3DS Max 2017 released
Apr 18, 2016 by Joel LeLievre
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(Updated) Two more unofficial videos have been posted: Max 2017 UV Editor – Auto Peel and Packing by Changsoo Eun, and Benchmark of deforming hires meshes by Spacefrog.
(Updated) Two unofficial videos have surfaced showing Max 2017 performance improvements: edit mesh performance, CAD data viewport performance.
(Updated) New links added with more information.
Autodesk has announced the release of 3DS Max 2017. Some of the notable new and improved features include a new Text Tool, enhanced UV Mapping tools, Geodesic Voxel and Heatmap skinning, improved Python implementation, enhanced Alembic support, Asset Library, HiDPI display support and much more. 3DS Max is being offered through rental licensing. For the full feature list you can visit Eddie Perlberg’s blog and to download the trial you can head over to the Autodesk 3DS Max website.
More information:
(Updated) Two unofficial videos have surfaced showing Max 2017 performance improvements: edit mesh performance, CAD data viewport performance.
(Updated) New links added with more information.
Autodesk has announced the release of 3DS Max 2017. Some of the notable new and improved features include a new Text Tool, enhanced UV Mapping tools, Geodesic Voxel and Heatmap skinning, improved Python implementation, enhanced Alembic support, Asset Library, HiDPI display support and much more. 3DS Max is being offered through rental licensing. For the full feature list you can visit Eddie Perlberg’s blog and to download the trial you can head over to the Autodesk 3DS Max website.
More information:
- 3DS Max user Changsoo Eun has published some benchmark numbers showing Max 2017’s improved performance in comparison with earlier versions.
- Autodesk’s Christopher Diggins has posted an article covering the advances in Max Creation Graph since it was initially released a year ago.
- Autodesk’s Rendering team has posted an article detailing the new render features in Max 2017.
Video showcasing the new features in 3DS Max 2017
High DPI Display
UV Mapping Updates
Raytracer Renderer
Unofficial video: UV Editor - Auto Peel and Packing
Unofficial video: 3DS Max 2017 vs. the other package: Edit mesh performance
Unofficial video: CAD data viewport performance
Unofficial video: Benchmark of deforming hires meshes
Source: Changsoo Eun, Spacefrog
Is that it?
Not sure if people here is serious or just trolling. Im using max since version 2, and this version has the biggest list of improvements Ive seen since then. They touch near every single part of 3dsmax, I dont remember any release that they did that. Any big new feature? Sure not, but I appreciate that they improve what I use 95% of the time, instead of adding a cool new feature that I will use first day to see what it does and forget about it. I didnt test it (I guess like you) but judging for the list of improvements and the numbers they show of viewport performance, I would not say “thats it”.
I’m not trolling, and I’ll download it and check it out for sure.
I don’t want “cool new features”, I would just like to see a glimmer of innovation. I would love it if they did some work on Biped and CAT.
Tragedy…
Take a look under the hood, and you will find that there is a LOT more in there, most of it the kind of stuff that makes everday users happy, as opposed to marketing fluff that is. 🙂
A “customer driven release” Haha!!
at last …. we got it
what dose we got
enhanced release
are you sure
what a disappointing news
Guess which technology we got from killed softimage – the checker map! LOL
Hilarious but true 😀
For a better explanation of this release take a look at this post:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/max/introducing-3ds-max-2017
They’ve actually done some really fundamental improvements.
PS: You guys do realize that both Ext1 and Ext2 are considered part of 2017 feature set, right? maybe you are being a bit too ungrateful here?
To clarify, I’m very disappointed that still after all this time we can’t have detachable viewports in Max, or that many of the functions of the new UI are still not as sleek and customizable as I hoped so, or that there has been no improvements to PFlow, and not to mention not even a word about better dynamics and simulation tools in Max which is very lacking compared to other packages, but I can still see that this is still one of the better releases of Max in the past few years, with a lot of fundamental improvements…
Look at the skinning tools, look at the new UV editor, look at MCG and the viewport performance, and they’ve finally started working on a new UI…
The detachable and customizable viewport will come I think. Much of the interface has been re-written in QT, which is the first step to a lot of that kind of stuff.
Hopefully that’s where they are going with this…
Why do we perpetually seem to be at the first step?
Wasn’t XBR (announced 2009, so in development before that) supposed to deal with that? Why has it taken 7 years to deal with future proofing the UI, rather than dicking about with ribbons?
Did we really need another yet another v1 renderer – especially now that Autodesk have bought Arnold?
You have a point, on both accounts…
About Arnolds though, I should’ve been happy about the news, thinking that we’ll get that in Max out of the box, but instead I felt a cynical skepticism thinking that, autodesk being autodesk, they’d probably skip Max or put in a trimmed down “Design” version into Max and call it a day… I’d actually be surprised if do the sensible thing here.
XBR as far as UI is concerned was largely just a roadmap. Where as this is an actually feature that is in Max now and ready to use. Sure maybe it took to long, but if you can’t see how successful this release is then I can’t help you.
I’m quite excited! There is a TON of great little things that have been improved! And I’m sure the UI change was a massive feat of programming, considering the spaghetti that the Max code must be now. And finally some real viewport performance, crossing fingers it’s stable as well. Looks like this could be a great little release.
It crashed during the NAB livestream.
Let’s be fair, he was doing a material conversion from a CFD simulation to Stingray materials. That is what crashed.
Mr.Perlberg rightfully dressed up for Funeral of Max. Btw, maya is going to have Arnold bundled up with it!? Arnold for Max? keep on dreaming. LOL! we max people got ART renderer you know!?- something thrown out of inventer. let’s spend our money on this corpse so AD can keep buying stuff for maya and keep developing it!
They already mentioned that 3ds max integration is priority.
Yes Arnold for MAYA, doubt we’ll see it for MAX, just like Bifrost went only to Maya. On a positive note, they’ve put a partial implimentation of Bullet in Max (about a decade later than all other main platforms.)
UV editor is totally rebuilt with DirectX.
It ia a lot faster and can handle dense mesh.
It also has a new packing and peel.
I’m totally thrilled with this release. Nearly every facet of Max has been updated with some great features that are going to make working in Max much more pleasant on a day to day basis. I’m particularly pleased with the the amount of animation and skinning updates in this release, something that I think has been lacking lately.
Last year we received a great new tool (MCG) this year looks an overall revamp on small things that I really apreciate. There is no major new awesome thing, but improvement on the day to day use of 3dsmax. for example, I had to read carefully but a simple thing like copy modifiers to multiple objects has been solved and will save a lot of work at least to me. You will say that this can be an SP, or an actualization? well, there is hundred of small improvements like this. I would like to see the viewport improvements but if its like they say, looks impresive to me. Boolean improvements, I use it daily to cut objects, so at least for me Good stuff on this one!
+1 to the boolean thing.Hope next step is to allow it to work while being in edit mode.
Being used to blender,3dcoat and modo and forced to use 3dsmax to work, I’m happy about the job they made on uv’s . Little things like “isolate island” are what makes working on an app frustrating or comfortable. Point selection is another bonus.
Personally, I’d prefer they keep working on this details one version or two and they rework on old code rather than working on fancy new features. So after that they can multithread,gpu, optimize the whole app including the UI.It’s inadmisible that currently the same character with similar rig performs 60 fps on blender and 15 fps on Max.
People people people! Wake up!
Think of how much we dreamed about Double presision booleans, High DPI display support and normal Asset Library? “Performance improvements speed UV navigation and editing 5-10x.” Or what about “an extended and improved Python/.NET toolset.”?
And a lot of other cool things.
It is evident that avtodesk the first time in 100 years, began to fix Max at a fundamental level.
I see that this is a very cool release.
Wow…so I get accused of being negative, so let me try to find the bright side…oh…the good news is that I owe absolutely no one an apology! One task off the ToDo list!!
Mr Green is correct: XBR is our new start!! Bringing in Frank is our new start–oh! We meant Eddie…he’s the new start!!
Now Hudson’s back and we’re going to rock…by starting over!!
So to be 100% clear…not even an embrionic, half-hearted attempt to provide the #1 requested feature.
Please point me to the part of this release that was the big breakthrough contribution that made it worth bringing Tom back in…or was he told to shut up and stand in the corner?
So…anyone still dispute that rental models tend to lead directly to stagnation of development.
I wish people knew how much I really wanted to be completely wrong about this release.
I vote : kill the new icons designer !!!
Eddie has written a comprehensive list of updates for 3dsmax 2017. If you’re disappointed here are some highlights worth the upgrade.
Speed – My benchmark scene… I tested this and yes that’s a real improvement.
CAD 3256 Objects – 9,000,000 polys:
3ds Max 2014
6-10fps
3ds Max 2016
20-30fps
3ds Max 2017
80-130fps
Python – We get proper Python implementation, import pymxs – Huge news for game developers, pipeline TDs, implementing Max into VFX house pipelines etc.
UDIMS in MAX!!!!!! Finally!
UV Editor – Now actually fast!
Sub-object selection – massively faster!
Allembic Cache any object! I’ll make a video about this!
HiDPI – QT Skin – 3dsmax may not look that different but it is a massive change. This isn’t just icon changes again, this is completely different UI, there’s over 6000 icons and 4000 dialog boxes in 3dsmax! Making it work on 4K monitors safeguards the future of 3dsmax and show they are committed to the long-term. I expect a lot more updates to come in the next versions now they’ve converted max to QT. I cannot begin to imagine how much of a huge amount of work this was to do to modern the tech under the hood of max. I could say more but I’d get in trouble… I’m hopeful for the next release.
Lots of plugins will be able to use QT and Python for their interfaces so expect a massive improvement to how plugins look and how consistent they are between Max and Maya.
And if you notice closely you’ll see that Mental Ray is now an optional component…. I wonder why… Must have be a pain to remove something so ingrained into the software. I wonder what they are planning to replace it with….
Installing it now, and I was so happy to see the optional Mental Ray install! That was one of my main Uservoice requests, mainly because of the memory and disk space Mental Ray waste when you’re using another renderer. But I suspect there might be more reasons to why it is optional.
Did it really crash during the Livestream? Man…what happened to this product/team?
I remember getting into long and heated web battles with Maya users about how Max was better at this and that…then they bought Max, and they are either not devoting enough resources or they’re not devoting the best people to this product. Before i get slammed for being mean, I’m sure there are competent people on the team, but clearly not enough of them
they bought max? I thought it always belonged to AD, but maybe I am wrong (Discreet was an AD division and also Kinetix).
Sorry…bad typing…meant Autodesk bought Maya. Then you got the monopoly-ish stagnation of Max development for film.
But the most important point is still that fluids in Max aren’t happening until there is a major change in philosophy at AD, and/or until they make some major changes in product leadership.
I have lots of respect for you man, but Maya fluids is crap still. I wouldn’t use that instead of PhoenixFD/RealFlow/Houdini/Whatever.
From what I’m reading, I think there has been good work under the hood and that 2018 will be even better, probably with Arnold out-of-the-box. Hopefully, Arnold dev will continue as is.
Mauricio…we actually AGREE…I’m not begging for Max to have Maya’s fluids…I want Max to have working fluids…yes, like Houdini would be AWESOME…and in fact would cause me to stop using Houdini most likely.
Why oh why i havnt learned and moved to MAYA 3 years ago.. and i belived that MAX will develope in animation and VFX fields.
most important news is that they announced on the live stream that Arnold renderer is coming to 3ds max.
live stream here btw, you can rewind the video to watch stuff you may have missed.
http://area.autodesk.com/nab2016
If you look at the itinerary for NAB, the only exposure max gets is the daily “what’s new in max 2017” in the early hours. Now look for Maya related slots, even for Motion Graphics it’s being pushed and promoted.
I don’t know for sure who to blame here, but I agree. Max needs to have more space at these events. If only to show that Max can be a better solution than Maya for medium to smaller studios.
Sure, I get that they needed to push Maya for motion now that they’ve integrated MASH, but it was 4-5 presentations showcasing Maya and only 1 about Max.
Come on AD, you can do better than that. Stop hiding Max and promoting only Maya.
Just to add on my own reply. At the Maxon booth, there was a presentation from Chad Ashley, former Digital Kitchen, on why they migrated from Max to C4D for motion graphics at DK.
The main reason was pool of artists to hire, but the other was that C4D, in their vision, could to admit everything Max can.
Now, if I saw live that presentation and than I went to the AD booth and saw they talking only about Maya, I would think why I should care about Max anyway.
IMHO A somewhat okay looking release, but like everyone else I think it’s a bit weird that they tout the Ext’s (for 2016) as new features for 2017… why stop there, they should say the SP’s are new features too!
A lot of people will take swipes at 2017 for not having the OMG crazy new feature that no other software has video. As I look through it, animation, texturing, crazy view-port performance increases, making the UI Hi-Def, toms of common sense improvements. These are the parts of the program I use everyday. These are the areas where I run into the most workflow hours. Sure it may not have mad flash, but at least for me Max has so many mature workflows compared to others, that it’s workflows are it’s flash. This release makes Max so much better for those who are constant Max users, for me it’s a very solid course correction to the package.
Actually Carl…I dont care if they dont brag about the feature no one else has…I’m annoyed that they refuse to add fluids to Max, which is essentially a feature EVERYONE ELSE has.
I work closely in Max for 10 years. I do architectural visualizations, infographics operative, a motion design. And I very rarely needed fluid for all time. But what I needed was beginning to appear in this release.
@Air exactly…if you’re doing archviz max is great for you, because that’s what it’s being directed into.
Everyone else has? Who is everyone else?
Cinema4d has fluids?
Modo has fluids?
Lightwave has fluids?
Blender has fluids? (Ready for production?)
Maya has fluids(ready for production?)
So y guess that for everybody you mean houdini? Well houdini is an fx package and max is a more open tool. How many people will benefit from fluids in max? 2%? I work in fx in max and belive me fluids is at the bootom of my wishlist for max. For me this types of release are the ones that make sense in 3dsmax, improvements in what I really use, and everyone uses, architects, fx, lighters, animators, modellers,…..
@eloi you started great but your argument kind of fell apart when you started naming competitors that HAVE fluids….then you had to put little qualifiers in there. Are Blenders fluids perfect? Nope….but they are exactly infinity better than Max’s.
I generally weakly imagine people who need fluids in the Max. They are clearly out of touch with reality. Tell me, Max has no other problems? First of all AD had to add fluids ??
Many. Any Arch project with a fountain or needs a well detailed lake. You can try to make it with particle flow but it isn’t same thing.
Speaking slowly to lengthen the video will not make up for the Lack of new exciting content.
Before you jump on me to define exciting, just hit the user requests board, you’ll be hard pressed to see any of the top 10 mentioned in this release.
This. The idea that Perlberg takes time to hype user voice in a product release that continues to ignore the #1 request is insane
I am assuming this will be fully Windows 10 Compatible? Has anyone tested that yet? I heard there were some issues with 2016 and Win X
Reading Dave’s list this sounds like a great release to me.
From what I’ve seen the The new UI is really nice and clean to use, and its something we all have to use every time we use Max at the end of the day, so that’s pretty important for ease of use and productivity. (and maybe the Max button won’t crash now! – and I’ve also got sick of having to redraw the icons with my mouse every 10 minutes – why does Max do that?!)
Proper Python integration is also something I’ve been waiting for for ages, it was such a hack before, so its great they’ve improved that and made it something normal artists can access easily. (hopefully this is as good as it sounds)
I’d rather have updates and fixes to the way I use Max every day rather than something like Bitfrost, which doesn’t seem to be making much traction in the FX world anyway.
I believe 2017 is a good version (not a excellent update) but every years I come hear and ask: what about Ptex and new updates for CAT ? :)))
We have some important and Strategic tools in max but there aren’t complete tools! and I think there aren’t big request like fluid system for updating but I don’t undrestand why they aren’t developing that to create special toolset from that?! like CAT, PF, Quicksilver, ََAfter Effect exporter and …
I really like some of the new improvements, especially in the animation toolset…
I think it’s a solid release (not more).
But take a look at the 3dsMax feedback forum – fluids are now marked as “under review”, that’s new i think.
Honestly, reading the feature list it seems like a good release.
Of course the ‘fluid chasers’ will be unhappy, but I see a lot of things that will improve my day-to-day work experience.
True customer driven release!!!
It’s great to see so many nice features and animation finally getting some attention. Gratitude must be expressed to the people behind it! At the same time this is something I would have expected 5 years ago. There are still many things that need “patching”. If you put it into perspective then you’re paying Rent for features that offer maybe 5% speed increase to your workflow compared to say max 2014 or even 2012. This is highly subjective of course and depends on what you do. As such I still find it very difficult to justify the rental model.
I would be pleased with this release, they finally seem to have given the UV editor some love and it looks like they sprinkled a whole bag of pixie dust on the viewport renderer (I would hope detachable viewports would be next in line here).
Which makes me feel pretty sad, because I would have been in the market for a new perpetual (and possibly maintenance subs)in the next year or so. But clearly that ain’t gonna happen. So given my allergic reaction to renting anything other than power tools and holiday cars, it looks like I’ll never get to use it.. Just as well I don’t have time to play with the demo and get even more irritated about the AD rental policy (software rental should be a premium temporary service – like Maxon with C4d rental license seems to provide – or reasonably priced like Houdini Indie. At AD’s current prices it simply isn’t a licensing solution for my small business).
I was talking to a buddy yesterday who made the switch to modo a few years back and he saw this release and actually said: If I could buy a permanent license for 2017 I’d switch back.
I agree that this release doesn’t have any mind blowing features but the stuff addressed is definitely very welcome. Especially if everything works as advertised.
the fact that they rebuild the code, feels for me like they have plans for futher releases an they are not willing to give up in the future on 3dsmax.
Usually if you’re going to use QT for your user interface, you might be looking at porting to other platforms.. QT is a great UI framework on it’s own but they wouldn’t put all these efforts moving away from native windows controls if there wasn’t something planned down the road. Pure speculation here. 🙂
Oh noooo…. Web-Cloud-B******* Installer!
Is there any way to get offline installer, this will be a fun to install on each single render-node….
The offline installer (browser download) is somewhat hidden. (Couldn’t find it at first either)
First select the language version with all the languages and then click on ‘more options’ which should now be visible.
the multilanguage version is downloadable, had the same problen 🙂
This was updated and now has the option for the browser download.
Hey, thank you very much! I was already afraid AD switched to Streaming Installation Service…
thanks
Without universal renderer like a Mental Ray and Arnold The 3ds max is a dead.
This is a AD plan – all must go to Maya.
And remember – Blender is Free. You don’t need to pay.
Ok people, once again we got a release of max that apparently has not enough new features…
but the important is that autodesk team payed attention to the small little things…it has no sense to have new features full of bugs…so one release implements more new stuff and another release has more fixing
what are people complaining for!??! a fluid system? we have Fumefx and phoenix that now are also on maya
better dynamics? we have pflow with physx and other implementations of physx plus the bullet inside MGC plus Rayfire, thinking particels, and more…it is better that these tools keep go on their way because autodesk will never do them better than actual developers!! i believe that people that asks about dynamics and fluids and so on really don’t know these great plugins in a real production
what i’d really like to see autodesk working on?
a multi threaded core
a totally node based way to work
a big communication channel where to expose and load all the parameters we want from all the plugins and tools
a fully working render pass system that avoids to have max files cloned just to create a particular pass for compositors
these are just some things that really deserve to be developed…there is more obviously
this is just my point of view 🙂
Looking forward to this, and the integration of Arnold, whenever that may be. Hoping Arnold will encourage Vray to offer more render nodes with the base price, and to remove the requirement of a silly dongle.
Cheers!
just Found this in the 3dsmax 2017 help:
Evaluate performance using Maya’s Profiler tool
Profiling is a process calculating how much time and resources are used to complete certain processes. You can now locate performance slow-downs by recording and graphing the amount of time consumed by each process. In 3ds Max software, you record a text file of your scene or animation’s performance. You can then use Maya software to graph and view the profile information to find any animation slow-downs.
I Have to use Maya for that as a 3dsmax user, really ?
looks okay release, once i install it will have a proper assessment of it…max 2018 due out april 2017 will hopefully have Arnold renderer added to it…THAT will be interesting to see and use from what i hear back from Arnold users..as they LOVE that renderer.
I’m really impressed at edit poly performance increase and uv mapping. 2 simple tools but they really started to be so slow that I now do almost all my modeling and uv in Zbrush. But still I had some uv mapping tasks to do in max and it was so slow sometimes.
And now let’s see how long it will take for the zillions plugins to keep up and make that release usable in production.
During the days and weeks it takes me to update max and PLUGINS to a new realease in my pipeline I always think about the few minutes it take me to upgrade my Houdini to a new daylie version…
And now let’s hope for a free Arnold (and a production ready Bifrost) in 3ds max 2018!
Another unofficial video.
Auto Peel and Non-Convex Packing.
https://vimeo.com/163361143
Here’s another benchmark video i captured
This time hires mesh deformation performance ( using FFD + Flex for dynamic, animation driven deformation)
I compared Max 2017 down to Max 2011’s performance and the latest release of “The Other Packager”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2tnRrv6bUw
The benchmark results in short: ( runtime in secs / avg. Fps):
— Max 2017 ( Nitrous ): 37.693 / 8.48964 ( Wireframe 12 fps )
— Max 2016 ( Nitrous ): 63.916 / 5.00657
— Max 2015 ( Nitrous ): 77.421 / 4.13325
— Max 2014 ( Nitrous ): 79.021 / 4.04956
.- Max 2013 ( Nitrous ): 50.634 / 0.631986
— Max 2012 ( Nitrous ): 48.029 / 0.666264
— Max 2011 ( D3D): 7.57 / 0.555845
— Latest Maya: 4-5 FPS ( Wireframe 12-14 FPS)
The Max scene uses a Flex deformed FFD box which drives the mesh deformation depending on the animation ( kind of cheap softbody deformation). The Maya scene scene used a keyframed lattice deformer which is definitely less processing intensive than the Flex based approach …
I gotto say, they’ve done a great job streamlining the rendering process, with the new Physical Camera, the new Physical Material, the new Sun and Sky system and ART which is really easy to setup, but lacks in features and basically a no go for animation(all of which can be solved if we have something like Arnold in conjunction with ART), and the new Scene Convertor also works well in most situations, though a modern frame buffer may still be in order.
And as for other things, Max definitely feels snappier and the viewport is absolutely a joy to work within, but I’m still waiting for a completely unified and easily customizable UI(everything detachable and dragable and dockable, look at ZBrush), imagine also if you could detach command panel rollouts and dock them together somewhere for easy access to different objects parameters without having to select them first(basically a next generation parameter collector). Imagine if you could change shortcuts for buttons right inside the viewport, or easily set defaults for every parameter and revert to it with a mouse click(similar to how you can zero out values with one click).
1) Physical camera NOT new, It’s just a ordinary Vray camera
2) ARTrender only for Archviz.. WHAT I must to do if I need to render an organic animation ?
3)WHERE a real universal render in 3ds max 2017 like a Mental ray and Arnold ? Quicksilver ?
4) That not new UI, what AD doing a whole year ? repainted an icon ? Yep. it’s a “big” job.
WHERE all tools from the List of 3ds max wishes. For What people must to pay?
It’s SP but not a full release
This UI is quite a big job. Is not only icons, is a qt based interface, is not only paint the 3000 icons there is inside 3ds.
You still have mentalray inside 3dsmax, what are you complaining?
X2 to x6 viewport performance is nothing to you? did you see the work done in uv unwrap?
You can complain about this release doesnt address the things you like, but I think is not fair to say arbitrary b******* without no reason, they did a lot of job in a lot of places that was really necesary, much more than a fluid solver.
I’ve used 3D Studio Max since early DOS days, this isn’t an impressive release. I really can’t understand the positive comments in this thread. It’s like all beta testers came in here to apologize for Max’s upgrade. For a big company and a full year of development, there’s very little here to be happy about.
The one big thing I’ll give this release, is the viewport speed improvements. Since a few versions back, this hasn’t been an issue for me having worked on massive scenes for film.
I am going to stick with my full copy that I got before subscription was made mandatory and add plugins to my arsenal as I go as there’s where the real innovation happens and the truly useful features come from.
Exacly i share your opinion, max and maya cost the same money, but the features are uncomparable, people please wake up!!
From a 3dsmax 2015 user i think 2017 is a great release! lots of small things that would make a big difference in my workflow, the max team have a good solid foundation to work on top of now,
too bad its only on rental, i’ll be using max2015 and blender from now on..
It’s the same deal each year, so many people that just complain about the new max version because of missing features and other things. Those people also say that application X is far better than max, gets more features and so on.
No one is forcing you to use max and no one is forcing you to upgrade. If you really think that max is so bad, stop using it and go to maya, blender, C4D, Houdini or whatever instead of complaining. Max doesn’t get any better for you just by complaining in here!
Every single application out there includes bugs and every application have different features, it’s all about what you use and need in your own workflow. You can’t have it all and Autodesk can’t please us all in one single application.
3ds max 2017 is a good release and I know that the team works hard on it to improve it even more each year.
Problem with that logic for us that have invested 7-15+ years in Max is that it takes a long, long time to know a program that well. So switching isn’t an option. Criticism is a valid outlet when you’re disappointed.
The second problem is that when you’ve invested that much time in a software, and the company decides to force rental on you, what do you do? You love that software, but its owner has decided to make some moves that really mess with you. Why couldn’t rental have stayed an option?
From my point of view this is one of the strongest releases of 3ds max in years. I’ve been playing with 2017 for a few days now and the speed and the feel of working with the new UI is fantastic.
I think at least ppl should stop whining about 3ds max dying or that there are no features for fx and game industries when we just got so many upgrades there – massive performance improvements, the new Unwrap, HUGE animation new tools, controllers and enhancements, better alembic, unlimited morph targets, new skinning time-savers, MCG getting bigger and bigger, improved Python for Pipeline and TDs and so many tiny thingies that are making our lives easier like ability to copy/paste on multi obj selections, local axis on sub-obj selection and so on…
Of course there is more work to do but I think Autodesk are definitely on the right track.
exactly!
@stefan @martin EXACTLY! They have the option and keep saying they’re going to switch to these other applications – they should just do it already. This is a great update and it’s only going to get better.
Instead of complaining all the time here, they should get on the beta, see whats being implemented, improved and/or needs fixing and voice their opinion that way. I’ve had several things I wanted to see added in that I brought up in feedbacks that were finally implemented in this version.
If it’s not one thing, they’ll find another to complain about.
What about us that are on the beta and feel that we’re not being listened to? Since I can’t discuss anything about the beta or even mention whether or not I am on it, that logic assumes that beta testers have all this power to influence Max which I don’t think/feel is true.
Also, I want to clarify that I am not a cynical person, a hater or anything of the sorts. As a developer, I know how hard it is to read people’s reactions to your hard work so I try to express myself appropriately. I just expect more from a company Autodesk’s size and userbase. My expectations were set in the early days of Kinetix, and they are not, in my opinion, living up to that. I would _love_ to praise a release of Max. I even think 2016 was a very solid release. There are things in 2017 that are great, I don’t dispute that, but I don’t feel it’s enough. It feels like it was one innovative feature short of being a good release.
UVW improvements are great, but I work in other software that are cheap so for me personally they don’t really affect me. Yes, I could hypothetically (if I had a rental 2017) do those things in Max now but why? Python, as a TD oriented person, is very welcome. The skinning in Max still isn’t that great (based on the 30 day trial) despite the additions. Painting weights is much harder than it should be.
I don’t want to be mean, I don’t want to make anyone at AD feel bad, but I have expectations of a company of their caliber. Since they’ve bought up so much of their competition, I feel they are not as challenged anymore by other software.
If Arnold makes it into Max, that would be amazing, but then what was the point of ART? Or is there some Arnold technology in there? I’m sad that ART doesn’t do GPU. Anyway, this is just my opinion, I’m very happy for all of you that really think this is a great release and worth your rental money and not being able to ever truly own the software.
Out of curiosity I went back through the announcement threads on the CGTalk Max forum.
My feeling was that there’s been a steady decline of interest in Max over the past 5 years – at least in the places I frequent.
I just wanted to see if there was anything to back it up.
Post count for 2011 release – around 930
2013 – roughly half that
2015 – half again
Maybe I’m hitting the wrong thread, and it’s a small sample, but it certainly feels like apart from a minor flurry when a trial arrives early, interest is in decline.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, or it’s mostly architects using it (it’s certainly arch/design heavy at 3DS London whenever I’ve been)
A lot of other people have just stuck with what they have, or moved to Houdini on one side or C4D on the other.
My guess is that has more with CGTalk itself being on the decline. I think that if you run that same comparison any any other CGTalk software forum, you would probably found a similar result.
I noticed the same.. As Mike said CGTalk itself is on decline. You can easily see this in the News /General Discussion forums. There is even a specific thread right ATM developing about the decline of CGTalk …
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&t=1359422
That’s interesting – although I’m not sure where everyone else has gone to.
Tweets about Max are pretty much it’s just been released – tweets being crap for in-depth discussion.
Facebook? (Shudder)
The Area seems to have been on a steady decline – compared to how vibrant the community was back in the pre-Area, Kate Pike days.
Well, we can fortunately say that CGPress is experiencing steady growth. There are more and more people posting here.
Simply because CGP is the best CG news portal, without censure and protection of sponsor
Long live CGP !
Well, this is bookmarked and I enter here two/three times each day. Other than here, I go to C4DCafe for some Cinema 4D talk and facebook (where I follow most news/vendors/studios).
Long live CGP.
One of the reason besides some nice reviews is that i don’t need to register to comment.
I think facebook. I’m getting most traffic for my video from faceboox.
Even more than CGP.
I looked at your video and I am not on “this is a great release” side of the fence. Like most I think, I was curious as to what you demonstrated to see if I missed something in my demo of 2017 that was super positive. So that’s not really a good metric.
“I want to believe” in a good update to Max. It’s still a great program, still IMO the best all-round package out there, the time I’ve invested in it and all the knowledge I have haven’t gone to waste. I love my copy of Max but they are going to have to do a lot more to get me on rental. I just want innovation. MCG was a great initiative and I applauded that decision. Some UI changes, some basic UVW features that I find in a $99 program, fairly (IMO of course) minor updates to skinning, ART didn’t seem at all necessary (maybe the majority loves this?), isn’t what I expect from a yearly release. Performance is of course welcome, but not worth the rental cost (and lack of ownership).
It’s not about whining, it’s about expressing, hopefully in a constructive way, what you expect out of Max.
What I want and expect are innovative features that serve a broad spectrum of users, especially ones that only Autodesk have the resources to develop. For an example, this is what I feel is “wrong” with Autodesk; why did Naiad (a niche produce I will admit but massively useful for film and tvc because of its incredible solid and gaseous fluid system) was a product with regular, go from frequent updates to Autodesk where there’s to this date still not a Naiad feature set equivalent in an Autodesk product. Maya’s Bifrost _still_ doesn’t have the features Naiad had 5+ years ago. Where’s the great graph system with all those awesome compound nodes and flexibility that we had? To this date I can still achieve effects more complex and versatile than what Bifrost offers. That’s mind boggling to me. It’s like once it went corporate, development slowed down to a halt. Are we going to see the same thing happen to Arnold? (I doubt it but it’s still a valid concern for Arnold users).
Users always have the right to question the developers of their product, and then of course it’s up to the developers to decide what they feel is worth listening to and implement. They proudly, in their marketing video, checked off #4 most requested feature in “UI enhancements” when I feel they completely missed the point about what people wanted when they voted for UI enhancements. Am I alone in this?
I’ll keep using Max for a long time, will I subscribe to get a borrowed copy of 2017? Not personally. Studios might out of habit for a while, but from the studios I’ve been at, no one is particularly excited about the newer versions or are eager to implement them into their next project. MCG was the last reason my current studio’s team was motivated to update. No one, and this is a huge company, seems interested in installing 2017 — but hey, AD got their money anyway so they just have to keep their userbase to keep making money. Growth isn’t as much of a concern now that they own such a large share of the market. Maya, Max, both industry standards. Until a true competitor comes up that artists are trained in, AD really doesn’t have much to worry about. Which sucks for us, but is great for their business.
Does this logic make sense to the rest of you?
CGTalk is on the decline because the moderator has banned pretty much all the IP addresses! 😉 Its probably true. Those that have disagreed with her haven’t posted again. Who knows the reasons why…(she is a bit trigger happy) Cliques have formed.
People who have steady jobs in the industry tend not to post much/at all; They know they are good and don’t need the praise of students. When they finish work, they need a break from CG. CG generalists post on vimeo/youtube…
nothing useful new…
Competitors are here : houdini, ok is vfx oriented, but C4d, a 3dsmax real competitor and just get a full realflow plugin integrated, one of the most requested tool by max users.
Hi.
I render with mental ray and i can not work with mr sky portal in 3dmax 2017. what happened with this ligth in this last version?