General questions

[sam]

Not true, max is great out of the box. It even has nice built-in GI, Radiosity, and advanced lighting options that most other 3d programs do not have. Max has its weak spots but it has the basics well covered.

Strong poly modeling toolset

Strong rendering options built-in (fast scanliner and GI)

Strong IK with built-in FK/IK switch

Strong procedural animation

Strong texturing toolset

Strong dynamics (Reactor)

Max has its weak spots with its outdated particle system and various areas that have problematic or buggy implementations (like the nurbs toolset and the boolean toolset). If nurbs or booleans were a major part of your workflow, then you might look into programs/plug-ins that cover for that weakspot in max (like Rhino or PowerBooleans). The particle system is reportedly going to be updated in the 5.5 release of max.

Basically max is fine totally stripped of all plugins. FX guys like Brandon Davis manage to wrangle out great stuff even from its outdated particle system. And maxers generally learn to avoid its booleans and nurbs or seek alternatives.

And the plug-in offerings out there are a part of max's strength as a program. Look at Scenegenie, Afterburn, Phoenix (and the upcoming Aura), ACT, Character Studio, Brazil, and Vray to see that developers are bringing innovative technology to 3ds max first.

sam

[TimWoods]

max is like any other tool. its how you use it. Granted the built in radiosity isnt good, particles are difficult. There is no hair plugin out of the box, but character studio is great.
Its not a heavy weight like maya or soft, but its not far behind, the poly modelling tools are great.
:beer:

[SuperMax]

Strong dynamics (Reactor)

Id like to hear peoples Views On reactor.

I havent used it yet, but hopefully soon. But hardley anyone mentions reactor in these forums.

Is it any good? Is there better? etc etc

[TimWoods]

reactor is excellent. much much better than max built in dynamics. ive used it on a few things, but nothing complicated. Its fairly easy to use, and results are predictable, unlike max dynamics.
havent used it on anything complicated tho!
:thumbsup:

[mouj]

Howdy !

well imho Max now really is part of the "grand" ones, since it's last release, so many improvements have been made over R4 !
But let's not forget that it has been used in the industry for a long while, meaning that all in all it's wasn't all that bad already, eventhough indeed it needed plugins : )
I think Tim has it right, it's up to how you'll use it, as an exemple look at BrandonD's use of particles inside Max, may the particles systems be outdated..

As for reactor, i think it's a good dynamics system, that also has it's weak spots : ) but rigid and soft bodies, ropes and even cloth simulation can do wonders in minutes, the toy car is fun to toy with, and constraint systems are quite powerfull.

my 2c

mouj

[gaggle]

For what it's worth, I understand you won't find a Lightwave user without a whole array of (free) plugins to help make it a better program. Imo the same goes for MAX. And Maya. Just a sign of a good healthy community.

That's plugins (and scripts) in general, if you were refering to those expensive plugins you have to go and buy, then yeah I'm with everyone else here in that they're not required. MAX can do a lot out of the box.

If you do have some requirement that one such plugin specifically meets though, then I certainly think it's cool that there are so many plugins to choose from. I think it's a pretty neat concept that there are, what, at least five or six different rendering-engines, a bunch of cloth-simulators, volumetric effects plugins, etc. etc. available if you ever need it. Quality thrives on competition and all that :)

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