3dsMax 2008 demo vids now up.

[victor throe]

im liking the sky portal





the movie files wouldnt play on any player except vlc.....

[duke]

Anyone know what codec is being used?

[Tirido]

At last, thanks for the link.

Videos use TechSmith codec. http://www.techsmith.com/download/codecs.asp

[a13xr3d]

Both this and Maya are a sad excuse for a new release. In a release there should be new features that will completely blow your mind, provide completely new workflows, innovative tools that haven't been done before.

Autodesk really crapped out 3ds and maya, and now I truly see that they don't give a flying piece of turd about the DESIGNERS.

And many are still going to be forced to use buy this... sad.

I'll be in the XSI forum if anyone wants to come along.

[Brian-Bradley]

Looking pretty good to me. But then I don't particularly need
my mind blowing to appreciate tools that will benefit my
worflow and end product. :)

Regards
Bri

[Arcanox]

I'm with Alex on this one, it really seems that they've shortchanged this version with worthwhile features. I understand that Bobo is excited because of some scripting improvements, that's great. But as a modeller, most of the UI workflow changes were minor tweaks that won't save me a while lot of time. Other things like program interoperability only cater to a specific set of individuals.

If this trend continues, the subscription service people are paying for will be utterly useless. I just think they need to be working a little harder to satisfy the needs of their customers.

[skello]

funny how he avoids "snapping" the working pivot to a component instead of eyeballing it.
i bet snapping accuracy is as finicky as ever. ...blah!

[Steve Green]

To be fair, I can see why they did the speedups - I'm still getting a bad feeling about Review, usefulness-wise.

If I compared Max to a meal, it feels like I've been munching on broccoli for the last couple of releases.

Good for you, but boring as hell to wade through.

Hopefully the next release might have a nice dessert amongst the healthy stuff.


At least the Maya guys and gals got Ncloth in their .5 release - we got the... Productivity Booster "Stares at unappealing steaming florettes"

- Steve

[theotheo]

Yeah the Productivity was pretty useless this year, and the review thing in max 2008 seems like a joke production wise. Especially if you look at thinks like Fprime for lightwave and Rendition for Maya.

But the speed increase is a very good factor along with mr 3.6. Im excited, but not ecstatic.

-the0

[JohnnyRandom]

Speed enhancements for pflow? please! he mentioned something in the Performance Enhancements video about "many" speed-ups throughout the application. *fingers-crossed*

[Breinmeester]

This is a new release?? It's utter crap!! They must have a lot of clients in the Architectural field. I'm switching to Maya. At least you can rig your characters there properly.

[grrinc]

At least you can rig your characters there properly.

Thats why I left Maya !!

[Breinmeester]

Well, at least they're still working on it over there, trying to improve it. Max has left it bleeding. All we get is architectural en gaming features.

[grrinc]

Well, at least they're still working on it over there, trying to improve it. Max has left it bleeding. All we get is architectural en gaming features.

Yeah I know :).

[wanzai]

funny how he avoids "snapping" the working pivot to a component instead of eyeballing it.
i bet snapping accuracy is as finicky as ever. ...blah!

Quoted for agreement. The working pivot is another workaround, not an improvement. As far as the videos shows, it's hardly more than what you already can do with a picked external pivot.

The selection preview is kinda nice, but I never felt switch between SOs using hotkeys was a pain. Not able to select based on visiliity and the lack of fuzzy input (I'm thinking tweak mode) are bigger issues.

Also the new normal constraint is just reminds me of the edge and face constraints. They're better than nothing, but - ironically - feel very constrained and have only very limited use.

This kind of poorly implemented "me-too" functions just feel half-a**ed. Autodesk needs to revamp the whole concept for geometry manipulation. There're enough examples set by other applications.

[CGTrader]

I'm switching to Maya.

Fortunately they own Maya too, so it's not a threat to them ;)
If you cannot beat them, buy them.. But then again, bigger the company more slugish it gets. The same should be said about their products. Along with big administration or risk management they have to deal with personel motivation and many other things that corporation faces everyday. Too much risk taking out existing software that brings them profit and build up a new one, what may halve customers. So the most logical step would be buying competitive technology, thus making some space in the market. Personally I wouldn't expect much innovation in autodesk products compared with its rivals.

[MikeNash]

Im not too impressed with new release of max either, looks like just another release to look like their working hard on fixing and improving things.

I'm using xsi now and i know that has it ups and downs but is doing better job then max now.

[DDS]

I can't believe they actually used Probooleans to model that, show it off, and use it as model to show new features. This piece of crap videos will still make this new upgrades even more worthless...since they won't excite anyone with them.

I remember when they used Prince of Persia character to show off stuff. Could they, at least, use some cool model from some game or movie to sell? oh wait that was discreet.

Does Autodesk care about anything related to making clients happy????? apart from all that, only 4 videos with 4 useful new features.

Geez, that looks...promising. Hell with the ****ing subscription :(

[aaraaf]

This just feels lackluster.

There's some nice strong stuff in there, but it just doesn't feel too compelling to go through an upgrade for. I rarely use degradation, and instead put things on different layers and hide what I don't need at the moment for heavy scenes.

This feature set feels completely geared towards the arch/viz professionals, although many of them will help everyone. I guess that it's more a boo towards AD marketing. I wish they had left Max and it's other programs like it under the Discreet name and not tried to merge all of the products under the Autodesk branding. It's damn boring, even when there's great stuff in there.

I've been avoiding using the Onion. Relying too heavily on plugins makes me nervous, but it's probably going to give me more of what I need and what I was hoping for. I just feel like a lot of what people were asking for on the official wishlist/feature request thread was ignored and that Max is being thought of as more of an architectural/design tool than an entertainment industry tool. I haven't seen a single character in the new stuff, and I wonder what happened to all of the push for Max as a video game asset creation tool.

Does anyone know if Autodesk got rid of all of the people that were marketing and branding Discreet and are they just using their Arch/Viz AD people for all of their software now? I haven't been following the Alias branded stuff... is it the same there? They're doing a good job right now of making room for their competition through their lack of marketing support of a lot of their markets.

[Steve Green]

Discreet was still under Autodesk control, in fact 3DS started out as an Autodesk branded product, Kinetix was set up for Max, then discreet was used when that was bought.

I really don't get Autodesk though, on the one hand they're trying to be hip and trendy with aircraft carrier parties and the Area, and on the other they show the marketing panache and vision of a communist-era soviet brick factory.

There's supposed to be a Max user coming on board though, so hopefully things might improve.

Software zealots can be a little tiring, but they do invoke a sense of passion and enthusiasm in the software, and with Max it just feels like it's been by-the-numbers for a while now.

- Steve

[MrHooper]

Seems to me that "sky portal" is just a plane with a transmat material applied. That has been around forever. Transmat is a MR shader specifically used for directing GI photons where you want them to go. I'm not a big max user, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't already a transmat shader that ships with it.

Andrew

[JohnnyRandom]

...on the other they show the marketing panache and vision of a communist-era soviet brick factory.


ROFLMAO, sorry but that was funny...

[MasterZap]

Seems to me that "sky portal" is just a plane with a transmat material applied. That has been around forever. Transmat is a MR shader specifically used for directing GI photons where you want them to go. I'm not a big max user, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't already a transmat shader that ships with it.

Andrew

LOL, no, that's most certainly not what they are. As a matter of fact they are light sources (the videos description about final gathering is an oversimplifaction for didactics sake). Also, they double as really cool light cards, plus have some other really cool features for rendering architectural interiors.

Also, these are just a few of the mr enhancements. There's more.

/Z

[KeithDemele]

funny how he avoids "snapping" the working pivot to a component instead of eyeballing it.
i bet snapping accuracy is as finicky as ever. ...blah!

Isaac you crack me up! I guess we will be seeing you in the XSI forum too..I will debate you on this tomorrow. lol.

We use max almost exclusively at the office, and our architects use Revit, so I am excited to see the adaptive degredation, in viewport shading (Realtime texture preview, neat!), Revit optimization, although I bet we still have to clean up those dang models, and mental ray features...Mental ray looks awesome, a lot faster, and some neat new features...I like the previews with lighting and stuff..ahh so neat...I will have to take out a new line of credit and upgrade to 10...or is it 2008? hehe

We would all love to see more bang for our buck, but hey, I will take what I can get.

[Opeth]

Seems to me like less of a new version and more of a small feature pack.
No significant workflow upgrades, just a few unexciting improvements.

XSI gives such substantial boosts each new version - they actually DEVELOP.
3Ds Max hasn't DEVELOPED in a long long while - just been patched up.

I think it's time we all started moving to XSI.


To emphasize the "new version" point:
When ZB2.5 was announced, a features video was released. Tons of new core features were shown and I must say that I was very excited about it (never mind the fact that some of those features eventually don't work well and the rest are mostly badly engineered). I could actually DO things I couldn't with the older version.
This excitement and urge to explore is far far away from the minute interest the Max video's provoked in me. So I can change between subObject levels? Big deal. Even THAT feature is an obvious patch and not a real change - I mean, it's still all built on the regular subObjects, unlike Silo 2.

[spacefrog]

of course XSI has to develop and push the borders....
they are far behind in installed seats - so the only thing they could do is pushing
dev and marketing like mad - without an eye on things like being profitable etc....

Autodesk has bought Maya for reason - it looks like they throttled down the dev effort for both packages - despite the statement made by Ken Pimentel (Max Product Manager)
saying that they nearly doubled Max's dev team during the last few months...

maybe this will only show in future releases, or maybe they were hired to build something new... don't know - i'm not happy with the progress of 3DS max too.....

[kenpimentel]

The 3ds Max 2008 experience is something you have to download and try to understand what we achieved. It is difficult to look at videos and "get it". No, it is not some radical change, it is a significant evolution of the release targeted at improving a broad range of workflows and incorporates a lot of innovation under the hood. For example, we know from our testing that this release can deal with tens of thousands of objects better than the competition. Your viewport experience has been dramatically improved, not only by the guaranteed interactivity of our new adaptive degradation algorithm, but the quality of the viewport. Is performance sexy? Not to some of you, but I think we should deliver REAL benefits to customers and allowing you to work with complex scenes faster than ever before is a reasonable goal (and it was one prioritized by all the customers we talked to in our research).

The fact is, with 300,000 installed base (the largest in the industry) and the most diverse group of users on the planet, we're always going to find some people who feel their needs aren't being addressed. Most of you are patiently waiting to get your hands on the release before deciding it is good/bad/ugly. Others, want to rush to judgement. I just suggest the value of the release is not in some fancy marketing statement, but in how more effective you'll be with the release. Will it let you get your work done faster than before with better results? We think that is more important than "sexy", but we reserve the right to start marketing 3ds Max features with partially clothed females (or males I guess).

ken

[Brian-Bradley]

Marketing is just fluffy stuff for the eyes. Always seems the
sensible course to get a hold of the tool and try it out before
making decisions that will affect your business and so ultimately
your sanity and health. :thumbsup:

Regards
Bri

[Clanger]

Well, I'm very happy with what's changed. Slugish viewpoint and having to do all sorts of strange voodoo to work with large scenes is the bain of my life. I can't wait.

[Opeth]

The 3ds Max 2008 experience is something you have to download and try to understand what we achieved. It is difficult to look at videos and "get it". No, it is not some radical change, it is a significant evolution of the release targeted at improving a broad range of workflows and incorporates a lot of innovation under the hood. For example, we know from our testing that this release can deal with tens of thousands of objects better than the competition. Your viewport experience has been dramatically improved, not only by the guaranteed interactivity of our new adaptive degradation algorithm, but the quality of the viewport. Is performance sexy? Not to some of you, but I think we should deliver REAL benefits to customers and allowing you to work with complex scenes faster than ever before is a reasonable goal (and it was one prioritized by all the customers we talked to in our research).

The fact is, with 300,000 installed base (the largest in the industry) and the most diverse group of users on the planet, we're always going to find some people who feel their needs aren't being addressed. Most of you are patiently waiting to get your hands on the release before deciding it is good/bad/ugly. Others, want to rush to judgement. I just suggest the value of the release is not in some fancy marketing statement, but in how more effective you'll be with the release. Will it let you get your work done faster than before with better results? We think that is more important than "sexy", but we reserve the right to start marketing 3ds Max features with partially clothed females (or males I guess).

ken

Granted. Sexiness is indeed over rated in these fields (see the ZB3 case again - very sexy, yet surprisingly disapointing when it comes to actual functionality).

However, do you really want us to start bringing up the incredibly functional updates XSI has been delivering for the past few versions (on every aspect of the platform)?
Sure, XSI hasn't got it all and is behind on some major issues. They have a lot of "catching up" to do.

And Max? Max has it's own area's in which it's development is, how to say, arrested.

- Schematic scene views
- node based material editors
- countless semi-functional only utilities, modifiers and apps (vertex paint, reaction manager, UVW project, just to name a few)
- no proper dynamic system (reactor? thanks, but that's for games and it shows)
- erroneous OBJ exporter
- no proper render pass managing

I can go on and on. These have all been mentioned for a long time, some for years. They are in much stronger need of development than viewport performance boosting, and I allow myself to speak confidently about this because I have good knowledge of the alpha testers forum and I know who asks for what.


The bottom line is that while other programs are seen making major strides and leaps in development from version to version, Studio Max, owned by one of the largest software development companies in the industry, seems to be evolving very little per upgrade.
It also seems as this specific upgrade is concentrated on developing an aspect of the program which is less demanded by users.

[kenpimentel]

Well, we surveyed hundreds of 3ds Max users, took the results of those surveys to various advisory boards and asked them to validate, then created a proposed release which we took on the road to dozens of customers - which based on their input - we revised the release and took it to Alpha.

This release was driven by the broader needs of the user base. The priorities were set by the users - not us. Yes, we put our own "flavor" on the release and have a chance to decide what it does too. The net result is 3ds Max 2008. I'm sorry if it doesn't address all of your needs. We have another 150 "high priorities" that customers want us to focus on (all of yours are on the list). The good news is that unlike some of our competitors, we're actually hiring instead of laying off people. So perhaps we'll be able to accelerate addressing your issues.

Fundamentally, we had to address issues that were ignored for too long. It was painful for us to not go after the features that are easier to market. Instead, we committed to building a better base/architecture for the long term. We've committed 3 releases to performance - and I think it was the right thing to do (plus you all were telling us to do it). While performance will remain a priority, we have substantially raised the bar and our focus can broaden. We hope to reward your patience, but it does take a while to digest a doubling of the dev team. You just don't "add water" and they're instantly productive with the code base. The investment has been made, payoff is coming...

[Steve Green]

Well, my 'rush to judgement' had to be made before my subscription ran out, and all I had to go on was the marketing information. I'm sure there are others in the same boat, and would explain the negative response to the marketing and apparent lack of features from some quarters.

If you release bare-bones videos, which hardly show more than the bootleg videos which surfaced at Siggraph, and even Bobo is expressing disappointment at the siggraph demo, you've got to ask yourself, are you doing enough?

In the end I tossed a coin to decide whether to renew. Honestly.

I could have sworn I saw scantily clad dancers from photos at Steel Beach, so maybe you're already going down that route.

- Steve

[Opeth]

The good news is that unlike some of our competitors, we're actually hiring instead of laying off people. So perhaps we'll be able to accelerate addressing your issues.

So I've heard, and was pleased to indeed.
Well, I very much hope that your above written approach indeed reflects that of Autodesk and that the next release will adress some of these issues which have been on the table for a long long time now.

Also, I do understand that a large amount of users use 3DsMax for architectural purposes, in which case:
1) They're pleased with the new version, and are probably the reason for it taking this form in the first place.
2) They're probably less active in this forum, and apparently don't have proper representation in the alpha testers forums, because I don't know of any viewport dragginess complaints and requests written there.
Which means that the appearence of the user base to us visual effects artists is inaccurate.

Let's see what you guys do with Mudbox now :D

[fx81]

LOL, am i seeing things or is it actually 14 fps when he is saying he get 50fps

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/2760/bscf1.jpg

[spacefrog]

LOL, am i seeing things or is it actually 14 fps when he is saying he get 50fps

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/2760/bscf1.jpg

well - to be fair - the framerate will dive for a second during the actual degradation process
that's the case with most of these algorithms.....

[Steve Green]

If you watch it carefully it doesn't go above 14.5fps as far as I can see.

I'm guessing it's because of the capture process, but it doesn't look good if you've got your demo artist saying one thing, and the video blatantly showing that it's not true in the video.

- Steve

[berthunt]

New mindblowing features are only great if they work in a production environment. I don't know how many time's I've been frustrated with buggy or single threaded and slow new features.

I've been wanting them to do this for quite a while- stablizing and speeding up their existing features.

If I were them going into the future, I would realize it doesn't make sense to develop two such similar products as Max and Maya. The temptation will be to add Maya features to Max and Max features to Maya. Spending twice the money to slowly make two relatively identical products. Perhaps that's a good idea from the standpoint of having the ultimate goal being to make it seamless to transfer files between the two programs. Once you can do that, you can get rid of one of the programs ( without a lot of customer outcry ) and put all the development focus on the other.
The other major thing I would do is make it easy to load just the parts of the program that you need at any one time. As more features get added the program will get slower and more bloated and take up more ram etc. Perhaps they are doing this already with plugin management, but make loading and unloading parts of the program seamless based on what you are using at the time.

[MasterZap]

The focus on this release has been performance and stability.

Many of the mental ray improvements are not even mentioned.

Beyond the portal lights (which will make your interior renderings so easy that your grandma can do them) and the self-illumination feature (which is mostly just an UI thing), there is


the new "ambient occlusion with color bleed" feature
improved, memory efficient (and faster) "Glare" shader
a new Bokeh/depth-of-field shader that supports multi-blade apertures with edge/center bias, or even arbitrary bokeh maps
the new photographic exposure control, which gives you physically correct camera exposure controls (f-stop, shutter, film iso) as well as artistic controls (highlight burn, midtone adjust, shadow crush, saturation, kelvin-temperature whitepoint, vignetting, etc.)
the new environment blur shader that makes product visualization shots (or visual effects shots) of glossy surfaces that largely reflect their environment (= an environment map) extremely efficient and high quality
and of course, the entire production shader library (http://www.youtube.com/mentalraystuff), containing things like very advanced matte/shadow features (for integrating CG obects into photographic plates) reaching over to things like 2.5D post motion blur and motion vector export shaders.
So I hope some of you will find some fun toys there ;)

/Z

[Magallanes]

Since they acquired Maya then they start acting a bit lazy.

Anyways, i wonder if they will broken the current support of max9 plugins, those are not cheap (usually).

[Steve Green]

Hi MasterZap,

they sound great, esp the blurry environment shader - was there any improvement on the speed of using AD materials in the material editor though?

I found it got really slow when using mr as the renderer for the material editor, and usually switched to scanline for speed (but then I was working blind until I rendered)

Thanks,

Steve

[CiaranM]

So you're saying that most of the worthy new features are really just implementations of the fine work of a 3rd party (MI), not originated by the developer themselves?
Not that it's not appreciated and all...

The focus on this release has been performance and stability.

Many of the mental ray improvements are not even mentioned.

Beyond the portal lights (which will make your interior renderings so easy that your grandma can do them) and the self-illumination feature (which is mostly just an UI thing), there is



the new "ambient occlusion with color bleed" feature
improved, memory efficient (and faster) "Glare" shader
a new Bokeh/depth-of-field shader that supports multi-blade apertures with edge/center bias, or even arbitrary bokeh maps
the new photographic exposure control, which gives you physically correct camera exposure controls (f-stop, shutter, film iso) as well as artistic controls (highlight burn, midtone adjust, shadow crush, saturation, kelvin-temperature whitepoint, vignetting, etc.)
the new environment blur shader that makes product visualization shots (or visual effects shots) of glossy surfaces that largely reflect their environment (= an environment map) extremely efficient and high quality
and of course, the entire production shader library (http://www.youtube.com/mentalraystuff), containing things like very advanced matte/shadow features (for integrating CG obects into photographic plates) reaching over to things like 2.5D post motion blur and motion vector export shaders.
So I hope some of you will find some fun toys there ;)

/Z

[Buzzoff]

Both this and Maya are a sad excuse for a new release. In a release there should be new features that will completely blow your mind, provide completely new workflows, innovative tools that haven't been done before.


That was a funny story. When is the last time they added anything like that to Max? For a while now they have just been copying features Maya had and now that they own Maya they don't even need to do that. They can just slap a number next to it. :)

Ambient occlusion with color bleed? Isn't that enviro-only radiosity that a lot of other programs already do?

[fez]

Fundamentally, we had to address issues that were ignored for too long...The investment has been made, payoff is coming...

Ken, I think you made the right choice. Sexy or not, I still think the Max marketing team is dropping the ball.

As I and many others have mentioned ad nauseum, subds and deforming meshes in Max are slow. Please consider making the subds blazingly fast before moving on to those aforementioned "sexy" features.

Thank you.

[aaraaf]

Maybe my post seemed harsher than I intended... I think that many of the upgrades are going to be really usefull, they just need to be marketed better. I'll definitely up my subscription which is due before the next release.

But I would really, really love to see a better layer manager. If I could select a layer and have it render as matte material without changing all of the layer's object's materials, it would be a blessing. This has been discussed nearly ad-nauseum in other threads, and for long enough I would expect to start to see something. I use the hell out of the current layer manager, and it needs a little love.

There are other things that I'd love to see done, that really seem minor. Hopefully with the larger dev team, these things will make Max 11.

I can't wait to see the viewport speed on my systems. Hopefully it bleeds over to deforming meshes and isn't just for scenes with tons of geometry.

[Eugenio]

The focus on this release has been performance and stability.

Many of the mental ray improvements are not even mentioned.

Beyond the portal lights (which will make your interior renderings so easy that your grandma can do them) and the self-illumination feature (which is mostly just an UI thing), there is

the new "ambient occlusion with color bleed" feature
improved, memory efficient (and faster) "Glare" shader
a new Bokeh/depth-of-field shader that supports multi-blade apertures with edge/center bias, or even arbitrary bokeh maps
the new photographic exposure control, which gives you physically correct camera exposure controls (f-stop, shutter, film iso) as well as artistic controls (highlight burn, midtone adjust, shadow crush, saturation, kelvin-temperature whitepoint, vignetting, etc.)
the new environment blur shader that makes product visualization shots (or visual effects shots) of glossy surfaces that largely reflect their environment (= an environment map) extremely efficient and high quality
and of course, the entire production shader library (http://www.youtube.com/mentalraystuff), containing things like very advanced matte/shadow features (for integrating CG obects into photographic plates) reaching over to things like 2.5D post motion blur and motion vector export shaders.
So I hope some of you will find some fun toys there ;)

/ZThanks for the info Master Zap! I'm quite curious to see some of them working. Especially the AO with color bleeding. How can it be? Will it be much slower? To me it's worth the upgrade just for this new MR. It will be like in Max 9 compared to 8 for rendering, you just can't go back anymore.

As a matter of fact they are light sources (the videos description about final gathering is an oversimplifaction for didactics sake). Also, they double as really cool light cards, plus have some other really cool features for rendering architectural interiors.Sounds great! I noticed in the video that for a FG with Draft preset the quality of the shadows was too crisp and detailed. Can we save it with FG map? This would be a HUGE thing.

Well, we surveyed hundreds of 3ds Max users, took the results of those surveys to various advisory boards and asked them to validate, then created a proposed release which we took on the road to dozens of customers - which based on their input - we revised the release and took it to Alpha.

This release was driven by the broader needs of the user base. The priorities were set by the users - not us. Yes, we put our own "flavor" on the release and have a chance to decide what it does too. The net result is 3ds Max 2008. I'm sorry if it doesn't address all of your needs. We have another 150 "high priorities" that customers want us to focus on (all of yours are on the list). The good news is that unlike some of our competitors, we're actually hiring instead of laying off people. So perhaps we'll be able to accelerate addressing your issues.

Fundamentally, we had to address issues that were ignored for too long. It was painful for us to not go after the features that are easier to market. Instead, we committed to building a better base/architecture for the long term. We've committed 3 releases to performance - and I think it was the right thing to do (plus you all were telling us to do it). While performance will remain a priority, we have substantially raised the bar and our focus can broaden. We hope to reward your patience, but it does take a while to digest a doubling of the dev team. You just don't "add water" and they're instantly productive with the code base. The investment has been made, payoff is coming...Ken, there is one thing that I find especially frustrating in Max. And it's not the absent of a fluid system, node based material editor and so on. But it's the lack of sense in the implementation of some features. Sometimes it seems that you guys are joking us! Look at that:

-In Max 9 you have nicely boosted the Editable Poly speed. But the general procedure to model in max is with an Editable Poly and on top a symmetry and/or at least a Turbosmooth. However, in the baseObject level if you turn on the "show end result" it will be as slow as in max 8! Max is not ZBrush! None will model in a million poly model in the baseObject level! Can you see that? In the end the boosted speed in 9 is useless for the general modeling process. Not to mention that nothing have been done for Edit Poly, still slow as a hell.

-When Max gained the Isoline display, the obvious idea is that: "Ok, now we can model in Isoline mode". But no, we can just to look at it. Almost useless too. With the speed boost of max 9 I really hoped for this being adressed, but not in 9 and nor in 10 (2008).

-The Paint Deform have been added for Edit/Editable Poly. But why not as a standalone modifier??? We need to add an Edit Poly (that is so damn slow) to have acess to these features.

-The Handles subObject was added for Patch objects, but not for splines!!! What the ****!!! Sorry, but who still uses Patches in max??? And who still use splines??? C'mon...

-To hide Geometry by Category we press Shift+G, for shapes Shift+S, for Helpers Shift+H...and for Bones? Shift+B? No! There is no shortcut for it, and there is no way to assign one to! Just writing damn single line of script! This is amazing, just amazing.

-The Edit Poly shortcuts are TOTALY diffrent of the ones for Editable Poly. Aren't they supposed to do the same? But one as a modifier just like Edit/Editable Mesh?

-I found today that I CANNOT set shortcuts for Poly Select modifier (tell me if I'm wrong)! Why all these related stuff share what they have in common? Say Edit/Editable Poly and Poly Select should all use the same shortcuts edge loops, rings and so on. The same for mesh, spline, everything! There is a guy working with us that is coming back from XSI to max (was a max user once too) and try to explain those things for him. There is just no way.

-This one is grave. It's clear to me that Edit Poly have been rushed to be out in time. So much that it's like an alien inside max. The problem here is that for the scripting point of view Edit and Editable Poly are totaly different things! So if you write a script for Editable Poly, you must redo everything for Edit Poly. For the ones that think:"I don't care, I'm not scripter anyway.", remember that PolyBoost and OrionFlame are scripts and for them to support Edit Poly is a real pain (AFAIK OrionFlame doesn't support it and PolyBoost only partially). So it affects everyone.

-Now this one is a guess. But based on what I've wrote up to here, I'm afraid it's true. In the Review video for Max 2008, the guy said that it supports all STANDARD 3ds max lights. There is room to understand this in two ways, all max lights can be said as standard (in this meaning "out of the box") or ONLY the standard lights, in other words no Photometric support. If this is the case, I need ask you: With one hand you encourage people to use more and more the Photometric Lights because the better workflow with GI and tone mappers, etc. And with the other you develop a tool that forces to go back and use the standard lights again. What is the idea behind such move? I really want to hear that...in fact, I NEED to...

So can you understand why I say that I feel like Autodesk are joking us? If you take a closer look you will see that many nice ideas were so bad implemented, especially in terms of workflow. Looks like the people who make it don't use it. I don't want to be rude, but it's just how I see it.

I must say that I can't feel love in max development. I mean, try to push the limits, innovate, to risk. Autodesk has assumed a typical lider posture, slowdown the evolution, maximize the profit "per feature" and let the ones behind to push the barriers and if, only if, they are luck enough to create something revolutionary then Autodesk can copy or buy it. It's so sad. You may disagree but it's hard when we can just look and see. The last Maya version was the first one on their hands and was so weak that even not being a Maya user I was frustrated, this one was not much different. I still nticed that for max the most interesting features since 9 was related to rendering so credits go to Mental Images (2008 except scene manager and Maxscript ProEditor)! It's also hard to disagree when you need to pray to have an Isoline modeling mode or a damn simple slide edge or a node material editor for Max when all others already have and now are trying to push the limits. Think about that.

Nevertheless, max is a great program, I love it. I'm quite curious to what has to come. Because max 8 did a great job speeding up rigs especially with script controllers, Max 9 with poly object and now 2008 with heavy scenes with lots of geometry. I believe that for fixing all these things need to go really deep in the program and this may take a lot of resources and time. Now it's time to speed up curve editor/dope sheet and deforming meshes with Turbosmooth, and especially some nice new features. Speed is important, but shoudn't be considered a new feature.

Ken, don't forget one thing: Hope is last that dies, but dies...

Regards,

Jr.

[cresshead]

the new photographic exposure control, which gives you physically correct camera exposure controls (f-stop, shutter, film iso) as well as artistic controls (highlight burn, midtone adjust, shadow crush, saturation, kelvin-temperature whitepoint, vignetting, etc.)

nice n all that but not fully developed...your getting the shutter and film but no ''lens''...

lightwave 9.2 added real world lenses from camera manufacturers with digital stills cameras and video/film cameras...and it's a huge list from
all the major makers of such items including sony, fuji and panasonic as examples...

it's just a drop down menu...pick the maker and the lens...done....where's that for max 2008?

[MasterZap]

So you're saying that most of the worthy new features are really just implementations of the fine work of a 3rd party (MI), not originated by the developer themselves?
Not that it's not appreciated and all...

No, not really. I'm saying "there is a lot more there than the short demo movies tell you".

I just happened to list the stuff I know, and I know what I know coz I work there ;)

/Z

[slebed]

No, not really. I'm saying "there is a lot more there than the short demo movies tell you".

I just happened to list the stuff I know, and I know what I know coz I work there ;)

/Z

Hey MasterZap! Ken mentioned in his blog that the new MR production library features will not be supported in Max2008, but will be available. I can imagine that there wasn't time to properly impliment them in this release (at least I hope so, since Autodesk doesn't seem to want to add vfx specific features to max). Will you be able to help us figure out how to add them when max is released?

BTW Ken if you read this, I love the fact that you guys are improving things 'under the hood'. I understand how doing things like this will help everyone in the long run, but as you probably gathered from reading the posts here, most of the max users here are focused on character animation or visual effects (like myself). I can't stress enough how important it is to people like myself that Autodesk start adding features that address my industry directly. So far everything that has been added in past releases has really focused on the arch vis crowd, with my industry getting secondary benefits from it.

From my perspective looking in, it seems that Autodesk wants to keep the vfx specific features limited to maya. Just because I can use max for vfx, doesn't mean its has the proper tools for it. When I first started using Max3.0, its focus was clearly on visual effects. I needed to move away from Lightwave, and it came down to either max or maya. Ever since discreet folded into Autodesk, Max's focus has changed to archvis.

I personnally don't want to transition my company over to maya. I'm not a big fan of it. If I'm going to start investing in a new platform, it will most likely be houdini. To be honest, I just don't want to switch platforms. I've invested too many years into Max. I'd just like to see a focus on my field again.

[wurp]

interesting, would it be possible to have the dll and MI files for these shaders so I can try these in xsi?

The focus on this release has been performance and stability.

Many of the mental ray improvements are not even mentioned.

Beyond the portal lights (which will make your interior renderings so easy that your grandma can do them) and the self-illumination feature (which is mostly just an UI thing), there is



the new "ambient occlusion with color bleed" feature
improved, memory efficient (and faster) "Glare" shader
a new Bokeh/depth-of-field shader that supports multi-blade apertures with edge/center bias, or even arbitrary bokeh maps
the new photographic exposure control, which gives you physically correct camera exposure controls (f-stop, shutter, film iso) as well as artistic controls (highlight burn, midtone adjust, shadow crush, saturation, kelvin-temperature whitepoint, vignetting, etc.)
the new environment blur shader that makes product visualization shots (or visual effects shots) of glossy surfaces that largely reflect their environment (= an environment map) extremely efficient and high quality
and of course, the entire production shader library (http://www.youtube.com/mentalraystuff), containing things like very advanced matte/shadow features (for integrating CG obects into photographic plates) reaching over to things like 2.5D post motion blur and motion vector export shaders.
So I hope some of you will find some fun toys there ;)

/Z

[Anthonie]

cool and all! Im a big max user next to using maya alot, but there is one thing in max that I'm bothered with. I can't use my wacom as how I use it in maya -_-. Is somebody on this planet who knows it might change with max 2008 or maybe someone who knows a script or plugin or something like that.

[SergioSantos]

cool and all! Im a big max user next to using maya alot, but there is one thing in max that I'm bothered with. I can't use my wacom as how I use it in maya -_-. Is somebody on this planet who knows it might change with max 2008 or maybe someone who knows a script or plugin or something like that.

Assign middle mouse button to the double click button of your pen... that's it.


and for Eugenio... are you really a max user? because for most of the things that you say there are at least one solution since max 8

[Anthonie]

"Assign middle mouse button to the double click button of your pen... that's it."

yeah well that's cool and all but that's not the problem. Now tell me if u can combine it when using Alt + rightmouse or Alt + middlemouse. thats my problem!. Like I said "just like in maya".
But thanks......for you quick answer...........

[martinc]

"Assign middle mouse button to the double click button of your pen... that's it."

yeah well that's cool and all but that's not the problem. Now tell me if u can combine it when using Alt + rightmouse or Alt + middlemouse. thats my problem!. Like I said "just like in maya".
But thanks......for you quick answer...........

There isn't a way to switch the navigation controls in Max (or Maya), but you can get Switcher from Digital Raster (http://draster.com/component/page,shop.product_details/category_id,7/flypage,software-flypage/product_id,18/option,com_virtuemart/).

m

[MasterZap]

interesting, would it be possible to have the dll and MI files for these shaders so I can try these in xsi?

You mean right now? So far, they are only announced, not released. And the shaders require the 3.6 core, so you'll have to have that....

/Z

[Anthonie]

"There isn't a way to switch the navigation controls in Max (or Maya), but you can get Switcher from Digital Raster (http://draster.com/component/page,shop.product_details/category_id,7/flypage,software-flypage/product_id,18/option,com_virtuemart/).
"

omg! if this works then i'm really happy.Thanx man! that's some real info that's usefull
cheers m8

[saul3d]

Maybe incoming days, would be in character studio, the option to paste pose relative to another part of biped. (Like Motion Builder)

It would be amazing!

[Airflow]

I dont have a problem with it, It navigates fine. Just like in maya only reversed. Dunno what your doing wrong,

[Eugenio]

and for Eugenio... are you really a max user? because for most of the things that you say there are at least one solution since max 8

I use max for around 9 years, there are 3 more at work that use it too and none knows solutions for those. So I really want to hear, you can list them one by one if you wish...I may have overlooked something...

Regards,

Jr.

[loran]

it seems that Autodesk wants to keep the vfx specific features limited to maya.


I hope you re wrong! I am a 9 years max user. I started on v2.5. I really hope this is not the Autodesk projects for Max developpement! what could they do with VIZ??
anyway,I m sure that I would not turn to maya if this may happened.

[kenpimentel]

Yes, we all agree that there are many ways to improve 3ds Max. As far as I know, there isn't a forum on this planet where everyone says, "what a perfect product, don't touch it". 3ds Max currently is and has been the #1 professional 3D animation tool because it provides a wealth of functionality covering hundreds of market needs. As long as we continue to listen to our users, help them prioritize their needs, and ensure a stable, well-thought out product, I'm sure 3ds Max will remain the number #1 solution. I'm sorry that not every release of 3ds Max can be 100% focused on VFx users. Our goal is to find features that are important to every market - while recognizing how significant VFx users are to our success.

Unfortunately, I'm prevented from discussing or mentioning future plans or even if future releases will exist (as silly as that seems). I am very confident that with twice the number of developers, we'll be tackling a lot of problems that were difficult for us to do in the past. I'd suggest that there is a better chance that we'll do this given a) our investment in dev resources; b) our rather stunning financial results for 3ds Max in Q2 - some 2-3X above industry growth rates (BTW, thanks everyone for that!) It really helps us drive the 3ds Max agenda when we're the kids with the "golden touch". There is a very direct relationship between market success and new investment. Since they can't just double my salary with our profits (bummer), I guess we'll have to turn it into something you all can use and enjoy (and maybe double your salary).

[loran]

Max had never been VFX focused only and we all know that. The question is will it be VFX focused in the futur release ?(if some futur release are planned of course)
In other terms, will there be a VFX autodesk software called MAYA, and a VIZ software called MAX. Maybe Max will dissapear and VIZ keept on tracks!

this is a nightmare

[kenpimentel]

I suggest you take another look at 3ds Max 8. There is no other conclusion you could make about its focus. Was it 100% VFx? No, we never do 100% for one market. That was my point.

[loran]

I agree kenpimentel ! its just like I said.
But will it be that way in the futur or will there be radical changes?

[kenpimentel]

A year ago, all the max users were worried we'd kill max, all the maya users were worried we'd kill maya. It's more than a year later, and you can see, we didn't kill either one.

Now, everyone is asking is max just doing this market or that market. At least you all seem to agree that it isn't going away anymore. That's progress! You will see 3ds Max appeal to as broad of a user base as it ever has. Does that mean that every release has the same appeal for all markets? No. You will see that some releases are biased towards Games, some towards VFx and some to Design/Vis. We expect that in general, the vast majority of you will welcome each release and will find something to love in it. Is this easy to do? No. Will you all complain that your favorite feature wasn't done in a particular release? Yes. Please complain, it means you care and only want the best for 3ds Max. We don't have magic pixy dust to sprinkle over 3ds Max to turn it into your perfect product instantly, but we have the next best thing: a commited team that is doubling in size!

[Brian-Bradley]

As always I reckon once the product & demo are out that people
will settle down and remember that Max is a very cool application
that is capable of 'most' things we need it to do! If it doesn't, then
constructive dialogue on forums that outline the NEED for feature
X is much more useful to all of us than 'I'm switching to XSI' knee
jerk type howling.

Looking forward to the release of 2008, even though I know there
is quite a list I could draw up of things I wish Max could do! :thumbsup:

Regards
Bri

[AHD]

The focus on this release has been performance and stability.

Many of the mental ray improvements are not even mentioned.

Beyond the portal lights (which will make your interior renderings so easy that your grandma can do them) and the self-illumination feature (which is mostly just an UI thing), there is

the new "ambient occlusion with color bleed" feature
improved, memory efficient (and faster) "Glare" shader
a new Bokeh/depth-of-field shader that supports multi-blade apertures with edge/center bias, or even arbitrary bokeh maps
the new photographic exposure control, which gives you physically correct camera exposure controls (f-stop, shutter, film iso) as well as artistic controls (highlight burn, midtone adjust, shadow crush, saturation, kelvin-temperature whitepoint, vignetting, etc.)
the new environment blur shader that makes product visualization shots (or visual effects shots) of glossy surfaces that largely reflect their environment (= an environment map) extremely efficient and high quality
and of course, the entire production shader library (http://www.youtube.com/mentalraystuff), containing things like very advanced matte/shadow features (for integrating CG obects into photographic plates) reaching over to things like 2.5D post motion blur and motion vector export shaders.
So I hope some of you will find some fun toys there ;)

/Z

Hi Zap

Don't suppose you know if any of these MR features will make into Maya as well? In particular the sky portal workflow as well as the self-illumination on the MIA-material looks really promising.

Thanks :)

/Anders

[soulburn3d]

A year ago, all the max users were worried we'd kill max, all the maya users were worried we'd kill maya. It's more than a year later, and you can see, we didn't kill either one.

Actually, I was kinda hoping you would kill both max and maya, and release a next gen 3d app. :) But then again, that's been my wish since about 2001.

- Neil

[Maneswar]

Actually, I was kinda hoping you would kill both max and maya, and release a next gen 3d app. :) But then again, that's been my wish since about 2001.

- Neil

Me too actually but not for as long as you apparently. :) There are things I really appreciate in Max, but it also seems time to cut losses and start over instead of bandaging the heck out of it.

Maneswar

[Mahlon]

......Unfortunately, I'm prevented from discussing or mentioning future plans or even if future releases will exist (as silly as that seems). I am very confident that with twice the number of developers, we'll be tackling a lot of problems that were difficult for us to do in the past. I'd suggest that there is a better chance that we'll do this given a) our investment in dev resources; b) our rather stunning financial results for 3ds Max in Q2 - some 2-3X above industry growth rates (BTW, thanks everyone for that!) It really helps us drive the 3ds Max agenda when we're the kids with the "golden touch". There is a very direct relationship between market success and new investment. Since they can't just double my salary with our profits (bummer), I guess we'll have to turn it into something you all can use and enjoy (and maybe double your salary).

This is good to hear!

Mahlon

[soulburn3d]

There are things I really appreciate in Max, but it also seems time to cut losses and start over instead of bandaging the heck out of it.

Oh, I love max, or more specifically, I love certain principals on which max was built. It can do many things that no other 3d app in the industry can do. And there's also a lot of fundamental things that needs to be improved. And those things are the stuff that really require a complete rewrite.

- Neil

[aaraaf]

Originally Posted by kenpimentel
Now, everyone is asking is max just doing this market or that market. At least you all seem to agree that it isn't going away anymore. That's progress!

THAT had me laughing!

[refract]

I have to agree with Neil a little here. 3dsmax has some extremely useful functions Maya does not have, but on the same note,.. Maya has some very extremely useful stuff Max does not.
Autodesk now owns both, and everyone I've talked to keeps thinking, "they are going to merge the two." Thats bad marketing. Keeping the two separate, keeps both databases happy, but slowly adding features to each for future builds will keep sides happy.... Until both apps have the exact same features.

btw.. that portal lighting should not require the user telling the computer where a window is... the renderer should automatically check for distance.

[ReneAlex]

I love 3dsmax, I use it (has a hobbyist) since R1, and has a Professional since R4... and before that I use the last 2 DOS releases of Autodesk 3D Studio, I'm a self taught user who consider the software has a tool... like a hammer or a pen nothing more, and... have I already said that I love max?? well...

Is not a conformist, I'm I not consider myself a fan boy (that means that If I try other 3d app and it "clicks" in my head the way that max did the first time I try it out... I'm switching!!)

Now... All this complaining about the lack of revolutionary stuff in this new release is kind of sterile.

We has users and clients of Autodesk software must direct our wishes and ideas in a constructive way, and use this forums to discuss and enrich those ideas. Then let then know the request through autodesk forums, email... and those users meetings you get the chance to assist... you lucky bastarts up north.... :P JK.
____

NOW:

This future release is clearly not a Leap in the development of max. At least not in a landmark features. (what I consider a landmark? mental ray has a primary renderer... That was a really big WOW!! to me)

Yes it would be more stable and would be faster, and that is very nice and important, but I agree with a fellow cgtalker; THATS ARE NOT NEW FEATURES.


New Features (to me) are those that makes you drop old technologies and embrace new workflows, and this release takes many of our request but is not bringing those game changers that almost all the cgtalk community demands.

There must be some priority off course... but the general opinion IMHO is that Stability and Speed are relatively new to the max community and those are most welcome, but in parallel the program should be getting more robust and bold in the main tools....

AND MORE IMPORTANT: COHERENT.
________________________________________________


To ken pimentel:

Is Great to see someone facing up this angry mob (thats includes me).
It means to me a lot, You manage to keep a corp. wise behavior and actually answer our questions, and take that like a BIG complement. Keep it up and invite some of your co workers to join you. Maybe you or someone willingly in autodesk should be in a "Max forum only Meet the Artists" here you will get in a week more Input than a month of in house interviews.

CGtalk is way more dynamic and responsive compare with the area and btw the area is way better than the old forums.

________________________________________________


and finally my quota of complaints:

Non linear animation... ok great... but just in biped, (now its available for all objects) but this illustrate my point... this improvements came from R7 to R8 and R9 so in between we where... "quasi happy" for those.

Now You can mirror/paste the skin data, but you can mirror uvw or custom rigs (not without some extra steps or some script help)

You have select ring and loop bottons.. but just in the edit poly... nor the mesh/poly select not in skin or uvw (now those last 2 are available)

The isoline preview mode fiasco is one of the most wow! and then WTF!! features ever! and always keeping it incoherent this mode is not app wide; is just a cosmetic fix and to speed up modelling.

The new exposure algorithm is great but the camera is the same (correct me if I'm wrong) since R1, No real or at least quasi real world parameters.

The layer manager cool but why is so architectural biased.

If you own Alias and Kaydara why max users must choose between biped and biped!... I mean don't kill biped! but give me the chance to pick between biped, custom rigs and HumanIK, then in a couple of releases unify the thing and get over with it already...

and a long etc...

___
max rocks!

[Glacierise]

Ok, so with the last two releases Max quite smokes the competition in the viz field. Maybe the next releases will be oriented towards VFX or character workflows (mudbux coming, yupeee).

And since I do viz, I am especially hapy with the new release. But as other people said, it would be cool if we knew a bit more from what's coming. Maybe not from the dev guys, but from more active marketing...

[etobler]

Oh, I love max, or more specifically, I love certain principals on which max was built. It can do many things that no other 3d app in the industry can do. And there's also a lot of fundamental things that needs to be improved. And those things are the stuff that really require a complete rewrite.

- Neil

what would require a complete rewrite? i'm sure having it mac and linux compatible would need a rewrite. what else? what is it with the max achitecture that it can't do or eventually be able to do?

[Klytus]

Max had never been VFX focused only and we all know that. The question is will it be VFX focused in the futur release ?(if some futur release are planned of course)
In other terms, will there be a VFX autodesk software called MAYA, and a VIZ software called MAX. Maybe Max will dissapear and VIZ keept on tracks!

this is a nightmare

What are you talking about? I've personally been using Max professionally for VFX since 1999 on TV shows, commercials and Movies. I have a wish list of stuff I want them to fix/add/change but overall it gets better with each release and I've never felt the need to switch packages, or been wanting for work for that matter.

[shingo]

The focus of the releases should tell you where Autodesk are positioning MAX.

Let's face it, Max has come to the end of the road as far as 3D animation is concerned and Viz is a huge market, so why not milk it by catering to that market while positioning Max to take over the entertainment sector?

It's not rocket science.

Ok, so with the last two releases Max quite smokes the competition in the viz field. Maybe the next releases will be oriented towards VFX or character workflows (mudbux coming, yupeee).

And since I do viz, I am especially hapy with the new release. But as other people said, it would be cool if we knew a bit more from what's coming. Maybe not from the dev guys, but from more active marketing...

[Brian-Bradley]

Let's face it, Max has come to the end of the road as far as 3D animation is concerned ...
It's not rocket science.

How on earth would anyone draw such a conclusion???:eek:

Regards
Bri

[spacefrog]

this post by shingo is from the maya 2008 videos thread...

Precisely.

But having the 2 apps compete for the same market requirs the doubling of efforts. Max is being positioned for Viz work and Maya is being pushed to replace the huge numbers of Max seats that exist out there.


shingo:

you seem to feel an intense urge to place this opinion everywhere - but in fact -
i do not think that you are right with your statements....
and where did you get the "info" from that makes you think maya is pushed into max's seats ?

[BigPixolin]

I am for one very happy with this release. Anything that speeds up my workflow means more money for me. Speed increases will make me more dough than new features would.:thumbsup:

[soulburn3d]

what would require a complete rewrite? i'm sure having it mac and linux compatible would need a rewrite. what else? what is it with the max achitecture that it can't do or eventually be able to do?

Well, first off, as you said, porting max to mac and linux. Having a linux version would allow max to be more easily used by the larger studios, that are primarily linux based.

Second, an ascii max file format. While I'm not positive, I can imagine that since the max file format was never meant to be human readable, you need to invent a whole new format in order to allow for an ascii version.

Deeper maxscript access. Maxscript was added after the fact (version 2), and as such, there's still so much of the program that's unaccessible via maxscript. A scripting language needs to be integrated from the beginning.

Old and twisted code. After 15 years of development, the code in a piece of software becomes so contorted that doing even a simple change to the system can be super difficult, because there's too many years of cruft. While it's a big job starting from scratch, it makes all the code cleaner, and hence easier to add new stuff quickly.

Those are the first things off the top of my head.

- Neil

[shingo]

Come on people, thsi is hardly an erth shattering revelation.

1. Large games companies are looking for something to replace MAX. I knwo this becasue I happen to work for one of them.
2. Autodesk are making no secret of the fact that they are pushing Maya as the applciation to best serve the next generation of games. This includes studios that are MAX based.
3. Max is 10 years old. In 3D terms it is a dinosaur.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck.........

this post by shingo is from the maya 2008 videos thread...

shingo:

you seem to feel an intense urge to place this opinion everywhere - but in fact -
i do not think that you are right with your statements....
and where did you get the "info" from that makes you think maya is pushed into max's seats ?

[shingo]

You are either being sarcastic or seriously out of the loop.

How many peoep have already stated that most of the improvements in the last few MAX releases have all been VIZ centric?

Then again, maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist.

How on earth would anyone draw such a conclusion???:eek:

Regards
Bri

[soulburn3d]

2. Autodesk are making no secret of the fact that they are pushing Maya as the applciation to best serve the next generation of games. This includes studios that are MAX based.
3. Max is 10 years old. In 3D terms it is a dinosaur.


I don't know, maya is right up there with max in age. Seems an odd decision to replace a dinosaur with another dinosaur :)

- Neil

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

That and the fact that 3ds max owns the 3D market in seats and revenue, including Maya which is its closest competitor. So if you were Autodesk would you kill off Max (which is making more money than Maya) or Maya? Or would you keep both in development as long as both are making more money than your teams are putting into them? Shingo, you views seem rather schewed and are pure speculation at best.

-Eric

[BigPixolin]

Shingo, you views seem rather schewed and are pure speculation at best.

-Eric

Un-informed speculation.

[cganimator]

Come on people, thsi is hardly an erth shattering revelation.
2. Autodesk are making no secret of the fact that they are pushing Maya as the applciation to best serve the next generation of games. This includes studios that are MAX based.
3. Max is 10 years old. In 3D terms it is a dinosaur.

According to ex-Alias hompage, Alias stared to develop Maya in 1993, the same year when the Yost Group started to develop 3ds max.

I can not see "the fact" Could you show me "the fact"?

[pluMmet]

We don't have magic pixy dust to sprinkle over 3ds Max

Well I'm sure we can take care of that...You get Max running on Linux and we'll get you some of the reqired dust :deal:

[Klytus]

Well, first off, as you said, porting max to mac and linux. Having a linux version would allow max to be more easily used by the larger studios, that are primarily linux based.


Agreed. I really want to get off Windows all together. I've switched to OS X for everything except Max and Fusion, it would be great to not have to boot into Vista to do 3D.


Old and twisted code. After 15 years of development, the code in a piece of software becomes so contorted that doing even a simple change to the system can be super difficult, because there's too many years of cruft. While it's a big job starting from scratch, it makes all the code cleaner, and hence easier to add new stuff quickly.


Totally. I've been trying to get a bug in the bitmap loader fixed since 2004 to no avail. A mate of mine went in and did a cludgy fix for me but he said the code he saw in there was a nightmare.

Incidentally what the bug is (in case anyone from Autodesk wants to look at it finally) is that when you load an IFL seqence as a texture and select sync to particle age in the loader, Max then loads every frame of the IFL into memory. This is fine for doing little sprites but I needed to load 10 different HD explosion sequences for a pflow driven procedural space battle I had to do. In the end I had to place and time several dozen explosions manually when had this bug not existed it could all have been handled automatically by a single pflow event.

[SoLiTuDe]

1. Large games companies are looking for something to replace MAX. I knwo this becasue I happen to work for one of them.



I used to work at one, and they aren't looking for anything to replace Max..

[shingo]

Tell that to Autodesk Eric,

They are the ones giving us reason to speculate.

It's is true that 3Dmax owns the market, but it won't own it forever. If you read what I stated, I didn't say anything about Autodesk killing Max, but using Max to exploit the VIZ market, and simultaneously grow Maya's user base by taking over from Max.

That's common sense. Anyone who knows anything about the games industry will tell you that games companies are looking to replace Max for next gen, so this is not a case of what Autodesk wants to do with Max, so much as whether they are prepared to offer something new to the market.

So on the contrary PiXeL_MoNKeY, my views are not screwed, they are common sense.

That and the fact that 3ds max owns the 3D market in seats and revenue, including Maya which is its closest competitor. So if you were Autodesk would you kill off Max (which is making more money than Maya) or Maya? Or would you keep both in development as long as both are making more money than your teams are putting into them? Shingo, you views seem rather schewed and are pure speculation at best.

-Eric

[megatronskeletor]

Tell that to Autodesk Eric,

They are the ones giving us reason to speculate.

It's is true that 3Dmax owns the market, but it won't own it forever. If you read what I stated, I didn't say anything about Autodesk killing Max, but using Max to exploit the VIZ market, and simultaneously grow Maya's user base by taking over from Max.

That's common sense. Anyone who knows anything about the games industry will tell you that games companies are looking to replace Max for next gen, so this is not a case of what Autodesk wants to do with Max, so much as whether they are prepared to offer something new to the market.

So on the contrary PiXeL_MoNKeY, my views are not screwed, they are common sense.


Actually your views dont make much sense.

You're still thinking in terms of Max vs. Maya (again, vs. threads - i love when they devolve like this on cgtalk). They're owned by the same company now. There is no reason for one to pork the other for market share. Max has a larger installed base last I heard, and does it really make sense to try to absorb both products into one new product? You break all existing pipelines using one or the other. If a studio has to re-vamp to pick up a new package, why wouldnt they also evaluate all of your competitors products at that time? It doesnt make sense to alienate the userbase that way. They can develop both simultaneously and share where it makes sense. Autodesk is a large company with many products, so it isnt going to stretch them thin to maintain 2 products for which they already have dedicated dev teams and customers.

[shingo]

An intersting but meaningless factoid cganimator. If the same effort had gone into the development of both apps, then surely they would have been released the same time.

You guys are taking this far too personally. Max will be around for a while yet. Between now and then, surely you'll have time to get up to speed on Maya, Houdini, or XSI.

According to ex-Alias hompage, Alias stared to develop Maya in 1993, the same year when the Yost Group started to develop 3ds max.

I can not see "the fact" Could you show me "the fact"?

[megatronskeletor]

Come on people, thsi is hardly an erth shattering revelation.

1. Large games companies are looking for something to replace MAX. I knwo this becasue I happen to work for one of them.
2. Autodesk are making no secret of the fact that they are pushing Maya as the applciation to best serve the next generation of games. This includes studios that are MAX based.
3. Max is 10 years old. In 3D terms it is a dinosaur.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck.........


Yeah, I really cant resist here - you're so far off base.

I use both maya and max and have no religious feelings for either.

Maya is as old as MAX and is in fact based on other packages which are much older than max. PowerAnimator, Wavefront, TDI Explore - Maya has nearly 25 years of development time invested in it. Does it make sense to throw it all out and re-write? Seems like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

The age argument doesnt hold up here. Both of these packages have changed so much since inception. They have been constantly improved upon. Softimage pretty much started over with Sumatra/XSI, but honestly they needed to. Commercially it didnt work out very well for them in the beginning, but is showing signs of improvement (and personally i LOVE xsi, I just dont get to use it at work).

My point being...
this all boils up to alot of fanboy speculation and doom/gloom. The realities of the situation are much more mundane and nothing in complex software development happens overnight.

To put it another way...
If a forum troll trolls in a forum... does anyone care?

[cresshead]

maya won't replace max and max won't replace maya....

both will be replaced at ''some point'' in the not too distant future when hardware needs more scalable applications and wot not....ie we go 100% 64bit with 8 or 16core pc's
as the norm for running such 3d apps.....until then they'll tweek max n maya for the transition period we're in with mixed 32/64 bit o/s and dual core n 8 core pc's dominating.

[shingo]

Yes, Max does own the market, but it wont forver. Do you propose that Autodesk sit passively and hope the Max market isn't encroached upon, or do they offer the user base a roadmap?

And why does porking have to be involved? Entertainment is not that big a market. VIZ and design is a huge market. Why wouldn't Autodesk want to enjoy the best of both worlds and deelop a whole new market for Max and have Maya succeed Max?

There is a risk, but that risk is no different than exists today. Most users will stick with Autodesk just for peace of mind and look to Maya as a natural progresssion from Max.

Actually your views dont make much sense.

You're still thinking in terms of Max vs. Maya (again, vs. threads - i love when they devolve like this on cgtalk). They're owned by the same company now. There is no reason for one to pork the other for market share. Max has a larger installed base last I heard, and does it really make sense to try to absorb both products into one new product? You break all existing pipelines using one or the other. If a studio has to re-vamp to pick up a new package, why wouldnt they also evaluate all of your competitors products at that time? It doesnt make sense to alienate the userbase that way. They can develop both simultaneously and share where it makes sense. Autodesk is a large company with many products, so it isnt going to stretch them thin to maintain 2 products for which they already have dedicated dev teams and customers.

[shingo]

Sounds to me like you're having a parallel debate here. I said nothing about Max or Maya being killed, much less anything about throwing anything out, much less propose any doom and gloom scenarios.

Improving upon an app is only possible for so long without an entire re-write, but total re-writes are hugely expensive. No matter how much Max changes, it will be forever stuck with it's plug-in/band-aid approach to integrating new tools because that it the way it was designed from day 1. It served Max well for many years, but it is becomming it's flaw. You can forget consitency in workflow, or unified interfaces if you work in Max.

Softimage were able to create Sumatra/XSI from scratch at the time they were owned by Microsoft, which was lucky for them.

What I am relaying here is not fanboy speculation. It's what I have been privy to.



Maya is as old as MAX and is in fact based on other packages which are much older than max. PowerAnimator, Wavefront, TDI Explore - Maya has nearly 25 years of development time invested in it. Does it make sense to throw it all out and re-write? Seems like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

The age argument doesnt hold up here. Both of these packages have changed so much since inception. They have been constantly improved upon. Softimage pretty much started over with Sumatra/XSI, but honestly they needed to. Commercially it didnt work out very well for them in the beginning, but is showing signs of improvement (and personally i LOVE xsi, I just dont get to use it at work).

My point being...
this all boils up to alot of fanboy speculation and doom/gloom. The realities of the situation are much more mundane and nothing in complex software development happens overnight.

To put it another way...
If a forum troll trolls in a forum... does anyone care?

[megatronskeletor]

You clearly enjoy uninformed speculation & debate on 3d software development.
I'll just smile and nod, then get back to work.

[shingo]

The "informed" probably said the same thing back in the days when someone suggested the earth wasn't flat.

Don't work to hard.

You clearly enjoy uninformed speculation & debate on 3d software development.
I'll just smile and nod, then get back to work.

[spacefrog]

The "informed" probably said the same thing back in the days when someone suggested the earth wasn't flat.



ha - and you are Copernicus then ?
you seem to be really are a little over-confident about yourself ;-)
In my eyes you got a narrow view of things that you defend rather fanboyish
i think.... but well ... be it as you like...
it's the old maya vs. max debat, for my part i had these arguments a lot with some specific maya users, who never could base the arguing on facts or intermediate/deep max knowledge...

[shingo]

Copernicus? No nothing quite so gnadiose.

It's fascinating to observe people imagining in their heads what I have said. And it's not even about maya vs. max and I never suggested that it was. It's about simple business fundamentals and life cycles of software. Autodesk are in the business of expanding their markets like any other company, and when you own most of the existing market, that means moving into new fields.

The questions you should be asking is why would Autodesk NOT want to take advantage of the lucrative design and VIZ markets? Why would Autodesk NOT want to position Maya to usurp Max in the largest entainment field, which is games?

ha - and you are Copernicus then ?

it's the old maya vs. max debat, for my part i had these arguments a lot with some specific maya users, who never could base the arguing on facts or intermediate/deep max knowledge...

[DZL]

Agreed. I really want to get off Windows all together. I've switched to OS X for everything except Max and Fusion, it would be great to not have to boot into Vista to do 3D.

get maya for the OSX - and set aside a couple weeks and go over every video tutorial you can get your hands on.

that's what i'm doing. bye-bye max and windows. hello maya for the OSX.

[Brian-Bradley]

You are either being sarcastic or seriously out of the loop.


Hopefully I am not either, :shrug: Just that your reasoning and conclusions
are so speculative that I was amazed you would pass it off as a foregone
conclusion. Are you saying that Max's massive use in the games industry
is a giant mistake and people actually meant to use Maya?

Tis all a mute point anyway. Software is a tool, use the tool to do a job,
get paid, use the money to enjoy time with family and friends. :thumbsup:

Regards
Bri

[soulburn3d]

get maya for the OSX - and set aside a couple weeks and go over every video tutorial you can get your hands on.

that's what i'm doing. bye-bye max and windows. hello maya for the OSX.

Unfortunately, while maya is a very powerful program, it's missing a lot of really useful features that max has. So it's not as easy as just learning new software, you will be giving up things in order to get other things you may want. But I'll stop here, don't want this to become a pointless "this software is better" thread.

- Neil

[cresshead]

quoted
The questions you should be asking is why would Autodesk NOT want to take advantage of the lucrative design and VIZ markets? Why would Autodesk NOT want to position Maya to usurp Max in the largest entainment field, which is games?
end quote

design and VIZ markets:- studio tools, autodesk viz, 3dsmax 2008...there's a bunch of apps all from autodesk that cover this area well

games?...3dsmax dominates and maya was on the 'outside' of that market..they [alias wavefront] created a game specific version of maya a few years back...then dropped it and dropped the price of maya...still even now maya is 2nd fiddle to max in the numbers game so if you'd drop anything it would be maya not max...max has more game specific tools/plugins and capabilities.

i don't see where your coming from at all...you talk about these markets as though autodesk should look into them when they already have a nr total dominance of them already.

[mmoses00]

There certainly are a lot of people complaining here.

It would be interesting (much more interesting) to hear exactly what each person does with Maya, Max, etc.. and what problem they had/have with the apps (personally or professionally...? - and of course .. do that in the proper forum! :)

I have done cg integration and fx work on over 500 effects shots with 3dsmax... and with some complaints and crashes along the way.. I still FINALED them... and we made our deadlines. I picked up many tips and tricks from studios over the years, and there are some very stable systems in max that get me where I want to go. The people I know that use Maya love the complexity of the app, because that complexity = options to them.. and more options means more power for them to make their effects shots work. Both apps are cool...

I would never want to see XSI, Lightwave or any of the 3D apps go away any time soon.. as the competition drives the cool features and tools.

So, for the record, I do visual effects lighting, fx integration, and compositing on 3D assets handed to me from layout artists and animators... many times coming from different 3D apps.... and the one main issue I have when trying to run thru 30 shots in 5 weeks is that 3dsmax keeps loading textures and stuff into memory until finally it fails.. would be nice to have it flush RAM when I switch from shaded view to wireframe... and also have an option for proxies in the material editor....and a viewport speed like Mudbox or Zbrush!

Any Autodesk people listening?

:)

[cresshead]

.... and the one main issue I have when trying to run thru 30 shots in 5 weeks is that 3dsmax keeps loading textures and stuff into memory until finally it fails.. would be nice to have it flush RAM when I switch from shaded view to wireframe... and also have an option for proxies in the material editor....and a viewport speed like Mudbox or Zbrush!

Any Autodesk people listening?

:)

yup autodesk are and have updated max ...texture proxies ARE in 3dsmax 9..i think you may have missed a demo video showing them working...

[ReneAlex]

There certainly are a lot of people complaining here.

It would be interesting (much more interesting) to hear exactly what each person does with Maya, Max, etc.. and what problem they had/have with the apps (personally or professionally...? - and of course .. do that in the proper forum! :)


I Agree with you 100%

3ds max, maya, xsi, LW are our tools... some prefer one over the other, and ALL this tools as something to improve, and there are ways to do it... this ways are slow... sometimes don't work... but at the end of the day; there is someone getting paid for work using this tools, and with or without complains I'm one of them.

[cresshead]

to set bitmap texture proxies go>file>assest tracking [max 9]
shortcut shift+t

http://www.cresshead.com/wip_wait/max9_texture_proxy.jpg

[mmoses00]

Ha! Proxies in the material editor... cool.

Can't wait to get into the next version.
So far.. they have done a decent job of not breaking things that worked before.. other than the overhaul on scripted interfaces ..

But yeah.. it is not good when things crash due to just switching views or opening the material editor.. better memory management is always good.

Be great to have Motionbuilders viewport performance in max.. since they own it all now.

[dnashj33]

Be great to have Motionbuilders viewport performance in max.. since they own it all now.Viewport performance was a huge boost from 8 to 9...and is supposed to be even better with 10 (2008). Sounds like you're getting your wish.

[kenpimentel]

Wow, I thought this was a 3ds Max 2008 thread where we can sing the glories of the new release, instead it turned into a Maya/Max, Games/VIZ discussion.

Customer will read many different things into our actions and unfortunately, we can't always exactly explain our intentions due to various restrictions on our communications. So, this leaves you guessing - which isn't generally what you want your customers doing.

Facts: Game companies switch tool vendors for many reasons. Sometimes it is because the talent they can hire only knows a particular tool or it's a "political" decision, othertimes, it is some tool/pipeline dependency issue. Historically, a very small percentage of customers switch from max to maya and maya to max every year. So, yes, there are a few Game studios (not even companies) considering a move to Maya for reasons unknown to me. I've also heard of Game companies coming to 3ds Max from Maya/XSI - so my guess is that there is always a low-level of churn. The best story I know is when EA decided that they would all use Maya. That was about 4 years ago. Today, EA is like the second or third largest Game company using 3ds Max. Yes, they have more Maya seats, but the point is that they still have a huge investment in 3ds Max.

I think that some people are confusing our new marketing energies around Design/Vis (where we already dominate but we want to leverage the shift from 2D to 3D more aggressively) with an intention to move away from other markets. There is no reason for us to do this as long as we can service the needs of multiple markets. We've been expanding the team to ensure that we can both deliver kickass Games/VFx capabilities along with tasty treats for Design/Vis/AEC/Civil/etc. You shouldn't confuse our efforts to strongly market our success in Design/Vis with intentions to move away from Entertainment. I think the reason that 3ds Max is the number one tool for 3d professionals is that we've done a great job of delivering a tool that works for so many purposes. Even a release that may appear "Game-centric" will still have compelling value to those in VFx and Design/Vis. You're not consistently number one unless you play this game pretty well.

I realize we haven't communicated this very well so far - and you'll even hear other Autodesk people saying different things on the subject. I'm sorry about that, I can only speak for 3ds Max!

ken

[XLNT-3d]

well, for me "if it ain't broke don't fix" it somewhat applies. I am happy about the continual updates and upgrades.

I've been using Max since R2 in the DOS days. I tried all the other apps, but I got too frustrated switching gears. Doesn't mean they are any less quality. However, I make money with my software and the faster, more efficient I can use it, the more money I generate. Most of the local colleges teach it and there seems to be plenty of freelancers available that know Max. Now I am on a subscription for work and home. Even for my freelance home use, $495 per year is an easy expense to swallow to stay current. For my market and freelance work, it just doesn't pay to switch. The better the stock software works without plugins, the better I like it. I still buy plugins, but the less the better. That's why I am happy Mental Ray works well for me. I could ditch some of our 3rd party render plugins.

[BigPixolin]

I make money with my software and the faster, more efficient I can use it, the more money I generate. Now I am on a subscription for work and home. Even for my freelance home use, $495 per year is an easy expense to swallow to stay current.

Quoted for 100% agreement.
I laugh inside when a few people "threaten" to let their subscription run out like it is hurting anybody.
The only person who would suffer when the subscription runs out is yourself.

[Rivendale]

Kudos to Ken Pimentel for coming into this thread and giving some info. I bet it is appreciated by many people. To hear that the development team has doubled in number sounds great. That is bound to have a big impact on later releases. I was thinking...now that Autodesk owns both 3ds max and Maya perhaps 3ds max is no longer allowed to "smoke the competition", since if it gets too good it will hurt Maya sales...? I hope I am wrong.;)

I think Autodesk needs to come up with something innovative for the next release though(2009). Don't be afraid to smoke the competition! In some ways I think 3ds max already does that but there is a lot of room for improvement. As for this new release of 3ds max I have to be honest and say that to me it is the least impressive release of 3ds max yet. That does not mean that 3ds max is not impressive as it is but I was hoping for more. I mean the 3d industry has the potential to be evolving a lot faster than this and I would love for 3ds max to take point lead.:) Hopefully the expanded team will open up new possibilities.

CML

[Steve Green]

Quoted for 100% agreement.
I laugh inside when a few people "threaten" to let their subscription run out like it is hurting anybody.
The only person who would suffer when the subscription runs out is yourself.

I'm under no illusion that it's 'hurting' anybody, Autodesk marketing seems to be doing a pretty good job of that all by themselves.

You only have to take a look at the video of the much trumpted speedups, where the claim is that it's set to degrade to maintain 50fps, and it obviously isn't doing it, and the viewport reads 14fps.

If you end up not running the latest version for whatever reason (and there seem to be quite a few), such as waiting for plugin recompiles, service packs, fixes to backburner, etc, then it's not really a compelling reason to stay on subscription.

- Steve

[Brian-Bradley]

2 Machines, 2 Versions of Max (Old & New) = best of both worlds.:thumbsup:


Regards
Bri

[BigPixolin]

I'm under no illusion that it's 'hurting' anybody, Autodesk marketing seems to be doing a pretty good job of that all by themselves.

You only have to take a look at the video of the much trumpted speedups, where the claim is that it's set to degrade to maintain 50fps, and it obviously isn't doing it, and the viewport reads 14fps.

If you end up not running the latest version for whatever reason (and there seem to be quite a few), such as waiting for plugin recompiles, service packs, fixes to backburner, etc, then it's not really a compelling reason to stay on subscription.

- Steve

The subscription is less then a upgrade from 1 version to the next.
If you would decide to let your subscription run out now and not get 2009. When 2010 hits you would have to pay $1,400 plus a new subscription fee if you decide not to get yourself in the same situation again. Thats how it isn't hurting anybody but the person who opted out of the subscription. (correct me if I'm wrong on those figures:) )

Pretty compelling to me personally.

[Steve Green]

That entirely depends on what Autodesk offer that's new.

I know people still using, and making a healthy living using Max 5 for example.

I could see people just not bothering upgrading - in my eyes, subscription has less value than before, almost at the level of the old VIP programme which offered virtually nothing for Max users, and no-one seemed to take it up.

- Steve

[cganimator]

.
I know people still using, and making a healthy living using Max 5 for example.


If they were on subscription, they could make a "healthier" living.

[Steve Green]

That's your opinion.

Some people don't feel the need to have the latest version of software, and most companies I know of on long projects will be running older versions that they know work (or at least know where the bugs are), rather than the newer versions.

A case of 'better the devil you know'

Take the case of backburner for instance, where it was a joke with the release of 2007. That could have quite easily caused problems resulting in headaches and a possible loss of client from it screwing up.

The person sticking with the older version of BB would be a lot better off in that situation.

Subscription is relatively cheap, I'm just saying that people are renewing out of the negatives of the cost of upgrades at a later date, rather than the positives of what the new upgrades are bringing. Which seems to be arse about face to me.

- Steve

[BigPixolin]

Subscription is relatively cheap, I'm just saying that people are renewing out of the negatives of the cost of upgrades at a later date, rather than the positives of what the new upgrades are bringing. Which seems to be arse about face to me.

- Steve

I would say they are renewing for the new software features first and the cost a far second.
Personaly I couldn't even go back to max 8 for anything.

[XLNT-3d]

The subscription makes sense financially. I always have multiple releases running on my systems. I usually keep the previous version just to account for any plugin problems or whatever. Then I migrate the job up into the latest version.

[Steve Green]

Leaving aside the financial aspect, two things I don't particularly like about subscription are

that it forces releases to be annual rather than when they've been tested properly - the past couple of releases of Max have been pretty bad in this regard. And then you get to the stage where are you are waiting a further 4-5 months for Service packs to appear.

and

It becomes tempting for Autodesk to leave non-fatal but annoying bugs to the next release since it is a shorter cycle.

Anyway, I've got work to do...

- Steve

[Brian-Bradley]

Hey Guys,

I am aware that quite a number of people have
had some fairly bad experiences with releases
of Max but we have not had any significant
problems at all!! In fact max 9 has been the
least problematic since V3 for us. Go Figure. :)

Regards
Bri

[soulburn3d]

If they were on subscription, they could make a "healthier" living.

I have to disagree there. Depending on what you're doing, stability can be worth way more than new features, especially if the new features don't happen to improve whatever specific tasks you're doing. I have no real opinion on where a subscription is worth it, but I do know from experience that always upgrading to the latest thing can be detrimental, it's all a big cost analysis on whether the new features / bug fixes are worth the possability of old things being broken.

- Neil

[cganimator]

I didn't mean "on subscription = always use latest version"

You can skip an upgrade because of various reason. We are on subscription but skipped v9 and will move to 2008.
But as XLNT-3d said, financially subscription still make sense and you can use previous version at the same time if you need.

There are more than 40,000 subscription memebers. Think of ithttp://forums.cgsociety.org/images/icons/icon7.gif

[XLNT-3d]

you might as well, because if you skip the fee, you pay double to upgrade. I missed a subscription fee and still paid a $100 late fee, but avoided having to pay for a double upgrade + renew subscription when 2008 comes out.

[BigPixolin]

Plus it protects your initial investment. Why let your investment into your career get out-dated when it is really cheap IMO to keep it current? $500 out of a years salary is a drop in the bucket especially considering that is the reason you have the salary in the first place.

[Steve Green]

What I am arguing is that point of view doesn't really say much for what Autodesk have been offering in upgrades.

Again it is the stick of a negative consequence rather than the carrot of something new.

I'm done arguing my point on this, I doubt I'm going to change the minds of people who think the subscription is still a good a deal as it was, and they aren't going to change mine either.

Cheers

- Steve

[nirsul]

Wow, I thought this was a 3ds Max 2008 thread where we can sing the glories of the new release....

Isn't the "What's new in MAX #.PDF" supposed to do that ?

I used to like waiting for that greatly detailed PDF you used to post online up until MAX 8.

Nir

[XLNT-3d]

they aren't going to change mine either.

Cheers

- Steve


Damn jedi mind tricks won't work on you either?

[joske]

"Arch: DOF / Bokeh camera shader"
any idea where I can find this ?
sounds sweet...

[Steve Green]

Hi,

they're hidden by default (and currently unsupported by Autodesk)

http://z4p.com/pd/unhide-max.html

is how to access them - there are a bunch of production shaders including the DOF one.

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/ has more details.


Cheers,

Steve

[joske]

thankx !
did the "# hidden" bit
can see the production shaders in mat lib and stuff
but : where to find the bokeh one ?

[Glacierise]

In the render settings, the 'renderer' tab, camera shaders - lens.

[joske]

well there's :

distortion lume
mr gamma & gain
mr physical sky
mr render subset of scene
night lume
shader list lens
wraparound lume

no bokeh right ?

[Glacierise]

Have you restarted max since you removed the '#hidden'? mr needs to load the new settings on max startup.

[joske]

yes i did restart

i can see difference between stand max and my new list of shaders
so that part seems to work

what am i supposed to get extra in the lens shaders ?
more than this ? to get the bokeh one ?

distortion lume
mr gamma & gain
mr physical sky
mr render subset of scene
night lume
shader list lens
wraparound lume

[Steve Green]

When I click on Lens in the Mental Ray renderer, the DOF Bokeh shader pops up as one of the options. Not sure why you're not getting that...

- Steve

[Glacierise]

You changed it in the architectural.mi, right? Strange.

[joske]

i double checked twice the "# hidden" production_max.mi thingy.
I'm sure i did not skip any "hidden" words, except the first like mentioned in the instructions

there is no mention of the word "bokeh" in the production_max.mi file, so it would seem plausable that you cannot unhide the bokeh with this procedure alone ...?

mabey I need to edit text somewhere else ?

[joske]

nope I only made changes in production_max.mi
nothing in architectural.mi
what to change in architectural.mi ?

[Glacierise]

remove the "hidden" line in the mia_lens_bokeh declaration

[joske]

thanx that's what was missing (remove hidden in architectural.mi )

how does this compare to the Mr DOF that already was present in max9 ?

quicker ? better ?

[Glacierise]

It's a different shader, I think. Better controls, faster, bokeh support... :thumbsup:

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