Autodesk has announced the release of 3ds Max 2021.3, available now for subscribers via their Autodesk Account page and the Autodesk Desktop App. The significant new feature includes a number of new Retopology Tools to reconstruct problematic geometry as clean quad-based meshes. In addition to retopo tools as a modifier, a rewritten Subdivide modifier helps to prepare models for retopology.
Many other new features are also available, including a new PBR Importer to browse to and load PBR-based texture files, Viewport Bloom, Arnold render post-processing nodes for creating exposure, color correction, dielectric and vignetting effects, and improvements to Selections, Point Cloud Displays, Spline Chamfer, ActiveShade multi-resolution window for faster previews, and more.
See the full list of what’s new on the 3DS Max blog.
retopo looks great!
Yup, right after I bought Quadremesher :]
I have Quadremesher as well and it works much better than the Autodesk tool.
Quad Remesher is definitely faster, but the AD tool tend to generates better geometry and can work on meshes that Quad Remesher will fail on. I’ve been using them both in my pipeline depending on the job.
Tests from different artists, tells a different history:
Sure, quadremesher can be faster, and have his strong points. But the outputs that retopology create, (at least for me), are far superior in detail that the ones from quadremesher.
Nice Eloi, is that example using Adaptive on quad remesher?
I Ask because it Looks like it has been remeshed with pretty even quads(Adaptive size set to 0%) where as the max version looks like it has focused more to fit the base geo more (Higher adaptive % in quad remesher)
This test has been done by Changsoo eun. He said that turning on Adaptive was not avoiding loose of detail on quadremesher.
Thanks Eloi, Max version does indeed look really good!
Would love to try it out, but Man I waited so many years for that! and when I finally leave max it comes back!
lol
I’ve been using Quadremsher for 6 months and the Retopology Modifier gives much better results. + It’s not destructive so you don’t have to make multiple copies to test results.
Glad to hear you are enjoying it JMB. The team put a whole lot of effort into it. We have more ideas too. 😉
What sort of speeds are typical for reform?
I’m not sure how much videos are sped up by, but I’m trying something not massively complex and getting it really bogging down 5 minutes in at around 60/70%
thanks
When it sits around 60/70% normally its because its failing or having some problems for some reason. Make sure to check martins video about general tecniques with reform, here some:
-If you are working with a 15M polys scan, and your objective polycount its 10K. First do a prooptimize and bring your original 15M to 100K, for example, will be easier to digest for retopo.
-Check the mesh, with cad data, comes a lot of nasty triangles. Make use of the new meshcleaner modifier, to clean non manifold tris and other problems.
-With long triangles (tipical from imported cad data) retopo can have problems, thats the reason we have an updated subdivide tool, (even if you increase polycounts, if the triangles are more seamless, retopo will be faster.
-Mostly again with CAD models “auto edge” on, can have difficulties, or increase significant processing times, mostly with bad geo, try to turn it off.
On the video I showcase retopo, I saw now that I cut some of it, but it was around 7 to 15 seconds per object even on my not very powerful laptop. Going more hires times can increase obviously.
I’ll take a look – I did try mesh cleaning before and some subdivision, and also turning autoedge off and it didn’t say there were any problems though.
Works well on booleans though.
Hmm, I say that – I get quite a few failures due to IPOPT usually if I have auto edge for boolean seams turned on.
Usually that means there isn’t enough info or data for Reform to solve properly. This usually happens when you have defined edges (boolean seams, smoothing groups, etc..) that are part of the same poly. If you add a subdivide modifier and decrease the edge length so that polys like that are broken up, you will probably solve fine.
OK, cheers Martin – I guess I hadn’t decreased the edge length enough.
Thanks!
As I also have the joy of imported cad geometry, I’ve had success ticking “specified normals” under auto edge. Think the cad importers produce bad smoothing groups but ok normals – worked for me at least.
For base meshes below 250.000 polys, everything which takes more than a few seconds, threatens to fail eventually and some fixes for the base mesh will be rquired.
Models over 250.000 polys (1M+) can have ususally longer calculation times.
There is a typo in the headline. “2020.3” … but it must be “2021.3”
Great Update!
Now, this is a real production-focused upgrade of a great quality! thanks! 🙂
Yes this is good!
Agree, great addition for max users 😀
great update guys 🙂
Wow… i am impressed by 3ds max. And all just because of retopology/good autoremesh…
came here for the drama! oh well.. it’s 2020 anything is possible.
How is this in comparison with quadremesher? If we dont take price into account (you have to buy quadremesher), are these default 3ds max remeshers BETTER than quadremesher…? SO theres no need anymore for it (for quadremesher)…?
retopo has 3 different algorithms. 2 aiming for faster approaches, 1 for quality. Its a modifier, so it has out of the box for me way more flexibility, you can stack them, keep it as non destructive, or for procedural workflows, etc…
For quality, quadremesher tends to kill details on organic meshes, where retopo preserve details way better. (theres a post in Stack with an example by changsoo eun).
However, in some situations where retopo has problems so far because the mesh is really bad, quadremesher can go trough.
Quadremesher has build in symmetry tools, paint tools to define resolutions, etc… Retopo relies on your stack to do symmetry and so on.
Looks like a great update 🙂 But come on guys why do the render output default to 640×480, like its still 1995!? 😀
I think we did update that Rune. It’s now 1280×720 as the default. 🙂
Haha, my bad 🙂
Actually the defaults was updated to 720p on the last update. If its still showing 640×480 its because your ENU folder, nuke them, and you will have the new defaults.
Doh, will take care of that. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction 🙂
Something is wrong. 3ds Max has updated and the response is not a swamp of negativity and claims of migration to competing software. …Oh and hatred of Autodesk. That’s also popular.
2020. what a crazy year.
Congrats to the Max team.
Btw.. Try using Retopology with TyBoleen. Good results.
Smart modifier stack Please.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/smart-modifier-stack-3rd-request-now-w-pictures/idi-p/9756424
Yeah, who would think ending perpetual sales after you said they weren’t going anywhere, jacking up the price of maintenance, then saying you were ending maintenance and not going to authorise versions older than three versions would endear people to Autodesk?
It’s not unwarranted.
If you hate Autodesk that much, just move on. Jeez.
23 years of knowledge, investment in third party plugins, requirement to use it by clients, middle of a pandemic – it’s not as simple as ‘move on’.
I wonder if Maya will also get all this new retopo, subdivide,remesh, etc features and algorithms? …or we are going to be stuck with that complete unusable and extremely slow thing. Looking at example meshes in 3dsMax videos, if you run that with Maya Retopologize it would probably take at very least 5 hours to compute…if it doesn’t fail that is. Huh
I’ve has a quick tryout with this update and it looks like it is going to be one of most useful things MAX has had in it for years.
I need to try it out on a some nasty imported engine models to see how useful it is on a job.
It’s going to be a useful tool.
Well done!
I have some test image gallery up!
http://cganimator.com/3dsmax-2021-3-new-retopology/