Autodesk Maya 2019 | Computer Animation & Modeling Software

My guess is that the delayed release this cycle is due to something fairly mundane: Qt 5.12. The VFX Reference Platform spec specifies Qt 5.12 for CY2019 software. This is a massive update after 3 years of using a heavily modified version of Qt 5.6. But the first version of Qt 5.12 was only released last Thursday! Even with the release, there were 500+ more fixes that didn’t make it in time for 5.12.0, so much that 5.12.0 is not recommended for shipping on Linux. This means it’s likely ADSK will want to wait another month for the 5.12.1 point release to get something usable.

(If you don’t know what Qt is, it’s is a big software library for writing cross-platform applications. It’s used by many CG applications that need to run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. A common first encounter with Qt is when scripting Python dialogs in Maya with the PySide and PyQt modules.)

My guess is that all the major features for Maya 2019 are finished, but QA testing and final release are being held up by Qt. Waiting for a somewhat obscure but important software library is not as exciting as some of the other theories out there (Autodesk killing Maya?!?!) but I’m pretty convinced that’s the main reason it’s taken so long. This theory also comes with a prediction: If they wait for 5.12.1, then take an additional 4 weeks or so for final QA & release prep, that puts the release of Maya 2019 about 8 weeks from now, i.e. late January/ mid February.  There are a few ways that schedule could be accelerated, e.g. if they are doing QA right now using a custom branch of Qt, but with Christmas and New Years coming up I’d be very surprised to see it this year.