I see a total desolation on all CGTalk branches. Max, Maya … everywhere…
Honestly, I’m not interested here anymore.
The professional’s talking is absolutely gone.
Questions asked here are mostly in the style of REDDIT … simply - “can someone answer”
What the f *ck is going on?
Do we need another resource, or is there a chance to return everything to the old rails?
Sure, it would be great to have a dedicated mxs-wiki site, but I don’t know anyone motivated enough to create one.
It is sad to see that this great place became so useless. But even in this state most of the time it is enough to goolge the answer.
I believe that those who is able to ask serious question search for the answer first, so it is unlikely to have a discussion if the answer already exists and thread is locked (what’s the point to lock it?). Turns out that the more answers we have - less questions we have
denisT, I’ve gone through so many threads in the maxscript section over the years, and what you have contributed is seriously beyond words. You’ve shared so many insights, so many complex and awesome solutions to problems that would be impossible for “the normal guy” to figure out (as there’s no documentation, and very few people who know).
I mean, I know like five nicknames on this site, and those I know is the one’s who seem to provide solutions to 90% of the problems (and 100% of the hard problems). I totally get why that is kinda demotivating 
And people who don’t even put in the slightliest of work, and don’t even bother to say “thank you”, honestly they don’t deserve someone else to solve their problem.
I don’t know, but I think a smaller forum could help the community aspect. I don’t know why, but I’ve often seen small dedicated forums have great communities. I think it’s partly because it’s easier to enforce rules, people asking dumb questions and not putting in any work quickly learns that that’s not the way to go.
In regards to the absence of professionals, I think professionals are leaving 3dsMax, it seems it’s slowly dying (it can’t offer anything to jump ahead of it’s competition). Also what Serehah is mentioning is great points, I’ve never understood why threads gets locked.
I don’t know man, but if you decide to leave, I would just have you know that what you’ve contributed here is probably appreciated immensely more that you know. Of everyone I’ve talked to that knows anything about maxscript, all of them knows who you are. It would be extremely sad to see you go 
It’s true but not completely true.
I’m right know developping in C# SDK a complex program where I have needed:
I have thounsands of questions that I’m solving taking hours and hours to get a solid answer. Why don’t I ask here? Really no reason or a lot of ones…
Basicaly, I don’t like users behaviour. As DenisT has said, the professional talking is absolutely gone. So, should I post my code just to help someone else to copy it? Because when I post my code with a question, there are just two possibilities: no answer or an answer from someone to whom I can ask the question directly by private. Why shall I do it public? Why should I give my work to those who do not deserve it?
You know, few months ago I was here helping directly someone in a a public thread. He was delighted because I give to him a solution to his problem (that took me days of work) so now he was able to go on with his C# SDK plugin. At one point of the thread, I got stuck in a point to go on with the plugin development. It was his time to help me. His answer was: sorry, it’s a professional work, I can’t give you the code, I will try to give you an snippet… till today. Of course, I knew from the first minute he wouldn’t help me.
So… what can I expect from people other than @denisT, @Klvnk, @PolyTools3D, @Serejah, @miauu, @Swordslayer, @Malkalypse, MZ, lo (and few others I forget, not more than five)? A B S O L U T E L Y N O T H I N G.
If we want serious help and implication, I think it is necessary to create a new forum restricted to trusted users:. people who don’t mind to share code with others and ready to spend their time for others. Perhaps not good programmers, but serious.
And leave this forum to help people whenever you want. By my side, every day I have less desire to help and share with strangers.
It seems to me that this site was gradually transformed from a site for professionals to some social network, which changed the rules of the site.
First it was removed the information on the date of registration on the site, then the posts counter and their frequency.
Perhaps this is some kind of social networking rule that I don’t know, but I needed this information in order to understand how to communicate with a specific participant.
This privacy has led to a decrease in the degree of responsibility of participation in the discussions of the site.
Participants appeared with unprepared questions and without feedback.
It is not interested for me to answer such questions, because in most cases this does not entail any discussion or exchange of opinions.
I have already said many times that I myself am learning on this site, finding answers to questions that I just sometimes did not think of. But the process turned into a one-way street.
And this was not only happened in the 3DS Max’s branch, but Maya’s branch as well.
I stopped asking professional questions here, so as not to embarrass some of the participants. It is inconvenient for them not to answer my question, but to share ideas and findings with everyone is meaningless. And I understand these people well.
I can say frankly that many interesting questions flowed into Private.
I had been asked many questions in Private before, but I often asked to transfer the discussions to an open area … But I don’t see the point do it now.
I do not think that 3DS MAX is dying … It will be in demand for many more years. I see an increasing interest in using the SDK in the 3DS MAX tools development. There are many problems and related issues on working with c ++, C #, Python, and Qt. There is still a lot to discuss, but it seems that it is no longer on this resource …
Yeah I wonder why they removed that (registered/postcount/frequency/karma), I always appreciated that information on whichever forum I visited. Removing that is (in a way) like removing experience from your CV. I think the social media aspect is a great point, I’ve never thought about that, but I see the same kind of thing seemingly happening everywhere
You might be right about 3dsMax, I just get the impression more and more people are getting sick of Autodesk (with good reason imo). I know that studios still use Maya and 3dsMax, but I’ve also heard about some of the smaller studios talking about switching to Blender as their main package. There’s so many alternatives, people already do a lot of stuff outside of their main 3d software (like retopo, texturing, uv’s, simulations etc). I don’t know
Anyway, it really sucks that the incentive for people like yourselves is gone. I would imagine similar issues has been raised around here, I wonder why they havent tried to turn the ship in the right direction
even a non-coder like me would give you 2 thumbs up Doc.
Dunno what it is with the new design, I used to have a peek in the maxscript forum now and then…even as a non-coder…you could still learn something…but now I don’t anymore…it’s something in the new/shitty ‘design’…
Looks like it’s all downhill from here.
The “Traffic Analysis” is meaningful. September is just when the forum’s design changed.
But I’m really sure that this is not the real problem but something that has reinforced the general feeling.
Hi guys, I’ve registered today on this website as my first impression was… huge ammount of content, neat UI, solid web over the years… so yeah, I thought this would be a great site to enjoy asking/answering about maxscript/maxplus or max programming topics and then I’ve found this thread 
Sad thing is, from what I’ve researched so far:
So it seems to me like this site has a good chance to become THE choice when it comes to ask/answer about max programming stuff… anyway, let’s see how it goes 
As I said this forum and this branch specifically need new life. It’s definitely the best resource of MaxScript, but there are new challenges in the MAX tools development today - c++ SDK, MaxPlus, Python, Qt.
But, unfortunately, activity on this forum falls for objective and subjective reasons. And this is sad…
I guess the powers that be saw the downward trend before Sept and thought…well maybe a revamped look (in Sept) would reverse the trend…but that’s like ‘lipstick on a pig’…(btw, pigs are beautiful creatures by themselves already…putting lipstick on them is just a monstrosity that only humans would dream up)
I for one, don’t really like this new “shiny” new look 
. Feels much harder to read and follow topics, also the questions most of the times have been answer many many times before.
Another thing, is that I’m moving more and more out of 3ds Max, for many reasons. Not related to the “possible” Autodesk future, since that no one knows, and I don’t want to start another war. But exclusion from the Beta, “lost” some of my AD friends for “unknown” reasons, and the state of Max and rental, it just doesn’t appeal to us. I still try to visit and help on other channels when I can, but we are just moving to other DCC.
Happy New Year everyone,
Daniel Santana
Same sentiment here, still check in here from time to time but it indeed looks like the fountain of knowledge is drying up I guess a big part moved over to various Facebook groups, which is a shame since it doesn’t create an archive, and thoughtfull discussions, like a forum does.
Other then that, DCC wise see a lot of people, including yours truly, move to greener pastures. The whole pricing of the autodesk move to rental doesn’t really work out for indies and small studios so if the customer base shifts more to the big studios the users probably aren’t even connected to the internet, let along hang around here.
Anyways, those are my 2cents…
Best wishes to everyone!
I felt like there just wasn’t as much interest in Max plugins anymore. My sales dropped off for a while, and I wasn’t sure how the subscription-only format would affect SDK. Plus now there’s that whole creation graph thing which I haven’t even had a chance to look at yet.
I’ve been spending most of my time this last year split between web work and learning Unity so I can finally start making my own games. Now I’m starting my own business, preparing to launch a kickstarter, etc.
I do still have some plugin ideas that I would like to make happen at some point.
For me it’s mostly the new forum/site design
I visit here every day ( main Max section ) for a short glance, but the new layout and forum organization kills my motivation to take part in any discussion. Don’t know. maybe i should have a deeper look to adjust some settings so that the forum organization is moree similar to the old sub-forum tree, but i think that’s not even possible…
Have to commit that i’m not doing much Max development currently, which is another reason to be quiet here
don’t bother with MCG anymore…not because I don’t like MCG but because Autodesk hasn’t bothered with its dev anymore…
I now find Houdini Engine far more powerful…sure it’s in its infancy…but still bloody powerful. My MCG basket I could do it with round strips but not with rectangular strips…coz of orientations going wonky…yeah you guessed it…done it fine in Houdini with rectangular strips…can easily produce an asset for Houdini Engine running inside Max.
but I won’t do a song and dance about Houdini’s other features…never a fanboi of any software.
There could be a lot of small reasons for the decline of this forum but I don’t think there is one definitive one.
Could be a demographic shift in users. Our new crop of young employees are somewhat less curious in creating new scripts for themselves. There is definitely the expectation of things just working out of the box. There is also more automation in software now then there was before, so maybe interest in solving problems programatically is less ingrained than when almost everything needed to be “programmed” (I use this term loosely, anything that is not GUI is considered programming by most not familiar with some form of coding ). Even explaining simple batch/cmd scripts is met with blank stares.
Tighter deadlines, less room for exploration. Fewer companies are willing to invest into scripting in general as availability of plugins to do the work or get close to the desired result are abundant. General trend of the disappearing middle, there are less middle sized companies and more small companies operating on the edge and large companies with enough resources/expertise to develop entirely in-house (proprietary script/production pipelines are closely guarded). We don’t have a dedicated scripter/developer/programmer, I started doing it purely out of necessity to meet deadlines.
Maxscript or any 3d program script is a very niche specialization. General brain-drain from 3d programming community, we are not replacing people who retired. Social media startups are more attractive in terms of pay / perks. Much easier to learn javascript than 3d math and C++. General decline in STEM education, although this is on recovery with a more recent generation.
Mixture of extremely experienced users and inexperienced users creates friction, new would-be users leave for different sources. Questions asked are either of really high difficulty or really simple (answerable by maxscript reference). Mid-level users feel intimidated to answer question, even though they have greater ability to empathize with new users and explain issues in less technical accessible terms. This is endemic of general programming community.
I can only speak for myself.
This forum is my second go to resource for maxscript next to the official maxscript help. I barely have enough knowledge of maxscirpt to pose a question let alone answer them, I certainly don’t want to lead someone down the wrong path. I try to answer when I can but mostly the day to day works keeps me pretty busy.