3DS Max 2016 brings node-based creation toolkit, XRef renovation
Apr 13, 2015 by CGP Staff
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(Updated) More information can be found on Eddie Perlberg and Christopher Diggins‘ blog posts. A video recording of the NAB 3DS Max 2016 presentation is now available on Autodesk’s site.
Autodesk has announced what seems to be one of the best 3DS Max releases in recent years. Max 2016 brings a new Creation Graph that allows users to extend Max’s capabilities, a long-awaited revamp of XRefs to allow for streamlined non-destructive animation workflows and many other features requested by users. Read on for the list of new features:
Watch a new features video and find out more on Autodesk’s website.
Autodesk has announced what seems to be one of the best 3DS Max releases in recent years. Max 2016 brings a new Creation Graph that allows users to extend Max’s capabilities, a long-awaited revamp of XRefs to allow for streamlined non-destructive animation workflows and many other features requested by users. Read on for the list of new features:
- New Max Creation Graph – a new node-based content and tool creation toolkit integrated by user request. Enables users to extend 3DS Max with geometric objects and modifiers. Users can package graphs and share them with other users.
- New XRef Renovations – externally reference objects to scenes and animate/edit material on the XRef object in the source file without having to merge the object into the scene, non-destructive animation workflows and improved XRef stability simplify collaboration among teams and throughout the production pipeline.
- Scene Explorer and Layer Manager improvements – working with complex scenes is now easier.
- New Physical Camera – supports real-life camera settings for visualization (developed with Chaos Group).
- New Iray and Mental Ray support – support for new Iray and Mental Ray enhancements.
- Alembic support – View massive data sets in the Nitrous viewport.
- Small user-requested features from the User Voice forum, which include viewport selection preview, Cut tool improvements, ability to visualize hard and smooth edges, etc.
- Camera Sequencer
- Dual Quaternion skinning – create better skinned characters in less time.
- OpenSubdiv support – create complex topology more quickly.
- Enhanced ShaderFX – create and exchange advanced shaders more easily.
- A360 rendering support (with subscription) – render in the cloud right from within 3DS Max.
- Easier Revit and SketchUp workflows – import data from Revit up to 10 times faster.
- Autodesk Translation Framework – exchange data with SolidWorks, other file formats.
- Multitouch 3D navigation support.
- New Design Workspace and Template Systems – the Design Workspace provides easy access to object placement, lighting, rendering, modeling and texturing tools to create high-quality stills and animations; built-in settings for rendering, environments, lighting and units.
- 3DS Max and 3DS Max Design are coming together.
Watch a new features video and find out more on Autodesk’s website.
New features overview
Max Creation Graph
Xref improvements
Alembic cache
Source: Autodesk
The 3ds max team really have delivered with this release. Solid Xref improvements and the very powerful Alembic implementation (with playback graph & performance mode!!!) are 2 great additions alone.
That’s not mentioning the Physical camera, viewport, opensubdiv improvements, CAD Import improvements (some are really great) and countless SATs. All this without mentioning the real highlight which is Max creation graph.
I wonder if this thread is going to be the first positive 3ds max discussion Max Underground/CG press has had in a long time? 🙂
don’t get your hopes up… remember Max still doesn’t have bifrost 😉 for some reason people think that is biggest must have.
This is an awesome release! Cant wait to try the MCG. Keep this level team! Congratulations!
Great job Max Development team. Happy to see the official word out! The Max Creation Graph holds tremendous capabilities.
It’s not bad, it’s just not anywhere near what the hype suggested, UNLESS they rather quickly release libraries of cool uses for the graph. This certainly doesn’t put them ahead of the competition in the way I’d hoped. And I don’t want Bifrost specifically, they can introduce fluids however they’d like… The problem is that Eddie specifically dismissed the very notion as niche, and sure enough nothing close to fluids. So it’s less about this release being bad as it being confirmation that they still think fluids are not worth being in core. It’s fine.. If they knock my socks off with an extension I might keep the license for occasional use, but if not Houdini is doing a great job for me
Never said that.
This is just fantastic news! I’m highly impressed with this.
It’s going to make rapid development so much nicer.
I’ve been working with maxscript and c++ SDK for many years, I’m really looking forward to try the new Max Creation Graph.
The above list actually should be longer than that.
There are a lot more the the list.
Alembic has been updated a lot since Ex1.
Now it support re-timing, arbitrary channel import, multi-uv export, Particle export and more.
The overall performance is a lot better than Ext1.
On top of that The performance mode is great.
I have the The fluid sim file that verts count reaches 2.6mil.
I can play at 80+ fps with my 5 year old i7 2700K & GTX 560.
For Scene Explorer, a lot of bugs and workflow problem has been addressed.
Add to Active Layer button is added along with a few more buttons.
Auto-expand option is added.
You can detente Active layer as ong as there is no object in the layer.
You can solo display filter with Alt+Click.
Now merge/xref/container support nested layer.
And.. there are even more.
Yes, I think it is the biggest max release.
this is fantastic! Congrats to the dev team!
It’s the most exciting release in years, can’t wait to see all the fun the community is going to have with MCG!
That creation graph looks pretty neat. Remind me of genome. Looks like a decent release, Is there a list of fixes and what they added from user requests?
If it does what it says on the box, it should be a very meaningful release, which could potentially bring max back on track. Congrats to Eddie and all involved.
Is the creation graph a fully new development or is it directly based on any other tools like Lab or Genome under the hood?
Christopher Diggins can answer your question:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/chris/introducing-max-creation-graphs
This is a new tool built from the ground up, Christopher is the primary dev and Martin Coven on design.
This looks like a fantastic release, can’t wait to play with all this stuff! Great work, Eddie and Martin!
It’s not so great, putting it side by side with the new maya 2016
Thats what I thought. So why do we pay the same but get less?
Immense gratitude to DEVELOPERS and Tom Hudson! This seems to be indeed the best release in a very long time.
I only have a few questions/concerns:
* Relating MC to ICE, it took MANY years and many updates to accumulate enough nodes for more serious workflow. I hope MC is as functional as possible and not lightly packed and limited.
* Xref – are OBJ and other formats also supported? For scene in video, arch or games you may need hundreds of imported objects that are obviously not .max but .obj and in ideal case .fbx. A decent reference system like Maya has would allow you to link files as such beyond .max.
* How stable is XREF with characters? Would rig break (e.g cat)?
* Anything improved with animation? Pflow?
I am also concerned that we are just thrown a bone before going on all RENTAL model as adobe did with CC- a big thing and then quiet from then on. I would imagine that a lot of people (myself included) were leaving subs and I feel that after prolonged user frustration ADSK may have simply been forced to throw more weight behind it THIS TIME. How genuine is this? I have no doubt in sincerity and hard work of developers but the company itself. When things calm down it may all remain as it has always been. We need our SWISS KNIFE – software that is strong all around (including animation).
MCG looks like Genome from Thinkbox Software with AD custom node interface.
Love it!
Think this looks G R E A T
Congrats to the dev team!
Is that it! Really! after all the talk this is what they present us with.
I think after see what has been done behind the scene since all the guy return to make max great again have amounted to nothing. I think its time max is halved in price because we are paying the same as maya and they are getting all the goods at our expense. This is backed up by the creation graph. This is a clear statement to the max community, if you want it you are going to have to do it yourself because we aren’t.
SO WHY ARE WE PAYING THE SAME AS MAYA?
I am someone who was excited when it was leaked, and failed to see the improvements and now who is super happy with the release. Sorry max team for i came to a conclusion so early before the official release. My bad. With the full list of improvements, without a doubt a great release.
just one word AWESOME
Well, there goes my “I can’t work because I have to learn Modo” excuse. THANKS A LOT AUTODESK.
But in all seriousness, thanks a lot, Autodesk.
*insert citizen kane applauding gif.
I’m very curious how the MCG will work out. I’d love to combine it with the scripts I’ve been making over the years.
Well looks interisting.
But.. does it look so or will it work good.. Well we´ll see.
But my question is rather compatibility to older plugins like PSD manager, Forrestpack vray and so on..
any changes ?
This was a non SDK-breaking release so any plugins that work with Max 2015 should work fine with 2016.
Exciting news 🙂 Keep going like that please
This was a very solid release, congratulations to the team, there is a little bit of everything for every one in there(don’t forget that 2016 release is everything from 2015 onward, not just this latest one), and on top of that, MCG for everyone, that feature alone could make this release a great one.
Thankfully many of the features that were released as extensions seem to be improved upon in this release, which is always a good sign, it shows their devotion and I hope it continues,
If this team can keep up this pace for years to come, Max can reclaim some of it’s lost grounds again, I’m very optimistic now, things seem to be changing.
But Eddie, we haven’t forgotten about Bifrost yet, Max’s community deserves to have that tool in Max, and it’s had for a long time, there is a big hole in the shape of a unified dynamics system in Max that I’m hoping you can finally fill.
Thanks for all of your comments. It’s a privilege to work with all of these talented people who are inspired to making a great product.
We recognize that more opportunities are out there and we are eager to continue find ways to bring them to you.
In the mean time, I am excited to see what this 3ds Max community can do with this version. I look forward to talking with you soon.
Great to see this go from testing in beta to live now. Don’t forget people can come hear you speak at the next New York Max Usergroup meet-up next Tuesday, April 21st!
well, i wished
better/faster rig-Skinnig
better/faster rendering
fluids.
Well… maybe next year 🙂
Sorry, you lost me when you canned upgrades.
A hike of 70% for a single upgrade wasn’t enough – Greedy, greedy Autodesk.
I can’t justify spending over $5.5K – shame that the developers are being dumped on by the policy-makers and bean counters.
And it’s only going to get worse with rental only.
•3DS Max and 3DS Max Design are coming together.
Had to double check on that one bullet, and sure enough, from their website:
*3ds Max 2016 combines the functionality of 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design into a single product. So you can work quickly and collaborate whether you are working in entertainment or design.
Making us choose which version of 3ds Max to buy was a horrible thing to implement. I’m glad that was removed and it is all one product again.
MGC is a great addition to the toolset, but my favorite feature is that the list of what was touched was so long this time. Sure everyone wants the 3-5 big features but often effort dwindles after that it seems like with any software release. Way to keep up the effort!
For those of you complaining about the lack of BiFrost, here’s something to think about.
For the last two versions, Eddie implemented the top user request in 3ds Max. With the MCG, there’s no more sense on the ICE for 3ds Max modifiers.
If you take your votes and put it on a fluids system (BiFrost), that’s probably what you’ll get in 2017 version. 🙂
Looks like a big release. Great to see things are in the right camp. For those complaining about prices and upgrades Blender is’s free.
I think people are not realizing that a good referencing system is waaaay more important than a fluid system or other shiny features.
I hope it’s as robust as it seems 🙂
I’m really happy with the release.
This looks really fun ! Thank you to the max team for all their hard work.
That MCG is amazing, but is there any detailed video available hat shows how it works and how it is made. Just interested in knowing how we can make it? How complex it is?
I’d like to see some tutorial videos on MGC to see if ‘artists’ can use it or is it just for maxscript coders?
Tutorials are coming. This is a creation tool that does require some thinking through the process of developing a tool, but IMO it is simpler than Maxscript. I do have maxscript experience, but no programming experience and I can build things much more complex than I ever could with Maxscript. FWIW.
Haters gonna hate!
This long list of features/updates is amazing 🙂 Thanks for the additional items listed, Changsoo. I know there’s still much more that hasn’t been mentioned here yet.
But again, the usual people will keep on hating 😉 I guess you can’t make everyone happy, which was expected.
Such a lazy stock response from someone who won’t even use their own name.
Autodesk can stop me hating by being a bit more reasonable to their customers and stop calling restrictive licensing as a benefit, or ‘simpler’
Let’s see – we’ve gone from paying reasonable amounts for an upgrade, staggered depending on which version you were on to not being able to upgrade at *all*
Touting what should be standard as a subscription benefit, like a concurrent laptop licence, or access to old builds.
And then telling users that even being on subscription wasn’t good enough, and we should be on the Entertainment suite to get PFlow extensions.
Told that rentals weren’t going to happen, and then 18months down the line, oh they are?
I am neither a programmer nor a scriptwriter though I somehow manage fine with Houdini.
If there ends up being something where either the users or (preferably) Autodesk regularly distribute cool stuff this could be good.
Looks like nothing happened with fluids… Or Populate? Is it being added to the list of aborted tools? That was the only major cool thing earlier
Clarification : I meant releasing tools made with MCG
1. Autodesk should think of its users more than they do of its shareholders – We are the ones who put food on your table – not them !
2. Why can’t AutoDESK do what Adobe does:Each new release they remake their website and fill them with tons of videos and short tutorials – all of top notch quality with the most talented people (aka Evangelists)!
Why – Every single year ADESK release short 1-2 minutes videos not covering even 1/5 of the “BIG” features ? At least this year we do not have a video with te french accented girl which are more like a tutorial I would have made (as in amateur quality both in teaching and in video quality).
And they charge far less for much more ! Photoshop is no less huge than 3ds max and I pay less then the upgrade and get the whole CC package.
For what we are paying each year – we should be getting between 100-200 new features per upgrade.
congrats to us all 🙂
Please in next release:
– Send MS Ribbon and (AutoCAD feel UI) to hell and update it to sexy one like in Maya
– improve command panel and make its rollouts float-able
– Again! I’d like to see MS Ribbon suffer in hell (even now most users still hate it)
– if you want to fill the top of max ui so bad please look in 3ds max 6 for inspiration.
Anyone with programming skills can say if its technically possible to port MCG to MAYA ? Wich basicly will mean MAYA with MAX strongest point wich are modifiers !
Autodesk and the team deliver and awesome and innovative release. Extending the creative avenues for artists tk explore with. Congrats adsk and the team. ThankS for the hard work and listening to the community on feedback.
BTW Thought this was interesting
http://www.autodesk.co.uk/resellers/locate-a-reseller
Try specifying film + TV or games and standalone Max drops out of the available list of products.
Funny that.
XREF, MCG, Viewport performance, multithreading, Alembic cache, this pack is outstanding and amazing.. and now i can forget the free stuff thing..
‘harga ga bisa bohong’ this is a real deal.. 😀
congrats Autodesk and team.. thank you for listening our complaint, our voice.. we do it because we love MAX..
They don’t want Max in that (my) market, and it’s quickly going to be self-fulfilling prophecy
You’re remarks about adsk and 3ds max really surprise me. It’s unfortunate.
This is definitely a solid release. I haven’t made up my mind about MCG yet as I haven’t had time to really dive into it — which is the new feature I’d use the most out of the new ones. Improved X-Refs are very important for large environment work so I’m happy for that too. The Scene Explorer is nice, some ways lots better than the Outliner script and in a couple of ways a bit worse to my taste.
Simple but nice feature is how objects get an outline around them when you over over them. Makes it really easy to know what you’re selecting. Really like this little new feature.
I feel really passionate about Max needing a Zookeeper type graph system. The wiring system is cumbersome to use but really powerful along with custom attributes.
I also feel really passionate about visual scripting, like Blueprints in Unreal Engine 4 or Playmaker in Unity. MCG is sort of like that, but it doesn’t cover all the Maxscript properties. I asked if MCG could cover Maxscript properties easily but got no reply. How nice would it be to select any object, expose its maxscript parameters in MCG and wire it up to other parameters?
Those last two paragraphs I feel all kinds of Max users would find useful, not just specialists of one area. Having said that, I who is often tasked with doing liquids would like Bifrost in Max but it’s not yet completely added in Maya yet so I don’t expect the timeframe for that to happen anytime soon. What I mean by “completely” is that while some nodes are now exposed in Maya 2016, it still doesn’t have all the compound nodes that Naiad had 2-3 years ago. Unless I am missing something I also don’t see any NEL type custom channels that made Naiad extra powerful.
Maya Bifrost does have some very useful features like guided liquids — great for almost automatic foam generation on oceans and other things.
Lengthy post and if you made it the way through, thanks for reading. Good job on 2016.
Fianlly!! Fianlly!! Fianlly!!
after years of big expectations and big complains we can widely enjoy a great release!!
I really hope that this in only the beginning of a new bright future for MAX
A great thank you to all the developers team! you did a great job guys! keep on this way!
We are proud of you all!!
MAX is back!! woohoo!!
Anybody does know about bugs fixed list and complete list of small request features?
I am still working on the full legacy fix list. Not sure of an exact date when it will be released.
Great news, looking forward to seeing the list!
I look at the nodal stuff, and thinking:
when i started working 20 tears ago, i thought that working 2d or 3d will be more easy, fast and fun.
I thought that the future will make the most difficult tasks the most simple.
but i am sad to see that it’s the opposite.
We have to be engineers to work now. no fun anymore.
(it’s just me, maybe because i’m an old artist:)
I wouldn’t worry! I’m sure there will be tons of ready-to-use tools made with MCG that people will share for free!
It was always going to get more powerful, and there’s only so many ways you can simplify complex concepts until you need to expose the complexity in the UI, in any case, you’ll have a hard time getting a job as a 3dartist these days without some basic scripting knowledge.
Over in the other camp (full of coders) they’ve had their own problems. CPU’s stopped getting faster a while ago, and everything from 3dsmax to notepad have had to embrace parallelism to make full use of the multi-core processors we have today.
In short, everything changes 🙂
Honestly, I can’t even comprehend some of the complaints I’ve been reading (regarding the release, not pricing model. The pricing gripes I understand).
This release is loaded with features. Real, actual features, guys! We haven’t seen a feature list this long in like 5 years! Just MCG alone appears to put some amazing power in your hands with a much, much lower barrier to entry than learning MAXScript or C++/SDK. Being only mildly technical I find this to be extremely exciting as my previous flirtations with MAXScript have been filled with headaches and frustration.
I work in games and know first hand how impossible it is to please people so my heart goes out to the devs right now. Keep your heads up, guys! The release looks awesome! It’s great to feel excited about Max again!
My honest opinion on the new features. Or so called new features.
Camera Sequencer: Really! would bother using.
Dual Quaternion skinning: Good will use.
OpenSubdiv support: have it already not a new feature.
Enhanced ShaderFX: Never will use.
A360 rendering support: Use deadline not interested.
Physical Camera: Really! Use vray
Support for new Iray and mental ray enhancements: use Vray
Max Creation Graph: maxscript with a dress on.
XRef renovations: Could be great if it works, long time coming.
Scene Explorer and Layer Manager improvements: Really A new feature?
Design Workspace: What?
Easier Revit and SketchUp workflows: Useful for ArchVis.
Template system: Waist of our money.
Alembic support: Excellent.
Autodesk Translation Framework: Useful for ArchVis
Multitouch support: Thats a joke right?
Small user-requested features (SURFs): Really .
No particles, no mass effects, no cat, no soft body.
Those are the things i would be excited about.
particles – Really! Use TP.
no mass effects – Use TP,
cat – Never will use.
soft body – Use TP.
Well,
The problem is simply that your answer is part of the problem. Max has for years abrogated their responsibility to improve and innovate to plug in creators.
At first I like the flexibility, until competitors started having more functionality out of the box.
I can no longer for some capabilities accept that the solution is “buy a bunch of plug-ins”
I don’t think that you understand the meaning of my reply.
I simply applied his logic to his request.
And that leads back to what I see in this release.
MCG is to make it easier for the script wizards to do their thing because AD isn’t, to busy doing it for Maya.
Going forward if you want it you will have to do it your self.
Thats why I question the price, we are getting a bad deal when compared to Maya.
And to the fun boy’s when you invest over a decade in max you will want it to keep up with competitors. You don’t want to through all the time and effort invested in max out the window and start from scratch with a new app.
I personally feel that Autodesk should focus on things only they can do first. Then add features. MCG is a great example and why it’s getting such nearly universal praise. It should be much lower on their list to add features that already exists in plugins/scripts.
In an ideal world, 3ds Max would have every feature that every other 3D package has (although there aren’t that many). That would take forever, and each release you’d disappoint a large number of users because only a segment would find those features useful to them.
So wouldn’t it make sense for AD to focus on improving Max in ways that smaller devs can’t. The “fully node based scene editor” has 716 votes, that’s pretty darn high and is something only AD can do. So is a customizable user interface.
Max – use Blender
…and so on
so.. how about come up with your own list of ‘features’ you hope you would see?
Is MCG multi-threaded?
Max 2016 does seem like a very good release! Being on subscription I can’t wait to download it. Bravo to the whole Max dev team! Compared to the past several releases, this really looks like the best one. Maybe MCG is the first iteration of what is eventually going to become a fully node based scene editor as requested here:
http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/80695-general-feature-requests/suggestions/1489067-a-fully-node-based-scene-editor
Now waiting for the UI overhaul in Max 2017! I could settle with no other change but a new UI and bug fixes if we have this in the next release. We need a modern completely customizable everything-dockable UI. It’s 2015 already and the UI still looks like the default skin of Windows 98. You could draw some ideas from Maya and Blender. Also the ability to create more than 4 viewports and undock them. I’m sure it’s nothing you guys can’t do! I’ll be putting my votes on 3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com for this. 🙂 If you like the idea of a new UI, please vote:
http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/80695-general-feature-requests/suggestions/2496197-enhanced-user-interface-in-max
http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/80695-general-feature-requests/suggestions/1491735-ui-100-customisation-drag-drop
http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/80695-general-feature-requests/suggestions/6320511-3ds-max-qt-user-interface
I didn’t think I was ever going to say this but THANKS Autodesk for finally listening. 🙂 And again, kudos to the whole dev team! Can’t wait to see what’s in store for the upcoming Extension packs. 🙂
Wonderful update ! Finally we can be proud and happy users. 🙂
Now some love for Morpher and Character Studio please (I’m old)
A big thank you goes out to the 3dsmax dev team! Solid release. Can’t wait to see what else your cooking up.
Kudos to the Max team.
Very good move capitalizing on Max strong points & much needed production features.
F**k that! It doesn’t justify ADSK’s unjust pricing across the globe and their extortion tactics! I’ll rather pour my money into blender dev and stick with SideFx.
I wonder if Autodesk and there team when they released the 3dsmax 2016 conceder to expand the number of threads that can be used by to be more than 32 threads, since the new workstations now built with huge number of threads, to solve the problems like viewport background configuration which I face with my new hpz820 work station with 40 threads using two Xeon 2690 v2