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3DS Max 2020 new features revealed
Updated: Since this article was published, Autodesk has released its 3DS Max 2020 features video on YouTube.
Ahead of the public announcement, Autodesk has updated its help documentation revealing some of what’s new in 3DS Max 2020.
The headline feature would appear to be improvements to the Chamfer modifier, which now boasts an overhauled UI plus several new modes. The existing Fixed Weight Chamfer mode has been retained and a new Weighted Chamfer mode is added that allows the user to control the size of a chamfer on a per edge basis using its crease properties. A new inset option allows the user to add edge rings procedurally for those occasions when smoothing groups are undesirable. Finally Chamfer Depth can now use negative values to create an inverted curve effect.
Max’s OSL implementation continues to improve in this release with more accurate representation of OSL maps in the viewports. Many new OSL maps are added, including ColorSpace, Falloff, Halftone, UVW MatCap, Normal, Random Index by Number/Color, Simple Gradient, Simple Tiles, Tri-tone, Threads, Toon Width, Waveform, Weave, and Colorkey (for blue/green screen effects).
Max 2020 promises new performance improvements by adding validity intervals, a new internal feature that “prevents 3ds Max from evaluating curves and geometry that have not changed, thus improving playback speeds”. Viewport interaction should also now be quicker with using large number of grouped objects.
A couple of other tweaks to performance include 10x faster execution of the SetNormals MaxScript function and a more responsive Autobackup when interrupted by pressing escape. The FPS display has also been adjusted for greater accuracy and Unwrap UVW Flatten mapping considerably faster when working with many UV islands.
The Preview Animation feature has received some attention too, with a promise of 1.5-3 times faster creation on local drives plus several changes to the default settings and interface.
Many other changes are included such as improved Alembic support that fixes playback control issues and performance mode, allows custom attributes on non-geometry to be exported, and improves triangulation on concave ngons.
For archvis artists we see new Combine By options in the Revit Importer that allows the user to select how multiple objects are combined into one. Revit Interoperability also now lets you import Revit 2017, 2018, and 2019 formats without upgrading the files. Other improvements include IES lights, better translation of Revit Camera, Sun and Sky, and more.
More minor improvement include support for e57 and PLY point cloud formats and the ability when copy and pasting modifiers to retain their names.
That’s all we know so far. It’s helpful to look back at previous releases to see what more we can expect. Since Autodesk changed their release schedule we should anticipate additional features during the 2020 cycle. During the 2019 cycle for example, additional updates repeatedly improved Fluids, Arnold and OSL, added Shared Views and interactive active shade viewport, and more.
Although some users are reporting that Max 2020 is already available for download, this news is only from the documentation and does not detail all of the bug fixes and smaller enhancements, once the official announcement happens we will update this article should more information or demos be released. In the meantime, you can read more about Max 2020 in the What’s New section of 3DS Max’s documentation.
we are all waiting for Juang3d comments
hahaha
Nope… if max users are happy with this release and the investment made, I have nothing to say, I think it speaks by itself, enjoy the new chamfer!!!!!
BTW the new OSL is made by devs inside Autodesk or are OSL from people that made it for free?
Cheers!
All osl included in 3dsmax are done internally in autodek, and available to download for everybody on a github repository.
Well, not all, there are some made by users as fas as I can see.
https://github.com/ADN-DevTech/3dsMax-OSL-Shaders/tree/master/OSL/ADN-User%20Submitted
Which is good, don´t take me wrong.
You’re linking the ones that are specifically not included in max install.
Yes, the ones I mention, the ones that are done by other people.
But here you have the generic link if you need it:
https://github.com/ADN-DevTech/3dsMax-OSL-Shaders
Aaaah! I see.
You mean that the user made ones are not included in max.
Ok, sorry for the missunderstanding 🙂
Cheers!
Exactly. The ones included in max, are only done by max devs. Then on the github you have the ones in max, the ones that will come in the future as “prototypes” and others done by external people.
Hi,
The shipping OSL shaders are made by Autodesk devs and there are also user contributions in 2020 release.
So both dev and users have shipping shaders.
Also, by the way, Juang3d, THIS would be a post where your comments would actually fit into the discussion…
Why?
I’ve been saying that development is stalled, and this is it.
You can see the roadmap, can someone from Autodesk tell for HOW LONG some of those features have been in the road map?, of course, this is made public now, but for how long have you been telling some of those features inside beta?
There is no time frame, there is no commitment, there are no specifics, the roadmap is full of cool words saying “we will do A LOT OF THINGS” and in this specific case probably no one could be able to call them liars, specially because they don’t say when, just “in the future”.
A roadmap is something that tells you approximate time frames, for version 2020.1 our target is “blah blah blah” for 2020.2 is “whatever”, but that roadmap is again a marketing gimmic because they knew users will rage about it.
The chamfer modifier is the star of this release, that is something that can be coded by one developer in a small time frame, but it seems that is not the case, it seems some user said that all that already existed, they just “purchased” it or copied it, I don’t know, but in the old days, a new Chamfer modifier would have been in the “small new features list”.
Today I’m really tired and I’ll be back on fight another day, but I cannot imagine how any user of max could be happy with the development pace, and IMHO this is BAD for all the industry, Max and Maya with slow and stalled development pace, being the most used packages in several industries only makes those industries worse, you probably think I’m happy because I see this, you are wrong, I could be happy if Max and Maya force the industry to evolve, but, as Autodesk has demonstrated year after year, that is not their target.
And you yourself found out some kind of data about how many users are using max out there, you can figure out the revenue of autodesk, do you think that amount of users and revenue is on pair with the development pace in Max/Maya?
Maybe now, when they see that the marketing gimmic done with the Road Map is not working and users are pissed off, they may react and start investing YOUR money in YOUR software, instead of doing whatever they do with what you pay, but I doubt it, because Autodesk users are on rental, so no matter if you like it or not, you don’t pay for new features, you pay for using the software, they don’t need to have you happy, they just need to exists and maintain a minimum pace for you to be tied to them each month of your working life.
Max 2020 is a sad release that confirms what happens when a company looses the need of having to convince their users to upgrade to the latest version.
On the other side, this was all clear as soon as Autodesk adopted SaaS, Adobe demonstrated it, the lack of real innovation at fast pace is amazing.
Cheers.
The new chamfer modifier will be a small feature if it was… a small thing, but actually they add a lot of love in to the chamfer modifier, and will only get better.
Every app has a chamfer modifier, 3dsmax had a chamfer modifier, the new one has 10X more options, and compared with ALL the other solutions happen to be the most complete.
So yes, people can rand and undervaluate some of the features, but what I see is that the people complaining about it is people that didnt use it. Actually people that try it are quite happy with it.
Sure, I will love to see more stuff on a new max release, but as they said multiple times, a new “year” number just means an sdk freeze. Its 3 months since last update.
About the roadmap… I think its good we see more what is on the plans for 3dsmax. If you think they will not commit with it, only time will tell, we can revisit this post 1 year in the future.
No one is saying max is a bad software, and I say this because of this phrase:
“Actually people that try it are quite happy with it.”
What is being said here is that it’s actual value is not what it costs, development is amazingly slow and the 3dsmax core development team size is absurd, if you have this info, please share it.
Could you do the same work in a similar time frame with Max2017?
But now you can’t decide to do that, beucase “no pay = no work”, as simple as that.
The roadmap is not a roadmap, it’s a wishlist, a road map has a time frame to acomplish it, that is a wish list or a future possible target list with no time frame.
If you present a shot to your boss with the things you want to do to that shot, and don’t tell the time frame to your boss it would not be accepted, because the value of that decissions cannot be evaluated, you can make the BEST FX SHOT in the world, but it you need 10 years to do that shot… may not be worth it, well the same happens here, ideas, desires and wishes are great, but that’s all that is presented in that list, that’s not a roadmap and it’s value cannot be evaluated if there is no time frame.
And BTW, they are a publicly traded company, but since there are not software releases or software sold, AFAIK they can make public statements with time frames if they want, they are in a different position right now, I may be wrong, but there is a reason why they make that list public now and not before.
That’s not a roadmap.
Roadmap is like roadtrip, I did one last month. We decided what to do, but not When. You need flexibility to stop longer if you like a place, or take a detour if a road its block. Dates will be great, I agree, but on the development of things sometimes things take longer than planned. you already saw 2 things from this roadmap quite developed on the video, detachable viewport and retopology.
I know devs numbers, but not sure I can talk about, there are plenty of them reading this forum, so if they can, they can tell you.
They will never tell the amount of dev inside core max development, Bifrost people and Arnold people is not part of those numbers, because they cannot improve other areas, like CAT, Biped, Particle Flow, and core features is scene evaluation graph, internal render pipeline, viewport tech and a long etc… I hope they prove me wrong and suddenly we have here a detailed list of developers and we can see how subscription money is well spent in a good and powerful developers group focused in fixing bugs and doing new feature development, but I doubt that.
But as I said, a roadmap is a roadmap when you put milestones, dates, you may reach them, or you may need to move them, but no dates = wish list, I’m sure in your roadmap you decided not only what you will do but roughly when will it be done, because it makes no sense to create a list of “I would love to do… whatever”, everyone can do that, but when you organize things you do estimations, even when you may need to correct them over time, and no client will accept a roadmap without a time estimation, and internally a roadmap has to go also with dates, no boss will accept a roadmap without time estimation.
That is why I say that the list is not a roadmap, it’s a wish list, or a “we would like to do “this” ” list, but not a real roadmap that may be useful to users to prevent the future and plan possible future abilities with the software.
Cheers!
If you want to know more about the “New Chamfer modifier” just click on the Link in the documentation…it says 404 😀
Sorry, you meant inside the docs 🙂
Exactly
Yes sorry for the dead link. I’ve already notified the team. You can find more about it if you go to modifiers>Object Space Modifiers>Chamfer Modifier.
https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2020/ENU/?guid=GUID-E7BF59A4-BFDD-4DEB-B29D-CA0E434BE355
https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2020/ENU/?guid=GUID-05788689-F347-4B90-96B1-530EAAEC4A2B
I’ve been utilizing the new Chamfer mod in my work already, it’s actually pretty freaking cool and insanely useful. Quite a surprise to see how well thought out, easy to setup, and versatile it is. Certainly something that is changing my workflow pipeline for the better.
Its not 1st of april yet or?
Its funny right? Max comes out sooner than ever with ridiculous nothing and maya comes out months later with better stuff, I wonder why they dont just kill it like softimage, I would be really glad if they do so. I wish I had time to immigrate to another app and be free of this crap.
don’t worry, Maya is almost out. Did you see latest version? 18 months of development to release a Maya version with no features, nice, one step closer to softimage
maya users need a new viewcube! 😁 😩
I look forward to the day we dont have to make previews and we can just press play.
Use Blender Eevee
£1700 for a chamfer BUG fix…FFS! bloody pirates!
no… you don’t pay £1700 for the update, you pay that for using it every day, remember it’s a “Software As A Service” model, so no matter if they update it or not, you pay for using it every day.
not me…I ditched that extortion train back in 2017 :¬)
Exactly. I’m planning to do the same next year. I’m done paying exorbitant prices for lackluster development. The final straw was the SCAM of trading in your MUCH more valuable perpetual license for a WORTHLESS and exorbitantly more expensive rental one in the long run. This scam also involves increasing the prices of long time perpetual license owners by two digit percent each year in order to CORNER them into trading in these MUCH more valuable licenses for WORTHLESS rental ones. Not gonna happen!
Once Autodesk scam most of their customers into transitioning to their sh*tty expensive rental plans and have them by the b@lls, they will have a FREE REIN to jack up the price as much as they want and you wouldn’t be able to do A THING because terminating your rental means you won’t be able to access the program and past projects anymore.
Modifiers as per use in app purchases, make it happen ADSK!
Please, don’t give them any ideas…
They are inspired(steal) from other peoples scripts/plugins enough at it is
Guys, if I was paying Max’s subscription and this is what I got, I would be very, VERY upset !!
it could be worse… you could be a Maya user
it could be worse… you could be a Softimage user
I do pay (though I am on perpetual and not sub) and I am actually really happy with what I am seeing thus far and with their upcoming roadmap blog.
However I can get why people can get upset about what they see if they overlook the fact that all of our DCC tools are being provided via a SaaS model. Yearly increment releases no longer have all the amazing features given in one single drop, its all slowly cooked and delivered to us over the point releases. Now we can argue the merits of this style of development all we want, but at the end of the year I still feel like I get my value when I look at the drops over the past 12 months and have ended up with a tool that allows me to be productive and do more great things that allow me to pay my bills.
More info:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPDRxIfaHfM
And you pay more for nothing:
2018: $1,470/year
2019: $1,505/year
2020: $1,545/year
Actually its not for nothing, its called inflation.
Is the constant increase by 20% each year for my perpetual licenses also due to inflation? Because this is how much Autodesk has been jacking up my price this and the past 2 years.
Make no mistake, once Autodesk scam most of their clients into trading their SUPERIOR perpetual licenses for INFERIOR rental ones, they will have FREE REIN to jack up their price as high as their SHAREHOLDERS tell them to. It can be a double digit percent if they feel like it. And you wouldn’t be able to do A THING because stopping paying your RENT means you won’t be able to access your software and past projects anymore. Have fun supporting a company that cares more about their SHAREHOLDERS and STOCK PRICE instead of us, the customers who ACTUALLY put the food on their table. So far they are doing a MIGHTY FINE job at driving away their loyal customers (I’ve been one for 10 years).
No, your case its different, I comment about matts comment, that was surprised by a 3% annual increase on a product for the only reason than “autodesk is stealing more money for nothing”.
You guys all forget something – Autodesk is feeding the shareholders. That is the whole reason for SaaS.
And why develop, when they can buy it! Autodesk has ONLY ONE product – Autocad! And that is it. Everything else is a bough product.
Autodesk rep once told me the reason Autocad is not being developed (just to say – parametric CAD) is that it is “our main product that is 90% of the sales, why to bother to develop it further. It is good enough. We do not want to upset existing clients!” 🙂
It shows up in my Autodesk Desktop App for installation. So…I guess I’m installing it. The link for the release notes in the Desktop App is a good ol’ 404.
Another $700 in maintenance renewal wasted it seems. Sometimes I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship and just sticking around waiting for things to “get better”. At least it was a good tax write-off. Haha!
Hoping for some more impressive features and improvements in PU1.
We have a roadmap now!
https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/3ds-max-public/
Well I’ll be. I can’t remember the last time I saw a roadmap for 3ds Max. I applaud this. Never understood the excuses as to why this was kept secret in the past.
I really hope material compatibility with the game engines is high on the list, it looks like it might be looked at with the Unity Partnership section. I hate having to make separate standard materials with the proper maps to get maps to import into Unity (partially anyways). The Physical material doesn’t really do much here as I hoped it would when it came out.
Once they moved to rental only the investors are less likely to sue them under the pretense that some announcement caused a drop in the share price.
Don’t believe in any roadmap Autodesk publishes. Read the fine print: “The list of capabilities presented below is certainly not exhaustive and is subject to change.” In other word “here’s something to throw at our clients to distract them from the lackluster development in recent years and the ever increasing prices. We may or may not deliver, but the future is bright, please believe us!” Yea, we’ve already seen this movie. Are you familiar with the old roadmap called “Project Excalibur” aka “XBR” from 2011? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LZMvlOn8V4 Almost none of the goals panned out except for the viewport speed improvement.
Thank you soooo much for this roadmap, it was so lovely that I just decided to immigrate after 15 years of being a max user since version 3, cuz now I know that max is hopeless, so Im off to blender and houdini, good luck
If I had a dollar for every time someone claimed to be moving on from max to blender/Houdini, I’d literally be a millionaire by now. However, you see the same people and trend popping up anytime there’s a 3dsmax news. The only time this site is this lively is when there’s an Autodesk discussion. You can go to any max news(and even non-max news) over the past few years on this site and the trend in the posts are exactly the same. So yeah, see you at the next point release.
so what
I know what youre saying and I totally agree with you cuz Ive been there and Ive been that guy, but frankly not this time, Im not trying to prove anything to you or anyone else or even myself, I just gave up using max for real, once and for all, you know Ive been so loyal to max and even fanatic about it, I never thought about abandoning it seriously, Ive always been whining about things I wanted and didnt happen, but when I saw 2020 and then the roadmap I made the hardest decision of my life and finally did it, so you wouldnt see me comment on max 2021, 2022 etc. so yeah, and good luck
Ok, points were made, autodesk is total crap, I dont pay for Max, I crack it and use it for free, do you why? Cuz it doesnt worth it, but for free use its fine, although I would pay for blender if it wasnt free. Thanks autodesk, for doing nothing.
Really?? All the people here are against what I said? Funny, Im just doing what autodesk deserves, go ahead and give your money to autodesk for nothing, sooner or later you will either abandon autodesk’s products or you will use it illegally.
There’s a bounty (usually given to employees) to report companies that pirate. Currently, reward is set at $10k; the fine to the companies is much, much higher. So no, the majority of correctly run companies do not use pirated software, they don’t dare tread there unless run by idiots. And you pretty much stating you pirate out loud. Good luck with that unless you are in a country where copyrights and patents don’t have value and the Software Alliance can’t touch you.
Tell me more…
Well you got that right, Im in a country where copyrights dont have value and they cant touch me, but look at the bright side, someone like me can say something outloud that nobody else can, I wouldnt say the same about houdini, I would pay for it gladly cuz it worth every cent, sometimes you have to play the role of a bad man and take a few dislikes to be able to tell the bitter truth, which is autodesk sucks.
if it doesnt worth it you shouldn’t use it. move to something else. You can pay for blender, you can make donations. But I feel you are just acting like a parasite. I wouldn’t leave my wallet next to you for 5 seconds LOL
Huh, you just made it personal, Im gonna consider what you said as a joke, and I must say that I finally gave up using max after 15 years, and yes I would donate for blender intead of giving my money to wolves at autodesk.
nah I didnt meant to get personal sorry, it was a bad joke. but still you shouldnt reason this way, is like saying that you steal a car because it costs too much. You can use another car luckily.
I dont believe it but I finally did it, I switched my software, Im starting a new project not using max after 15 years, so I wont waste my time care about max. good luck buddy
After reading the roadmap:
No Linux version in sight, not even a processing one without GUI for cooking, command-line rendering and other stuff. We live in a world in wich more and more stuff is done using cloud computing (AWS, GCE, Azure) while M$oft charges quite a lot of money for it’s Windows-Datacenter licensing. It’s impossible to keep paste while pretty much ALL other 3D packages support linux fully or partially. It’s just sad to see that such aspects are mostly overlooked.
my 2 cents
-Robert
If interested, here is a little better list of what we have done since 3ds Max 2016.
https://area.autodesk.com/3dsmax-timeline/
@Martin I’m confused, haven’t Validity Intervals been a concept in the 3dsmax SDK since forever?
I can’t speak for how they were before, or if they were before in the SDK, but we found that Max was doing a lot of calculating at times when there really wasn’t anything new to calculate. All the controllers were revisited to improve their performance when there was no animation or if a curve was not changing over a period of frames.
That’s very strange, you’re describing how 3dsmax has already worked for many versions.
I can assure you controllers didn’t work like this. They were evaluated every frame even if they only had one keyframe.
So, nothing on animation that brings us up to par with Maya?.
No xgen, even though our hair system is crap.
Nothing on particle flow?.
No muscles or pose space deformers or follicles for facial rigging?
How about Voronoi?.
Jeez. What about user requests reflects on this roadmap beyond fire and smoke?
lol ignored.
their goal is to separate max and maya.
u want that stuff? pay for maya.
Fix the layer manager already? That bug has existed for so many versions….
Egg Spline, Chamfer modifier. Autodesk never fails to impress…
Did they fix the window crossing selection icon bug yet? I still have hope…
Is this a joke!? Is this why I’m paying thousands of euros a year for my licenses?? This year alone the price for upgrading went up by 20%. For what? The “improvements” in 2020 should have been an update to 2019 AT BEST. Year after year lackluster releases. There is NOTHING noteworthy in Max 2020 that will improve my experience as far as I can see. I won’t even bother wasting my time installing this. When you care more about your INVESTORS and your STOCK price instead of the people who ACTUALLY put the food on your table, you are destined to failure. If you are unable to deliver, at least slash your prices in half – in line with the lackluster value each new release brings.
Good thing I’m already starting to learn Blender 2.8 and Houdini after being a loyal Autodesk customer for 10 years. I see LOTS of companies and freelancers doing the same. Good job on driving away your loyal customers, Autodesk , you are doing a MIGHTY fine job. I’m extremely disappointed with this company and I’m planning on dropping them in 2020 because of the lack of innovation for years, and their OUTRAGEOUS pricing increases (20% each year for my perpetual licenses) with which they are hoping to corner me and the rest of their customers into exchanging our MUCH more valuable perpetual licenses for INFERIOR monthly/yearly rentals that cost DOUBLE what I’m paying now and don’t provide any benefit, only drawbacks.
I already switched to BricsCAD and I’m never looking back. I hope to do the same in 2020 in regards to 3ds Max. I WEEP when I see the improvements in Blender 2.8, A FREE SOFTWARE . I’m already donating to the Blender Foundation for the good job they are doing. This was the boiling point.
Every update, Autodesk hears two things from users:
1.) Add cool new features designed specifically for ME, and not for those other guys! 😉
2.) Don’t add anything new — just fix bugs!
The above directives can be… challenging when you have as wide a variety of users, with very different needs, all using 3ds Max.
For architectural/visualization artists, advanced VFX tools aren’t as important — the ability to import data from programs like Inventor or Revit, with materials intact, and be able to render their scenes for clients is paramount.
For VFX artists, it’s mostly the opposite — they’re not as interested in making building exteriors or interiors look beautiful for business clients; they want to blow them up, have monsters or robots attack them, tsunamis swamp them, or cool spaceships fly by them. 🙂
For motion graphics artists, it’s advanced 2D animation tools. For character animators, it’s rigging/animation tools. For TDs, it’s access to all aspects of the program via scripting and other tools. For real-time visualization and VR, it’s all about getting data from Max to your favorite real-time tool.
As always, every time we release an update for 3ds Max, we get some people who are thrilled by the features released and the bugs fixed, and people who are upset that their favorite feature wasn’t included/fixed.
As an Autodesk employee who works in technical support for 3ds Max, I see both sides. For every person who’s upset that his/her favorite feature wasn’t included, I hear from someone else who’s happy that we fixed or added a feature that they were requesting.
Bottom line is, development never stops, and we’re working constantly to improve Max for as many members of our wide-ranging customer base as possible.
You must be a stand-up comedian or something, I give you one single clue. Compare maya’s rigging tools with 3ds max’s rigging tools, and spare me maya is for animation and max is not speach, the rigging tools max has is still the same it was there when max was discreet’s. So go figure.
Be objective and name the rigging tools that were at Dicreet’s time and today’s one. And show me how they are “still the same”.
Wow, youre awesome! Really? Ok lets see, how about bones, constraints, reaction manager and etc are still the same as max 6? How hard would it be to integrate a node editor like maya for rigging purposes?! Or overall purposes! Are you real? Is this a joke? Are you really asking me this question? Have you even seen maya’s rigging stuff? Now please do enlighten me that what did you mean by be objective and name the rigging tools …
I might be in minority, or not, but I don’t consider bug fixes as NEW value. That is your obligation to fix something I’ve already payed. When I see a new release, I expect new features that will make my life as an artist easier.
We don’t consider bug fixes as features, but they are certainly valueable and a lot of customers want to know when defects are fixed and what they are. We fix defects continuously and add them to the updates.
OK, fair enough – but you do consider it as a binary choice on what to work on, right? At least, that is what I understand from the original post.
Look, I really want to be part of the constructive argument and I hope that now with the road-map we can have informed discussions. But I have to tell you – your history has not paved a promising road. Max is in a bad state, core things are slow and not scalable. Every single thing that Max had as an upper hand is gone, competition does everything better/faster now, so you need some serious catching up to do. And if you really want “best in class results” then those things from the road-map need to be incredible the day they are launched. Can you really do that?
Also, I hope that Max will find his market focus soon because I don’t think trying to make Max suitable for everybody is doing anybody any good.
If you really want to be constructive and want to provide feedback, I hope you will join beta. We do try and make everything we work on the best possible and we take feedback to heart. I hope you try chamfer. My team worked on that and I’m very proud of what we were able to accomplish.
I have applied for beta couple of times over the years but I have no problem trying it again.
And I will try chamfer.
Great to have the new chamfer features, but if you’re honest, 90% of it was ripped off from the Quad Chamfer plugin by Marius Salaghi which has been available for 8+ years. Crease weights, presets… Might as well steal Radial Symmetry from him too, it’s amazing. The inset idea was created by some clever folks on the polycount forum. Chamfer still creates bad geometry. At 4:08 in your demo video, you can see bad shading in the inset as a result of flipped normals due to chamfer creating crashing geometry. There’s zero innovation going on at Autodesk for Max and it’s a real bummer. It really feels like there are 5 people working on Max. I hope with the new “improved” viewport previews(anything would be an improvement because it’s been broken for years), someone has thought to increase the shadow map size(for which there’s no UI setting for outside of maxscript) from the default of 512?
Dosent explain why you let pflow languish the way you did. Most requested by users.
The problem with Particle Flow is that it was developed by Oleg (Orbaz Technologies). At some point we got Box 1-3 added in and that counted as updates I guess; and I don’t think Oleg had much to do with it since. Forum posts at Orbaz have gone unanswered for several years now. He was working on making it truly multi core 5-6 years ago, but that never came to be. How much he is involved, or actually doing anything to improve PF, or if someone took over his role to update PF, who knows. But it’s pretty much the same slow beast it has been for years. It would probably be easier to develop a new particle system than fix PF.
I was happy when they added it in, I could never my company to buy it. But surely someone could pick up where he left off. As we have seen someone has now scucessfully done that. Anway I have made my peace with the particles situation in 3ds max.
I’d prefer they’d start fresh, as it sounds like there were issues Oleg had trying to get multi-core to work with the way he wrote PF, so I don’t know how they’d get that and GPU support in there as well (other than mparticles). Also, of the few programmers I know, none of them enjoy working with others’ code. Like Tyson was able to create something all by himself, I would hope a dedicated team could do the same. I’d love to get TyFlow whenever it comes out, but we don’t do particles often enough to justify it, unless it somehow ends up super cheap. But I do have to laugh at how slow PF is every time I have to save out cache files for the simple things I do.
The problem is that we all have a vague idea of how much money Autodesk makes from 3dsmax, and we all have a vague idea of how productive software developers can actually be.
If a million Max users pay a thousand dollars a year for maintenance and updates then it stands to reason that at least 1% of that income should be funnelled towards the development team, right? Just 1% of all that subscription money should be enough to pay the salaries of a hundred full-time developers.
But every year, from reading the release notes and using the new versions, it looks like only one developer has been working on 3dsmax, and not even full-time. It looks like the output of one half-hearted developer who has to apply in writing just to get permission to try a crazy idea like “pasted modifiers now retain their names”.
So no. None of us believe that Autodesk is “working constantly to improve Max”. You can reassure us all you like, but we’ll believe it when we see it, and we are not seeing it.
Alex, did you look at the Max roadmap link? So, ART, Arnold, Physical Materials, MCG, OSL, Fluids and better Revit/Inventor interop (among many other things) don’t constitute improvements? https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/3ds-max-public/
I’ve been a Max user since version 1.0, and a TD for 20+ years, so I’m the target market for all of those features, but I wouldn’t touch any of them with a ten foot pole. It’s like they spilled out of an alternate reality where the 1990s just roll on & on forever.
Nobody uses ART or Arnold or physical materials in viewports, because we get better and more cost-effective rendering, materials and OSL through VRay and other third-party products.
MCG? It’s horrible. Yet another poor reinvention of the node-graph, but for functional programming, which nobody wants, because it just isn’t useful in computer graphics. It’s not code, it’s not nodes, it’s… not worth looking at more than once.
And Max Fluids? It’s worse than having nothing at all, because we know that it used to be Naiad, and Autodesk turned it into something that looks like a student project. Meanwhile, there are student projects on Github that work better.
This all may sound harsh, but seriously… where is that money going? Did Autodesk really build a portal to the never-ending `90s?
The speed increases (ui file loading)have been noticeable as the versions increase 2016-2019. Thats one thing that has kept me happy.
Thanks for chiming in on behalf of Autodesk. But seriously, please spare us the marketing speech and smooth-talking. No matter what kind of Max user you are, it’s as clear as day that development has been lackluster on all fronts for years. Only a complete noob at Max and 3D in general can be impressed with this software because they don’t know its history. These are people who have not worked for 10 years with the software like me and others have.
And on and on.
People beware! Autodesk want to scam you into trading in your SUPERIOR perpetual licenses for INFERIOR rental ones because it’s more profitable for their shareholders, not you. I don’t advise you to accept their shady trade in offer. If they manage to lure enough people into the new rental licensing, they will have FREE REIN to jack up the rental price as high as their SHAREHOLDERS tell them to. It can be a double digit percent if they feel like it. And you wouldn’t be able to do A THING because stopping paying your RENT means you won’t be able to access your software and past projects anymore. I personally will never trade in my perpetual licenses.
– Graphite is based on the Polyboost script but rewritten in native code. I do agree that it would be nice to see some boosts in this area overall, but we are starting to see it as end users with the new Chamfer for example. Roadmap lists a few more so I will wait and see before I hold up my pitchfork and torch on this one (though I really do want to see more on the modeling ASAP).
– Double precision floats are already in I believe.
– Node modifier one can point at MCG as a solution, Bifrost has some additional work in this area, but sure i will bite and agree that we could see more. We the users always like more.
– Viewport supports PBR. One just needs to use the Standard Surface material, activate realistic maps, and turn on the lighting in the viewport. There was a very well documented video done by Zap Anderson that was released last week showing just this.
– UI could always be faster (seems like all of the Autodesk 3D apps suffer from this). Looks UI performance is being done in each release with some fixes in 2019 and more here in 2020.
– Tear off viewports are not here yet, but are listed on the roadmap fairly specifically. So while not in our hands yet, my assumption is that if its listed by name in that roadmap its probably a good guess its being cooked or they wouldn’t have dare listed it with the “safe harbors” worries that they always have.
– No (new) perpetual licenses is crummy. I get that the industry is going this way, but it’s still wrong IMO and I do not get what is wrong with providing both options for a business to go with. Choice is good.
– Price increases suck. Its never fun to pay more, I too hold onto my perpetual license, I certainly pay more yearly for it as well. All I can do is pass on the cost increase to my clients. No one is ever happy about this, but none of us have much of a choice in the matter.
The PBR in viewport is partially working, despite the YouTube video description saying “fully supported”. Reflection roughness values are not respected for the reflections. You have to use the Physical material as well, not Standard; if you want metalness to work. Which also gives you limits functionality if you use VRay or other 3rd party renderer. Of course, that is also up to them to make their shaders PBR capable.
The UI still has some major speed and usability issues at times. I sometimes wait several seconds for the modifier list to populate, which often makes a small list above the modify panel instead of a long list below (one of several 4k issues that might have been partially addressed in 2019). The Slate Material Editor is slooooowwww, especially when working with many complicated materials. Just switching materials in Slate takes a second or two for the selected materials window to update. I end up using the Compact Mat Editor more often than not because it is responsive. I only go into Slate when I have to setup complex nodes. Also, why do they make us double click a node to display its settings on the right? I wish there was a way to turn that off. And the most annoying offender of them all, having to click twice on separate windows to edit a type in value or check box… like if I have to change a setting for the render engine, I have to click once to select the window, then click again to be able to edit the value. It’s still there in 2020. 🙁 Works as it should in 2016, after that something got goofed up.
Whether it’s BUG FIXES or NEW FEATURES Autodesk isn’t delivering. Every Eff’ing Major release I see stingy amount of Fixs/Features. I have the impression that 3Ds Max development team consists of ONE single part-time developer. I suggest you take a look at the release notes from innovative software like Unity3d or Houdini and feel how much they care and respect their customers.
Lot of what you see here is other peoples scripts and work being claim by Autodesk. Nothing was develop by them. Yet they keep on charging nice amounts of money for new innovation.
Okay I will bite… got proof?
Arnold render – bought by Autodesk in 2016.
Graphite modeling tools introduced with Max 2010 – this was a script called Polyboost developed and released in 2006 by Carl-Mikael Lagnecrantz.
The node based Slate Material Editor introduced with Max 2011 – this was a plugin called Nodejoe developed and released by Thinking Apes in 2008.
MotionPaths is also a script by Jonathan de Blok called ProTrajectoryHandles, as well as camera sequencer – PROSEQUENCER 3DS MAX.
Also, hair and fur (as old as it is now) is Shave and Haircut by Joe Alter, pflow box 2 and box3 were plugins Oleg from Orbaz wrote before brought into max (i guess he also wrote Pflow in general while in Autodesk)… should I continue
Jeezus Christ, my expectations are very low with Autodesk and yet they are able to keep lowering the bar with each new version.
“Accurate FPS view” – What we saw before was reporting that the FPS was higher in the viewport than it was. This is a bug, not something to put on marketing reel.
“Enhanced Chamfer” – Really? Not saying it’s not useful, but looking at the content this is given enough time in the reel to make it seem like this was a big addition/improvement.
“Faster viewport playback” – This is good, but Max’s viewports are nowhere near as feature rich as their competition.
“NPR rendering” – How many people is this useful for who aren’t already using another workflow to get NPR results?
I gripe with each release, when you’ve invested so much time in a software it’s really damn sad. Having said that, I’m very happy after my transition to Houdini so I guess in the end this doesn’t really concern me. Autodesk is the CG company equivalent to Trump in politics. Some die-hard defenders, take victories that aren’t exactly victories and both has just lowered the bar extremely far for expectations of what is defined as a success.
I feel bad for the programmers and QA people working on Max and Maya. It’s clearly not their fault.
… and yes, I am going to keep comparing Max and Maya to Houdini as I suspect it won’t be long before it’s the leading software package out there. They’ve done tonnes to make it easier to use while loosing none of its power while adding an incredible amount of diverse features; from modeling, animation, rendering and of course FX.
Not even tyflow can rescue 3ds max, as incredible and impressive it looks. Not seen anything I can’t do in Houdini. He’s an incredibly talented artist and developer so I am not knocking him in any way for doing what he’s doing.
“… and yes, I am going to keep comparing Max and Maya to Houdini as I suspect it won’t be long before it’s the leading software package out there.”
Leading in what markets? Architectural, engineering, construction, real-time visualization, VR/AR, games, motion graphics, character animation, visual effects, forensic animation, mechanical simulation, 3D modeling, 3D painting, traffic studies, concept design?
3ds Max is used in some capacity in every one of these markets, and there are far more industries that require CG than just TV/movie special effects and games. Architectural visualization is a gigantic part of the DCC industry, for instance. An enormous number of 3ds Max users want to be able to easily, seamlessly import their Revit, Inventor, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, or Solidworks models and then animate and render them quickly. If you don’t work in these industries, then the above capabilities may be meaningless to you.
But conversely, for people in the AEC industry, being able to click a button and create a voxel-based explosion, animate a cool monster or render a spaceship battle is equally meaningless to them. Since the CG industry is so large and varied, you can pick and use whatever program meets your particular needs.
For architectural/visualization artists…
Can the human mind even imagine how terrible Revit imports would be (and have been) if Autodesk hadn’t owned Revit since 2002 and if Inventor wasn’t an Autodesk product?
The notion that any of the core demands of these industries are mutually exclusive and that segmentation is an excuse for lack of development is weak. Giving narrow examples like “a space battle” is disingenuous when at the base of it could be described as “a large scene with many millions\billions of polygons, xrefs, proxies, animated and static objects, environmental effects…etc” and have it apply to any number of disciplines. Sure Max is a generalist tool but the needs and requirements in 2019 are not the same as they were 23 years ago.
I’d like to share some experiences here, while trying to keep things civilized. Because I do appreciate the devs work, just not the directions taken 🙂
I’ve been a max user for 16 or so years, and I worked in Arch Viz earlier. I think Max is great for this purpose, and yes, it’s getting some features here and there that are nice! Honestly, I think it’s due to this area is not competing with Maya. And I think it’s down to the wast, often pre-textured, asset libraries combined with simple scenes and setups. Max does a great job at this, and yes, viewport performance is normally good too! If this was still my job, Max would be my tool and I’d probably be happy with it.
Now I work with CAD models, rigs and animations. Multiple scenes, shots, artists and other logistics, the story is completely different. In what I will call a medium sized scene. Lets say 10-15k objects and 40-50 million polys, Max is usually coming to a halt over and over again. Feels like 10-20% of the day is spent looking at Max stuck at “not responding”. The tools that are supposed to optimize your workflow often just make it slower. Adaptive degradation? Can be much slower on than off. I had ONE x-reffed scene the other day. It took me roughly 5 minutes to open the X-Ref Object window. This makes no sense to me. Click an object? Select a modifier? Double click a node in the slate editor. Max often just hangs for maybe a minute. These are not compute heavy operations. While I do appreciate work is being done here, I’m wondering how it got to this point? Seems like the competitors, like Houdini, have the whole UI running in a separate thread, not being affected by poly count, rigs and such. And even then, you can disable cooking to make sure you have no slowdowns. X-refs are still pretty much a mess with dealing with presets, and even breaks if you do changes in the scene you’re referencing. Which isn’t that, to a degree, the whole point? My team doesn’t dare to touch state sets. If you’re not careful you might break the setup, and undo doesn’t work. Hair and fur? Pflow? Slate? Nitrous? A few of the bucket full of features not being developed and kept up to date.
So while I’m one of those that most of all just want the software to perform well, and have the functions working on par with the competitors – which I’ve now switched to and have no issues! – I do understand the majority of users’ underwhelming feeling of not getting both bug fixes, improvements AND exciting features at a major release. TyFlow seems to be developed by one guy in comparison, which makes the latest releases look even worse.
youre replying to someone that describes your work as “cool monster and spaceship battle”
the people in charge of 3ds max dont “truly” give a damn where its going.
and to those paying for 3ds max, youve been getting pimped.
i didnt know slate material wasnt original from autodesk.
3ds max as a main mograph tool? name 5 companies?
MAX is Dead!!!
good chamfer modifier, reminds me of this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hvusH1QrRc
Impressive. Blender continues to amaze. There’s some real innovation going on in and around that software. I’ve only tinkered with it for a few minutes, but that was enough for me to get a sense that there’s some real passionate and thoughtful development going on. Finally, a competitor that Autodesk can’t buy and kill. I donated to the Blender foundation, and I suggest others do the same regardless of what software you currently use. Autodesk needs the competition.
I think Blender is growing strongly however I find that the main render engines for instance are not fully developed to the level of their peers for max or Maya like Vray or corona and also redhift is not even compatible with blender. I think until the big companies pay attention to blender and think about it as a serious and professional software , blender will not be more than a software for enthusiasts. Honestly the limitations for blender are the big companies that provide software or plugins that are used in professional environments and are well established.
Redshift are developing a Blender plugin right now.
You need think again how about a real time render that looks like Vray or Redshift? Blender is ahead of the game and people are sleep while they get their money robbed from autodesk. I left autodesk months back for Blender and the link down below shows you what true develop of a nextgen package looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q09wNDtAtVE&fbclid=IwAR3xXs8mejerFvqmMi-M0xSdbNERBBi5XOi5mLM2P92IPsPTL2dr-livi2c
So cool. That’s definitely the future, at least for my current industry. The quality is there, and being able to model, assemble, animate and near real-time render within one app is a huge time saver. Most artists can’t handle the back and forth of working with a game engine, but they can all appreciate and benefit from having the immediate feedback of real time rendering.
Max was so close to this years ago with the amazing viewport technology, but it was left to languish and die on the vine like most things in Max. Everyone went nuts for Maya’s “viewport 2.0,” and when I tell them Max had that almost 10 years earlier they’re dumbfounded.
wow, I didn’t know about that plugin. Very very cool. Definitely going to get that.
Its not a plugin its built in blender
If it’s built into Blender, why is it for sale on the Blender Market and Gumroad for $40?
I think he understood you were referring to the racing car video that shows Eevee.
MESHMachine is for sale in the BlenderMarket as you saw 🙂
A new Chamfer…
Look at Eevee, Tyflow, Project Lavinia, Substance Alchemist, and Zbrush, Houdini …
What happened Autodesk ? Why did you let us down ?
We saw different max 2020 versions? New chamfer….
5x faster rig evaluations. Overall 20% speed increase in scenes. Up to 4x make preview, with a rewriten interface. Osl to hslv realtime conversion, making working with osl shaders up to 200x faster. 14 new osl shaders. Improvements on revit import …. and yes also a new weighted chamfer with presets, crease set supports and insets. And this is 3 month after the last update that brings activeshade to the viewport.
Sure Im an Fx artist and from this last update my “only” benefit is the performance boost, and faster make preview. But from this to making this comments about the news ignoring 95% of the improvements, I dont know in what helps at all.
I really wish there was a publicly available list of:
1. Seats of Max/Maya overall.
2. Percentages or number of seats being used in what area of 3D (even if that was just an educated guess)
Might be that those numbers are hidden somewhere in a 250 page report, but I´m too lazy for that…
But that would make it easier to make an informed decision about what exactly to complain about.
Ever since I started doing 3D (which is only about 8-9 years), there have been “prejudices” as to whether which software package is “best” for which area:
1. Maya for animation.
2. Max for games and archviz and modelling in general.
3. Houdini for FX
4. Cinema4D for motion graphics
5. Blender for hobbyist (sorry…;)
I don´t think there has been a massive change in that perception/reality yet.
And from the beginning I have been told, that, in theory, you could still do everything with every package and its just a matter of preference and possibly skill/experience (some stuff is just harder to do with the off-the-shelf tools)
So thats what I´m doing with 3ds max now…
However, even though I´m doing mostly stuff in one area, I keep running into situations, where I´m missing things in Max, that are mostly being used by other areas.
And some of those things have been lacking for a loooong time and I just can´t make any sense of it why.
I was guessing that they are just incredibly difficult to do, but then tyFlow comes along, being developped by ONE guy and then I start thinking about hidden agendas and innercompany politics.
Honestly, I don´t know what people want. Do they just want ONE package to rule them all, that excells in every discipline? No one scared of THAT monopoly? Apart from the fact that it might NOT be the one you are good at and then you´d be royally f—d in our competitive world?
For me, I´m just lazy. I don´t want to learn new software for everything my package doesn´t excell in (for 3ds max that is mostly simulation/FX and moGrapgh stuff).
So I´m happy I can just use plugins that still feel like my package, for a lot of those lacking areas, even though it seems unfair that houdini has all of those features WITHOUT the need for more plugins.
And of course, every plugin adds to the overall price for 3ds max…
So the more other packages start closing the gap in the areas max excells in, the less attractive it will be to stay with max.
Also, a lot of people complaining are probably lacking the in depth experience of other packages to see how they excell and where they lack.
From the tiny experience I had with maya for example, I couldn´t tell why its supposed to be better at animation than max at all (supposedly better, if its not just due to its history)….
Actually. something like this might be a good starting point to give us a better idea of how 3ds max is being used…:
https://idatalabs.com/tech/products/autodesk-3ds-max
Maybe, but a lot of those companies will buy collections and you get Max even if you never intend to use it. You can bet that a huge firm like Gensler has a few thousand installs of Max that never get used.
Maybe, but they DO have a lot of archViz projects on their page, so it might be true after all, that max biggest user base is ArchViz these days…
yup. all the future development for max is for archviz period
so lets stop pretending its not headed there.
read the replies u guys are getting from autodesk.
@samuel
It is important to note that they are NOT an arch-viz firm but a billion dollar architecture and design firm. The only way you’re getting a rendering from Gensler is if they are also the designer. Even then they might outsource it depending upon budget or client direction.
The point is that 10,000 installs of the AEC collection at whatever firm does not equal 10,000 Max users.
I’m surprised that some of the Max developers like Martin and Jon still participate in threads like these. So kudos for that. There is not much to say and very little to gain apart from blame and insults – and I doubt it’s part of their jobs to do that.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.
Coming here is not part of my job. I come here because I’ve been part of the community for a long.. long time.
As Martin said, coming here is also not part of my job. I’ve been a part of the 3ds Max community since 1996, and I like contributing to the discussion, too.
Do you guys have employment contracts? Do they have non-disparagement clauses or other conditions pertaining to social media? Or are you “at will” employees who can be fired at any time for any reason?
RIP Max, I doubt there’ll be anyone attending the funeral tho’
At this point my 3ds max wishlist is short:
1.) Bring back perpetual licenses.
Oddly enough that is the only feature I really want at this point.
Mediocre– Immortan JoeOn the topic of too few improvements per release: if you look at the new timeline page at https://area.autodesk.com/3dsmax-timeline/ dating back to 3ds Max 2016, you can find these major enhancements:
2016 – MCG, OpenSubDiv, Camera Sequencer, physical camera, Alembic, TextPlus, heatmap skinning, Text/shape map
2017 – high DPI UI, physical material, scene converter, new booleans, blended box mapping, data channel modifier
2018 – Arnold, motion paths, new spline tools/modifiers, 3ds Max Batch, Fluids
2019 – OSL, shape booleans, project management updates, Arnold RTT support, ActiveShade viewport
(there is more but I tried to list those I consider most relevant)
My biggest concern with all this is not so much the amount/speed of improvements but the notorious abandonment of features in a semi-finished state without further refinement (e.g. MCG, Camera Sequencer, TextPlus, new booleans, motion paths, fluids, just to name some more recent ones, there are many more legacy ones). Such tools really should grow in depth and functionality over time, but instead many are never touched again (except for bug fixes) for a very long time.
Actually it looks pretty good to me. In my experience Max has been getting more stable so no complaints there. I really like the new Revit import options, that alone will save me hours of work. Sure it’s not perfect, but I don’t know of any software that is.
Add to the list of “the notorious abandonment of features in a semi-finished state” Viewport Canvas, this was a great idea, being able to paint inside 3DS MAX.
They could have made some sort of a substance painter, they even had superior tech with Mudbox, but noooooooo they just let it die…
What’s the point of having Max, Maya and Mudbox if you can’t share tech and features ?
Even Blender has some decent painting and sculpting.
I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense.
We are starting to share more. I guess really the first step of this was Fluids.
Martin, here’s the thing, you introduced fluids into max (a work in progress one) when most have already migrated to phoenix FD which is superior in every sense of the word to whatever fluids you are yet to do in Autodesk and by the time you upgrade yours, PhoenixFD would be upgraded to version 4.0 with even more features.
Sorry the way I see it is that your priorities are all screwed up. You DON”T Put resources to something that your consumers can buy as a plugin for a few hundred if they really need it and ignore the core issues in a software regardless if its been at the top of the demanding list (a list that was made prior Phoenix FD was a thing). Instead you focus on the aspects of a software that really need attention and cannot be replaced by plugins and those are, Cloth! (at least improve collisions and make it multithreaded!, Rigging! spline IK shortcomings! Character studio Biped upgrades! Muscle system?, Skinning improvements please!! Voxel and heat are a joke no one ever uses them. Introduce in Max what you did for Maya.
Double precision (you guys realize that this last one alone is a huuge deal) I am still amazed that max is an architecture friendly software when anything greater than a few hundred meters brings it to its knees!
Forget fluids Martin, forget smoke forget fire, forget osl shaders, forget VR seriously who the hell uses VR in max? Timmy?.
The only two things that can be called validly exciting on that road map are tear off viewports and boolean improvements loong overdue, even Boolean ops are going to Zbrush these days but i welcome them in Max especially if they are going to be as good as the ones in Modo/Zbrush.
No disrespect Martin, you probably don’t call the shots at Autodesk.
Fluids have been a highly requested feature, they responded with fluid integration. So maybe blame the users requesting those features? Some people are sick of buying plugins to get Max working the way they want it out of the box. Especially with Chaos Group jacking up their prices. We use Phoenix FD here, but if I could get away without using a plugin that will likely see a substantial increase in price, I would.
I blame both, for the users who are shortsighted or inexperienced enough to demand something from a software company which can barely deliver one let alone a full fledged system of fluids instead of demanding that which is absolutely vital and needed (character tools for one, modeling tools improvements for two, pflow for three). and I blame Autodesk for conveniently choosing to go down a path they know they can’t compete with available market options for any serious artist who pays one time fee for these plugins and ignore the core more demanding and responsible elements that need the attention. It also takes a good mature judgement to do so which they seem to not have or neglect.
I need fluids I buy PhoenixFD and never bother with a plugin again for 5 years.
I want to render I do the same with Vray.
I want particles I’m stuck because thinking particles subscription is worse than Autodesk, So fail here.
I want character tools forget about it doesn’t exist, there was bones pro now its stagnated in development and Maya has 5 skinning methods last i checked and yet it takes 3 times that time to skin an identical character in max. Did I mention no muscle system?
I want cloth, I can’t go anywhere else I am stuck in max running on one thread since 2001!
…
All valid points, but again, I simply don´t know what exactly the problem is here…:
1. Too many different user bases with too many different needs to even remotely please them all?
2. Bigger focus on bigger user bases? I think the loudest complaints are coming from the generalists (multithreading, skin, cloth, pflow, rigging), I rarely hear ArchViz people complaining that loudly about missing or outdated features…
2. Too much focus on profit and thus not enough money dedicated to development (the “greedy company” theory…;)
3. Innercompany politics (focussing some features on one package while pushing others for the other one).
Its not that I don´t understand the symptoms, I don´t understand the cause…
Although I also get the point about the plugins…It really doesn´t make sense to me to release a feature, when there is a far superior plugin out there, that does the same, but much better.
I get the point about investing in the development much much earlier and trying to play catchup now being a problem.
I also don´t get, why core features like multithreading, Xref or state sets are still such a mess, especially if you are depending on plugins for a lot of features. Those should be important for ALL industries.
The problem I have with “it doesn’t make sense to release a feature when there is already a plugin available that would do it far better”
I mean in itself the argument is valid but we’re looking at a software package that for a long time stayed stagnant in comparison to the competition. So the community went ahead and created plugins to add to the feature set of 3ds max which is fine and dandy.
But with that in mind and looking at “there is already a purchasable plugin for that” the price for max keeps increasing each year when innovation is being done by the competition and user base.
I think people who want to do fluids stuff use other packages or plugins with highly specialized options…i miss the announced complete core rewrite in 2011. Rework skinning, wiring, rigging, boolean and all the other basic stuff people need in their daily workflow.
@guest
sorry bro, you make valide points but they are all ignored, no replies whatsoever from autodesk.
lets leave martin alone, hes proud of his “chamfer” improvements. its not an attack, but u did say u are proud of it.
whats the use of one of the developers coming here to reply when their priorities of max is different from the majority here on this site? my guess is damage control.
you guys are really the minority users of 3ds max. so u only get minor “improvements”
u got joe here, a developer of 3ds max calling your work “cool monster and spaceship battle”
How many people does the Max Dev team have?
This is a marketing statement not a roadmap per se. I read between the lines and I can see “please don’t abandon us, we want your money.”
Nope. This IS a roadmap.
Did you guys come up with the roadmap for user requests?. I doubt.
I can see detachable viewport is there. Is one of the biggest user requests, for example.
Is there anything on the roadmap you like?
Why are they showing released stuff, is that how road map works? more than 60% of the features listed there are existing ones
They had one but somehow years of feature requests had to be nuked when they switched to a new system.
It is a roadmap without a scale so you have no idea if you will get somewhere before the death of the universe.
The detachable viewport request has got to be old enough to vote by now.
Underwhelming.
I have been a 3ds user since msdos and I currently run a school about 3D, animation etc. I have used 3dstudio and MAX a lot … but a lot a lot. I think this is a long ending for Max and maybe for Maya. Let me explain:
The change in the education policies of Autodesk causes private schools to be considered studies. There is no educational license at an educational price like the rest of the companies (See Modo, Cinema4D ..) In this way, we must pay a seat education at the same price as production. For a school that is unfeasible. € 2000 Year / Seat is crazy. They think that they will learn to use MAX in the university at an important production level, when this business has always been in small / medium schools. Private schools are migrating to Blender mostly and the students ask more and more about him and less about MAX or Maya (in the 90s they were only 3ds, max or Softi).
Why do we want to teach software that costs so much when students do not take advantage of it or their news hardly influence the base of a production? They only innovate in specific things that nobody uses and end up forgetting interesting ideas like the sequence editor … It never worked, or the viewport Canvas. In the end I am surrounded by twenty-somethings who prefer to use other software that gives them less problems and more advantages in what they really need.
Apart from that, the new features … seriously, nobody uses them. At least at a level that justifies that price and that abandonment to the user. Nobody uses ART and its wonderful dragonflies, or the dinosaur for interiors that is Arnold. People use Vray, Corona, Octane … it’s amazing that you open MAX and you are by default our beloved Scanline, which from MAX 5.0 and lighttracer, has not advanced anything. 30 years with Scanline on the cover. Even Mental Ray (snif) was more useful than ART.
I do not understand how Autodesk is distancing traditional schools, ignoring users, raising prices, innovating in nothing … I do not know.
That’s why I think that roadmap is the end of the road.
It’s just my opinion and I do not want friends like Jon or Martin to feel attacked … but understand that after using my favorite software for more than 20 years, they have thrown me out.
Very well said.
This is just a QoL update, nothing more. I love 3DS Max, don’t get me wrong, but this is barely worth the hour it’s going to take to install and week of updating plugins.
Hi guys,
Same here. The new max team is doing great efforts to improve customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, their hands are tied by a board of shareholders. Even if those people really want to make significant leaps forward with max, perhaps they even cant because of budgets and all.
All I can say is to stop complaining and ranting and take action by changing your pipelines.
This year I will switch to Blender/Houdini and render my scenes out in Clarisse.
Cheers,
P
To sum up, autodesks will not miss every opportunity to disappoint you. Squeeze toothpaste as usual, or describe ” constipation” more accurately, because their developers are really limited, they can do a little bit of everything but can’t do anything well.
Seeing all the post after a MAX release it seems a bit like “Groundhog Day” to me:
https://cgpress.org/archives/3ds-max-2019-documentation-reveals-new-features.html
https://cgpress.org/archives/autodesk-has-released-3ds-max-2018-to-subscribers.html
I guess something will change when I see no posts after a new MAX version is announced (because nobody cares anymore).
I’ve seen that every second Max update tends to be more about stability and speed, and not about features. No problem with that, since the sum of updates per year are still pretty decent. But I’m wondering if these smaller Product Updates could be doing more harm than good? A major release now (such as 2019, 2020 etc) is actually more like a Product Update, but with an included version change. That seems to be a tricky thing for users getting accustomed to.
Here’s a tip, do like me and update every second version, then there’s a lot more new stuff to play with 😛 The update process is such a hassle anyways, with all the plugin installations, shortcuts updating and getting every single macroscript back in!
I have yet to do download and install the update, but the speed improvements are really tempting! I am really looking forward to see if there are any updates to rig playback – which is my biggest issue with Max now as a character generalist. Anybody done any rig testing in this version?
I’m glad I’m on maintenance and not on subscription, I feel the maintenance price is more appropriate for this specific update, at least when you don’t know what’s in store for the PUs. I’ve been happy with the Max updates these past years, love the GUI update for example, but its a shame Autodesk is pushing users on a subscription that’s twice the cost. Anyways, we’ve been on that topic before…
Now it’s time to completely re write 3ds max, from scratches, with modern prog languages.
Lets put a few people like Tyson Ibele on a pay roll and lets do it! the entire 3d max community can afford it! A software that it is fully compatible with max but it is not max, it is better than max!
Photoshop – Gimp
Nuke – Natron
3dsmax – 4ds…
🙂
Gimp… hahahahahahahahahha
Unfortunately Natron is no longer actively developed
#Bullshit 2020