DarkMantid

Ok .. Max 5 was a MASSIVE dissapointment with its paultry amount of poorly implimented shitty features. On some marketing brainstorm Discreet decided to save us the time of downloading a couple Max4 scripts by incorperating them into Max5 and chargng us a few thousand for the convinience ( see Meshtools, Michael Comets: SplineIk, Keymanager , cometTrackview, cometWeightTable )

Now we have Max6 hot on its trails.. with even less features and a buket load of hype :

1/ Vertex painting (with layers!)... oooooh thats sooo new and exciting for us non game artists.

2/ A new schematic view .. wow .. so usefull .. just what we need! and with Sega's seal of approval .. Yay

3/ Reactor 2 .. ok now this is pretty kool ..but did Discreet actually create this. No they just bought some more code from Havok. and slapped it into the max 6 code base.

4/ Particle Flow ... Well this plugin was initially meant to be a free upgrade incoperated into the 5.1 patch ( if anyone remembers the hype) Now its part of the Max discreet subscription service! and already availible for max 5!

5/ LayerManager ... Well this features IS already in max 5 ( and yes this was also a script for max 4 ) so now its a new feature of max 6 ???

6/ "Blobmesh: metaballs" hooray .. another piss weak feature using technology that was around a decade or more ago

7/ Spline/Patch modelling : well surprise , surprise this feature was around in Max3 days ( also a 3rd party plugin that was "incorperated" into max 3 )

- ok so they improved the layout and workflow .. fair enough .. but seriously is this a marketable feature .. to convince you to fork over thousands of $$$ for a upgrade?

8/ Relax uv , Shell modifier ... these are no ground breaking features !

9/ Save Render Feature - Now come on ! really ... who really cares about this one ! ... anyway its more of a case of discreet finally getting their act togeather supporting a feature that should have been in the render dialogue from Max1.

10/ Mental Ray - Max now joins Maya and SoftImage .. with its shiny new renderer Mental ray ... The hard working guys at discreet had only to look back to the Mentalray connection code from ye ol days of max3 ... polish it up a bit and BAM we have a great new feature !


- Ok now to end my rant with a few conspiracy theorys and conjecture :

1/ Discreet have 2 - 3 people working on the Max code base.

2/ Max 6 with its weak .. slapped togeather "new" feature set .. is purely to convince us to all go on the "Subscription service" and feel like we are getting some semblence of value for money.


Ok Discreet listen up .. If you want some cred in the FX .. high end .. game communities ..you need to either step up to the plate and play with the big boys of XSI and Maya ... and get some real new features .. or bow out all togeather and stop wasting our time and money !

( And yes to add some minor cred to my ranting,I have been using 3dsmax in professional production environments for the last 5 years )

IMarshal

ummm, you forgot a few main points DarkMantid:

New Icon
New Packaging
...etc...

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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phil

New Icon, New Packaging?!!!!!!!!
Where does it say that?

Man I'm excited now!!!!
:-)


ps.
remember reactor is/was in there too, xsi still doesn't have any rigid body dynamics. I don't think it's as clear cut as "max is crap maya & xsi rule the world".

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Aldaryn

Well, it seems so, but they've definately got more than a thousend people working on advertisement, and was working really hard on: "How to fill a whole page with the "improvements" on nothing? So think, think, think, we're cartainly can pull something up from the code! Can't we?" - marketing branch.

Hehe... What should we do? Wait for MAX 7? Meanwhile, download the freeware stuff for MAX 5, or 6 that will be integrated fully, and in a professional manner into the future MAX 7...

No hard on discreet, this was supposed to be a bit ironic. But they've got to do better than this... :( Like the "integrated Deep Paint engine" goosip. I'm sad it was only a goosip.
And yes, they've got another few prgrammers retrained to create front end graph, UI layout, and some cool "logos", like MAX 6 has one, it don't even looks like the one Maya got... no sir, oh no..

By the way, no info mentiones the base code of MAX, like stability... I had a lots of cute crashes along with MAX 5...

- A.

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Joel Hooks

The new box comes with the subscription anyway, so sounds good to me. As long as Max keeps on keeping my lights on and my kids fed I am a happy camper

indianBoy

i really dont understand why is everyone criticizing discreet, after all the main aim of a designer is to produce A+ images and animation from any application, and tho i am no pro i have seen equally good work ( if not better ) being produced in 3d studio as in XSI etc...after all in the end its the artist that drives the app...

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chrom

DarkMantid about mental ray you are wrong.I have a friend that is a beta tester of 6 and its show me the new features.The integration of MR is perfect.Is a better fast then MR in maya.

but for other things i agree with you.Everething in this new release is about the number "6".To be one step before Maya but with 5% new features.


But I'm a maxer and I love discreet
And i'm happy with the new version.

DarkMantid

Its comforts me to see that there are some people out there as frustrated as I am about Discreet and its attutude towards Max development ..

Even these rumors .. of Deep paint integration .. further concrete my point that they have a very small development team who basically incorperates 3rd party code into the shaky framework that is Max.

I believe this approach to software development has lead to max's less that robust nature.

What next ? Shag Fur/Hair or Shave and haircut for Max 7 ?


The plugin framework that we call 3dsMax is getting pretty shakey and top heavy with years all the poorly intergrated 3rd party code.

Genesis

Indianboy, if you were to fork out cash for a car would you expect it to drive well without crashing randomly, or stopping for no reason?

You should expect the same from software, if it says it should do something it should do it, not pretend to do it. I work in max every day, and produce good stuff with it. However in doing this why should there be so much pain, and wasted time on crashes and setting up features that don't work.

I agree, Max 6 seems like yet another group of plugins sticky taped to the side of max in an effort to say "look what we have!"

Discreet should stop trying to have every feature every other program has and start making it solid to work on, and ensure everything in there works well. Also Discreet admitting when they have faults and bugs would be good too.

This being said, what is in this version could have easily been Max 5.5, and would have been for most other programs. I am not impressed at all.

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holosynthetic

cars have a few minute test drive before buying...max has a 30 day trial version..if you bought max hopefully you tryed it first to like it enough to buy it...no?

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drunkirishmic

they actually put metaballs in!? holy crap!

indianboy: its not about the art, thats not the point of the thread, its about getting a POS for 4 grand.

anyways, discreet will get the point sooner or later or go the way of mirai. from what i understand is a lot of houses r moving to maya or xsi. when it comes to modelling, all apps pretty much hav the same to offer. no go to animation, maya is way better than max, and more stable, and xsi is even better. then u hav dynamics, fur, fluids, etc. maya has most already there and somewhat easy to use. max has crap that they didnt even create. they r like the M$ of 3d apps. the only thing max has that gives it an edge is particle flow, brazil, and vray.

i feel ur pain dude, we all do

twilight

I've worked in 3dsmax for 8 years (well, started in 3ds v.1 in DOS) and a couple of years ago i "switched" to Cinema 4D.
I still use 3dsmax for some ocasional work, but C4D is used 95% of the time.
I'm not saying C4D is better than 3dsmax, don't get me wrong, even because there's still a lot to be done in C4D for it to become a major 3D package. Oh, and i'm not a mac geek, i use a pc!
But there are some features that really impressed me like stability, openGL support, fast workflow, etc...
But the thing i liked most about C4D was the company's (Maxon) attitude. They really listen to their users and each upgrade is a real improvement to the program. Not to mention that they upgrade almost once a year with some point releases along the way.
I remember a time when discreet (kinetix? autodesk?) would listen to us users. What has happened? Is discreet more interested in the high-end post-production apps? Is 3dsmax the "3D toy" of their post-production suite?
If it is, maybe autodesk should put 3dsmax in the hands of someone who really cares about 3D.
We are losing a great program. Don't let this happen.

Cheers!

halo

i think its called sitting on their laurels....discreet are exploiting an established workflow pipeline that exists

SuperMax

The announcement of Max6 hasnt actually put the world on fire from what i can tell from browsing around the net. Even CGtalk didnt announce it on the front page.
I remember Max5 had a bigger impact when it first came out.

Maybe when they actually release to the rest of us, well see some ads and demo videos of what it can actually do.

Coz right now it feels that Discreet just quietly whispered to the world that max6 is out. Sssssshhhhhhhhh keep your voices down when talking about max6 :shame:

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allenlikewo

If some of you hate max and discreet so much then why are you hanging out in the max forum???