in KeyShot with LiveLinking model update.

There are two ways to import your 3D models into KeyShot–direct import or through a plugin. You don’t need a plugin to import your native 3D data. However, the plugin transfers data faster and delivers tighter integration between KeyShot and the 3D modeling software making the workflow faster.

11_PlugIt

PlugIt is a script for Maya that will help you detail your Hard Surface models. In one click you can add pre-build Plugs into your mesh! You also have control of scale, rotation, connection, and so on. It works both on flat and curvature shapes.

I think tools like plugIt are some of the best modeling tools especially for hard surface artists who create complex robots, spaceships, weapons, and so on because this type of work involves creating so many small pieces and plugIt can be really handy. 

10_Octane Render

Octane Render is an unbiased rendering application with real-time capability. It was the first commercially available unbiased raytracer that fully utilized the GPU, giving it a significant speed advantage by allowing users to more easily modify scenes in real-time.

Octane Render was running exclusively on Nvidia’s CUDA technology, restricting it to Nvidia video cards; Octane Render now is running on Vulkan and therefore it is able to run on both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

9_Ornatrix

Ornatrix is an Artist-friendly grooming tool for a Non-destructive hair pipeline.

This tool is used by a lot of studios to work on a lot of popular shows and video games.

It can be used to grow any type of object, besides hair or fur. Ornatrix allows you to quickly change parameters such as strand twisting. You can even turn the mesh back into guides if you like.

8_Redshift

Redshift Rendering Technologies was founded in early 2012. And at NAB 2019, Maxon CEO David McGavran announced the acquisition of Redshift Rendering Technologies.

Redshift has the capability of “out of core” rendering which means that if a GPU runs out of memory (because of too many polygons or textures in the scene), it will use the system’s memory instead. 

7_Ziva VFX

This tool specializes in advanced muscle simulations, enabling you to have dynamic soft tissue physics in your character renders. With Ziva, you can avoid spending all that time sculpting every little detail of your character’s muscles to try and make them appear as realistic as possible from scene to scene.

The animators still do the main animation work but the muscle movement underneath the skin happens automatically which makes everything way better.

6_ADN Modeler

ADN Modeler Tools is a smart modeling script for Maya that comes with multiple useful tools, ranging from simple scripts to highly complex tools that completely redefine your workflow.

ADN Modeler can help you speed up the modeling process in Maya by saving you time when it comes to modeling tasks that are less fun and more tedious.

5_Vray

V-ray is one of the Best Plugins for Maya and the one that has been around for the longest period of time. It has a powerful CPU and GPU rendering built for the demands of high-end production. 

Chaos Group also launched V-Ray Next for Maya, which allows artists to utilize the viewport and GPU much more, you can isolate specific areas of the scene with ease. 

4_Phoenix FD

Phoenix FD is an all-in-one solution for fluid dynamics. It can Simulate fire, smoke, liquids, ocean waves, splashes, spray, mist, and more.

It was built for 3D artists who want to create dynamic effects using quick presets, fast setup, and intuitive controls.

It is good for generating small wisps of smoke and steam and Rendering particles as bubbles, drops, points, or fog.

Phoenix Fd was created and is currently developed by chaos group the developers of Vray one of the most popular render engines.

3_Pixar Renderman

Pixar RenderMan is a proprietary photorealistic 3D renderer produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The RenderMan renders their in-house 3D animated movie productions and it is also available as a commercial product licensed to third parties. And for those who don’t want to use it for commercial purposes, it is completely free.

2_Animbot

Animbot is a set of tools for Maya aimed at speeding up workflow. It has a lot of tools that can make the animator’s daily tasks feel like creative work rather than doing a chore.

Animbot has so many good tools that complement Maya’s animation workflow because with the amount of work animators have to do there has to be something that can make things easier and faster, and probably Animbot is the best option because it has so many useful tools that make the process easier.

1_Hardmesh

Hard mesh is Ideal for hard surface modeling. Its primary application is to create complex objects starting from simple shapes, but it can also be used to add details to any hard surface model.

With Hard Mesh, you can blend together any kind of mesh, without having to worry about the topology, and by just concentrating on the creative process of modeling Everything remains editable until you are not satisfied with the shape.