PDA

View Full Version : MAX is a good product, but not as good as it 'can' & 'should' be!

Xaint
02-07-2003, 02:16 AM
What disappoints me is the stance of discreet & achievements in MAX.

------------------------------------
The Stance:
-Why implement it, Somebody will do a plugin for it anyway!

-And what if not, companies already acclimatized to MAX, will buy it anyway. Everybody says it's a 'cutting-edge' product.

-And not least, if we put everything in the current release we can and we know of, what will we do next?! The development time will be slight longer, resulting less releases & much less money. It's business now!

At least it looks like for me, that discreet has this kind of attitude.

------------------------------------
The Achievements:
-There are certainly new features, but their usability is questionable. (I can speak of modelling tools only. It's okay that MAX is an all 'round software, but it's not an excuse for lacking usability.)

-Symmetry can be used for finalizing only. You have to turn on show end result in the modistack in order to see it, thus displaying jagged and flashing lines.

-Soft selecting faces, temporary discards the assigned materials for the object, and the customized black edged faces that I had set. It's disturbing.

-Many tools that other apps has for long time not implemented yet.

-Ctrl+click -> one vertex selected, for 10 vertices it's 10 times the work. (The Uzife plugin aids this somewhat, if not crashes MAX5)

-These were for MAX5, for 5.1 people told me that it still has no Epoly modifier in the stack. Rumored, that it caused instability and they rather left it out.

Maybe I'm wrong in some terms, but try it and see it, what you experience is what matters here.

------------------------------------
My Opinion:
MAX is a good product, but not as good as it 'can' & 'should' be!
Wings can be so good, because it's not a business, rather a pet project!
And also the artist is what really matters, not just the application, wonderful things can be done under magical hands. (But this article is about the application.)

People asked me, so I just wanted to point out my notion. Hope this won't led to World War III, or something like that...
Aaron Moore
02-07-2003, 02:41 AM
no software will ever be perfect... I agree that some of the development has been slow at Discreet. However, it is rumored that R6 will be a complete rewrite from the ground up and thus hopefully will include a whole slew of new features.

My only issue with Discreet is the lack of communication it has with the user community. Its hard to know what they are working on, what stage they are at, and so on and so forth.

However, I am plesantly supriesed at the amount of updates they provide which often include new featurs... like the 5.1 update came in a timely matter and the stability it gave was excellent.

I half to disagree with one of your points. I think that Discreet's attituded toward plugins in ok. They say do it with plugins, but they usually adapt the better ones into the future versions of max.

What I am hoping for is improvements in their dynamics system because compared to Maya, the havok pluging really isn't up to par with anything... running things via a "simulation" rather then in real time is a major draw back...

Also I hope they improve the usability of maxscript as it is a powerful language and if they could implement it in an easier to use/develop environment, it would truely become a much more powerful tool IMO.

just my 2 cents.
Mahlon
02-07-2003, 03:03 AM
Originally posted by Aaron Moore


...My only issue with Discreet is the lack of communication it has with the user community. Its hard to know what they are working on, what stage they are at, and so on and so forth.



Totally agree with you here. And for me right now, the whole Character Studio 4-can't-run-in-trial-mode-unless-max 5.1-is-running-in-trial-mode is annoying. It's as if they realized they perhaps made a mistake, and no one will talk about solutions to it. I can't get a response on the discreet forum about how to get around this problem.

Funding for a new project looks like it's going to happen, and I'm probably going to be buying 1 license of CS4, perhaps 2 for it, and the reseller has not returned the last 3 phone calls nor an e-mail, literally. I definitely want to demo it before I decide, because I have been looking into buying a seat of Maya for the project instead of CS4, as the software budget is built into the project.

Frustrated with discreet right now. Still like max very much, and am impressed with new features (except for skin modifier, which I still find unintuitive and clunky -- and the way it works with character assembly is almost a mystery as there is VERY little documentation), but just want a little support here.

CS4 looks impressive, too. Just want to make sure before I purchase.

Mahlon
Mahlon
02-07-2003, 07:36 AM
Brandon,
Rollback cut out your message....I do have faith in discreet the company, and really, the more Maya I learn, the more I see max's strong points for what it does well and easily, and probably buying another seat coming up. Yep, I got my subscription :beer: (dec 30th, just under the wire).

Now...CS4.....

Mahlon
ilasolomon
02-07-2003, 09:13 AM
the more Maya I learn, the more I see max's strong points for what it does well and easily
That's exactly what i wanted to say!
CGTalk Moderation
01-14-2006, 09:00 AM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.