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DaVinci Resolve 20
Blackmagic has officially released DaVinci Resolve 20, and the list of additions and augmentations is huge. Since I’ll never be able to cover everything, I recommend you visit the official website to get the entire list later.
The Cut and Edit pages have a handful of new (or better) AI tools to help with those tasks that are time-consuming to do manually but must be done first to get to the creative stuff. One example is the AI IntelliScript function, which is super handy for interview shoots where you need to transcribe dialog to text. You can bring it back into AI IntelliScript, layer in your different cameras, and Resolve will do a rough assemble edit based on who is talking. Further, there are some AI audio tools, like the AI Dialogue Matcher, which can balance the tone, level and reverb between dialogue that may have been recorded in different locales with different mics and such. And AI Voice Convert can change one voice to another — it has default voices, but you can train new voices if you have enough material to train with — and permission. The AI Music Editor can extend music by finding appropriate transition points. Meanwhile, AI Detect Music autodetects the beats and can display the beats on the timeline and snap to those beats — which is great for music videos, promo spots and demo reels.
Moving over to the Fusion page, there is robust support for Deep Compositing and native support for Cryptomattes. Layered files like PSD and multichannel EXRs can be broken out into those layers (which is also supported in the Edit page). Vector warping is available for optical-flow-type tracking onto deforming surfaces. And one small addition, which I think is really important, is that you can view your comp through the grade that has been applied in the Color page.
Speaking of the Color page, the AI Magic Mask has been updated so that the mask selection is now a point rather than a spline, which helps reduce errors due to changing shapes or things that go offscreen, and there are paint tools for adding and removing parts of the mask when the AI isn’t AI-ing as well. The AI Depth Map has also been beefed up to make more accurate calculations for determining the depth of objects in the scene. And there is a pretty fantastic Color Warper tool, which provides a more intuitive method for shifting colors than traditional color wheels where you use a chromaticity diagram to see which color in the spectrum you are coming from (sampled with an eyedropper in your picture) and then dragging a spline to the color you want it to become. It comes with parameters to refine the spread of the effect — meaning how broad your change reaches across the hue spectrum.
Fairlight has its own set of AI tools, which include an AI Audio Assistant that can build an initial sound mix for you, not only balancing different tracks but organizing those tracks. And AI IntelliCut can remove silences, checkerboard speakers and set up ADR cues. You can also preset chains of FX that you frequently apply to sound clips.
I’m pretty sure this covers only 15% of the additions and changes in Resolve 20, but I wanted to add one more — support for Apple ProRes on Windows. Finally!
blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
Price: $295 (lifetime license)
Maya MotionMaker
Character animation, especially locomotion (running, walking, etc.), is really time-consuming and requires a certain set of skills — aka it’s hard. There are plenty of motion-capture libraries to tap into to get you on your way. And even though you can layer keyframe animation on top of it, you are locked into those kinds of motions, unless you have an Xsens suit or motion-capture system — but at that point, you are working on another level than many of us.
To answer this need, Autodesk has been developing a locomotion system called MotionMaker, which is a machine-learning-based motion system that has been trained on hours of motion data captured at its studio. It’s controlled by a motion path that you lay down with traditional keyframes, and based on that path, MotionMaker calculates the gait of the character, including speedups, slowdowns and turns, moving up and down terrain (to an extent). And you can even add jumps (more cue-based actions are in the works).
It is currently limited to a man, a woman and a dog (which is kind of cool and unique). But you can take the base animated character and retarget the generated animation onto your own biped character. Presumably you can do it with the dog too, but I’m guessing the biped retargeting tools are more ubiquitous. Plus, the generated data is treated as regular animation data and it’s on a character rig, so you can layer animation on top, blend between keyframed animation and MotionMaker animation, and blend with other motion-capture clips. For example, jumping from a high wall and landing (motion-capture clip) and then running down the alley (MotionMaker). Furthermore, it works with Live Link — so you can port the motion over to Unreal Engine.
There are other tools to finesse the animation like speed ramping, adjusting the scale of the motion, tweaking the orientation of the movement (like turning sideways rather than walking straight down the path) and some tools for finessing foot-slides.
It’s a cool idea, and in its current state, I can see it being really useful for quickly blocking out ideas for animation and previz. Think of it like a sketch, so a director can sign off on timing and blocking before it’s passed over to the animation team. This might sound like a slight, but it’s not. You should realize that we are in the very early stages of this tool — a newborn compared to the far more mature host that is Maya. The development team has decided to include it in the latest build of Maya 2026 so it can get feedback from the animation community to make it a more robust production tool. There are plans for more kinds of motion, more complex motion, facial motion capture and the ability to train with your own motion-capture data. I do see some promising uses in the future for MotionMaker.
help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2026/ENU/
Price: Autodesk Maya is $245 monthly or $1,946 annually
Software reviews were written after being tested on a Puget Workstation AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7975WX 4.0GHz 32 Core 350W: 128GB DDR5-5600 RAM and NIVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Ge 48GB PCI-E. (pugetsystems.com)
Todd Sheridan Perry is an award-winning VFX supervisor and digital artist whose recent credits include I’m a Virgo, For All Mankind and Black Panther. He can be reached at todd@teaspoonvfx.com.
