The connect component and spin edge help to speed up your modeling workflow.
Several additions have been brought in to better control the rigs for meshes in Maya 2011. The new Smooth Bind feature dual quaternion works to address the pinching problem that occurs when the joints bend and the mesh surface pinches unrealistically. Paint Skin Weight options allow you to copy/paste vertex weights individually or on to multiple recipients. Weight hammer matches a vertex weight with surrounding vertices. Move weights reassigns joint influences to selected vertices. The Influence Listing now shows joints in a tree-hierarchy that can be edited, filtered, and be able to invert the selection. Interactive Smooth Binding surrounds the mesh around the selected joint with a volume that can be manipulated to control the influence falloff between joint and vertices. Joint drawing style can be changed to render the joints in a way that makes more sense for its use, such as a regular bone for an arm and a box for the hips. And the Closest Point constraint allows you to constrain an object to a vertex point that will not change it's shape no matter how much you move or deform the surface it is conformed to.
One of the major additions in the animation department is the new Camera Sequencer. This tool allows you to layout and manage the camera shots that you have made for your scene for real-time playback. You can also import AAF or FCP files into the sequencer to help you time your camera moves more precisely with the footage and audio that it will be composited to later. The Graph Editor has been improved upon and can allow for better selection, edit, filter, and modification of the curves in your scene. Also, you can import , display, and playback multiple audio tracks in your scene.
Dynamics are a simulation for things like particles, fluids, and gravity.
There are numerous changes and updates to the dynamics tool set. Some of the highlights include a new Leaf and Flower Face Sun attribute in the Paint Effects section that cause the flowers and leaves to grow in the direction of the Sun, based on the Sun Direction settings. Transfer All Strokes does just what it says, transferring strokes from one object to another. The Dynamic Relationships Editor has been improved to let you select, view, and edit connections of multiple objects and modify their dynamic relationships individually. Such improvements to the Fluid dynamics include Auto Resize of the fluid container, Self Attraction and Repulsion forces of liquid or gas bodies, and new fluid container properties provide better fluid resolutions. Improvements of the Dynamics Simulation attributes produce higher quality and better calculations of fluids and gases.
For rendering, the Hypershade Window's layout has been refined to let make it easier to get to and save your favorite shaders. The new Viewport 2.0 option in the Renderer menu of your viewport panel provides higher quality real-time rendering of lighting and shadows then the previous options allowed for in the past. The new 2D Pan and Zoom feature aids you in letting you move the camera to a position where you can tweak your shader or lighting without altering the position of the camera that will give you the final render. Great for detailed tracking and rotoscoping as well as general polish of the object(s) in your scene.
