I first used Maya 1.0 on 'The Iron Giant', back in 1998. For newcomers to the animation industry, and especially for our students starting with us this September, it's important to remember that Autodesk, who make the software Maya, offer an education copy of Maya for free, which can be downloaded from the official Autodesk site.Īutodesk Maya has been the dominant software package in 3D animation for over 20 years.