Well it's available for download on subscription - 2014 that is.

Running in demo until I get my license up, looking great so far, I may consider saying this is the best release I've seen, first time I'm not waiting for a hotfix or service pack to make it usable.

I was certainly one of those that looked at the new feature list and thought "meh". But I think that Autodesk have actually under-sold the viewport performance improvement.

Recently I was working on a scene with over 4000 individual objects and several million polygons, and it was understandably frustrating in MAX 2013. For working I was having to choose which assets were visible and then switch between the shaded and wireframe modes. Big viewport moves involving all assets could only be done with bounding box display. In MAX 2014 I can have all scene assets viewable, in realistic mode, with shadows, and it all moves around the scene with only the slightest of lags.
For me, that alone is worth the price of the upgrade - and I normally don't think Autodesk upgrades are worth it.

The viewport pan and zoom, and perspective match are good features I'll certainly be making use of. I even like the new menu options.

The only poor feature (IMHO) is Populate.
I get the distinct impression it was included way too early, just so there would be a headline feature within this release.
I'm not so concerned with the lack of interchangeable models, although I had assumed that it would have some crossover with Project Pinocchio as hinted at by some of the blog posts over at The Area. Stairs I always assumed would be out, as that looks quite difficult to integrate, but living in part of the world where there is practically no flat land at all, really reduces the benefit of Populate for me.

All in all, a good release, but may have been better if they left out Populate.

Agreed. Extremely respectable performance gains. Keep expecting the gotcha moment that accompanied the 2013 "gains"...but so far so good (great, in fact).

And the "default with enhanced" menus are pretty much awesome IMO.

Just for everyone that is curious...

The new 3ds Max 2014 splash screen is actually character based. The shape was derived from a running character and a snap-shot was taken on each frame and then a surface was built over them. If you look at the leaning front green edge you can clearly make out that it is a character's right leg and foot.

Good to know Kelly Very Duchamp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:D...a_Staircase.jpg

Would make a nice building though !

Should the download be visible in my subscription center? Are they staging the rollout? I'm not seeing it yet, so I'm just wondering how long to wait before contacting someone.

Thanks!

Brad

Brad, if it hasn't showed up there you can grab the trial. It is the same build and you can install it with your subs license info.

Thanks Kelly. Installing download managers is forbidden though, so I'll have to find a way to direct download, wait until it shows up in the subscription center, or wait till my disks arrive.

Ooh, that sounds like a fun method for creating abstract art! Thanks for the trial/subscription tip; I was still waiting on mine to come through.

Our ECS is available, but the Max standalone still isn't. No problem, we can grab the demo. However, our license info isn't available. Under our subscription contract admin, there are no serials/product keys for anything. Do the serials roll out later? Or is this a problem to contact someone else about? We've had problems with our subscription center in the past.

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