I have only been using Maya for less than a year, and am absolutely in love with it. Yes it has its moments, but I cant imagine them being worse than the pre QT days.
For people who were using Maya during those, I am interested to know you thoughts, especially in contrast to the current Maya.
Do you miss those days?
I don’t think there is anything to miss tbh, because nothing has really been removed, stuff has only been added. Qt only essentially changed the GUI, and the core UI command framework has stayed identical anyway (in other words, any UI code you could write in MEL in Maya 3.0 would still work in 2025 (with a few rare exceptions/caveats)).
Anything you could do back then, you can still pretty much do, but with even more options and command flags. The only thing I think you could miss would be “simpler times”, but nobody is forcing you to use the new stuff if you don’t want to.
Agreed, in fact Qt brought enough complexity to the table that for most simpler tools it was easier (and often more forward compatible) to just keep using the older interface layer, and really only reach for Qt when something was completely impossible otherwise.
Yes. I remember pre-QT Maya. QT did not exist on the IRIX OS. Maya was like this back then. (not an image of work I did). Don’t worry, we were all fine with Maya not supporting Python back then. Maya released in 1998. Python v2.0 didn’t show up until two years later. No one used Python 1.0 as an embedded scripting engine, AFAIK.
Autodesk Maya 2025 ( Mar 2024)
– Python 3.11.4
– Qt 6.5.3
Autodesk Maya 2024 ( Mar 2023)
– Python 3.10.8
Autodesk Maya 2023 ( Mar 2022)
– Python 3.9.7
Autodesk Maya 2022 (24. Mar 2021)
– Python 3.7.7
– Qt 5.15.2
Autodesk Maya 2020 (Mar 2019)
– Qt 5.12.5
Autodesk Maya 2019 (Mar 2018)
– Python 2.7.15 on MacOS
Autodesk Maya 2017 (Mar 2016)
– Python 2.7.11
– Qt 5.6.1
Autodesk Maya 2014 (26. Mar 2013)
– Python 2.7.3
Autodesk Maya 2013 (27. Mar 2012)
– Qt 4.7.1
Autodesk Maya 2011 (6. April 2010)
– Qt 4.5.3 – New Interface [ Nokia - Quantum Toolkit ] dockable UI elements, more flexible editors
– Python 2.6.4
– PyMEL 1.0
Autodesk Maya 2010 (August 2009)
– Python 2.6.1
Autodesk Maya 2009 (August 2008)
– Python 2.5.1
Autodesk Maya 2008 ver. 9.0 (September 2007)
– Support for Windows Vista
– Python 2.5.1
Autodesk Maya 8.5 (January 2007)
– Intel-based Mac OS X
– Python 2.4.3
Autodesk Maya 8.0 (August 2006)
– First 64-bit release
Alias Maya 7.0.1 (December 2005)
– No Python
Alias Maya 6.5 (January 2005)
– last IRIX Version
A|W Maya 3.5 (October 2001)
– first Mac OS X Version only
A|W Maya 3.0 (February 2000)
– first Linux Version
A|W Maya 1.5 (October 1998)
– IRIX only
A|W Maya 1.0.1 (October 1998)
– Windows Version
A|W Maya 1.0.1 (June 1998)
– IRIX Version
A|W Maya 1.0 (June 1998)
– first Windows Version
A|W Maya 1.0 (February 1998)
Alias | Wavefront Maya 1.0 - Character Animation
Alias | Wavefront Maya 1.0 - UI
Alias | Wavefront Maya 1.0 - Artisan
Alias|Wavefront Maya 1.0 ISO IMAGE
How cool, thanks everyone.
Also, I was watching a video by Ronald Reyer (Maya developer) summarising all the features added to Maya between 2013-2018. That period seems like a leep occurred. Am really hoping Bifrost renews this effort:
PS: Ronald Reyers Youtube channel has quite good material covering Bifrost
I found the following videos under QT’s Youtube channel, I thinks its an interesting watch if you are interested in QT or maya:
Before QT, Maya still had this Silicon Graphics magical look and feel.
MEL has options to create a ui and it still works today, so you don’t need to know anything about QT to create a UI in Maya.
Diving deeper into QT can be very complex but also rewarding. You can do so much more directly with QT than the UI elements provided by Maya.
