3ds Max 2021.1 features revealed
Autodesk has updated its documentation to with details of what we can expect in 3ds Max 2021.1. Headline features include improvements to the Bake To Texture tool introduced in Max 2021 which, in addition to various usability improvements, now supports outputting Multi Tile UV Mapping (UDIMs) and animated maps.
Fluids have been updated and the Fluid loader is now exposed so that object types such as particle systems can work with the data. Motion Blur is now working more reliably thanks to a fix so that the velocity channel now reports correct information when not using meters as your default scene scale. Finally, PRT now supports a signed and unsigned integer values (but must be activated using .ini change).
Modellers will be interested in new interactive extrude and inset tools. This feature allows the user to extrude polygons by holding down shift while using the move tool and inset polygons using the scale tool. The existing clone behaviour is retained, but you must now use control plus shift and drag to perform this action at polygon component level.
The viewport has been further refined so that depth of field effects now affect the environment map. Other improvements include a fix so that vignetting scale is now the same value as defined in the camera, support for Matte/Shadows materials in the viewport, and the ability for each view to have its own exposure, white-balance and vignette settings.
Arnold sees an update too with an AOV token system, animation support for Alembic, increased shader spinner accuracy and Bake to Texture support for the projection of normals from high to low resolution, normals spaces, and Mikkt.
Other improvements include support for multi-threaded processing in the Weighted Normals modifier, explicit normals are now preserved when performing several common operations, the new simplified PBR materials now support displacement, Shared Views now supports Physical materials, SketchUp model importing has been improved, improvements to the Slate Editor on 4K monitors and the Search field now allows users to perform global search through all materials and maps in the editor, the ability to view UDIM textures in the viewport when using the Bitmap Lookup OSL shader, instead of just viewing one as when using the Multi-Tile map, plus more.
To learn more about this release, visit the 3ds Max documentation. We will update this article once the official announcement has been released.
The viewport improvement is near completion with the matte/shadow preview.
i’m happy about that.
Also UDIM support and modelling improvements are a nice plus.
However, nothing on bifrost or animation yet.
Gentlemen!
Let the rants begin!
I stand beside you.
compared to Blender, this update is …..
Autodesk gangnam style.
uugh. So hard to recommend max anymore. As user since day one, these updates have just become depressing.
so true 🙁
I’m just going to say that I hope they are wrapping up with all these viewport and chamfer updates and start focusing on things that really matter to some of us and that is the animation/rigging/skinning/muscles and simulation notably improvements on cloth.
Forget Particles Tyflow is on its way. Can Autodesk do anything close or better? I’m not sure? If they can will it come at the cost of animation tools then please don’t!
You already have an Arnold team constantly updating the thing and the rest of us use VRay.
For those who want scattering there’s forest pack.
For those of us serious about VFX we got Phoenix FD or Fume, If Autodesk can implement something to challenge these, great, but if its going to come at the cost of animation tools, again please don’t bother.
Really guys all, I feel everybody is somewhat satisfied or has alternative plugins with all these updates for max except us character artists, that tool set is really left behind.
Yes I agree, I was using some rigging scripts and they havent been updated in ages and those guys have moved to maya, so the developlment is over. Maybe if they just developed CAT that would be great.
1 – improvements on CAT would be great, improvements on morpher modifier and easy building of scripted facial rigs (similar to XRAY CAT plugin).
2 – Cloth improvements: At least make this poor bastard multithreaded.
3 – Muscles.
4 – Spline IK improvements.
5 – Animation layering system similar to CAT but works anywhere easily.
6 – Skinning needs a complete make over its archaic!
Improvements on animation is very important:yes. As it is a lot of things you forget or ignore. We dont have color management in max yet. I am an fx artist and I dont agree about we have most things covered by plugins, some things needs to come from max, its not acceptable that we have to need up to 3 plugins for instancing at render time and each renderer comes with his own solution, we need a unified system coming from max that will benefit users in multiple areas. And like that… in any area. So yes animation tools i provements are needed, but as well much other things in other areas.
What do you mean by color management? (I’m a generalist btw so all tools are equally important to me that includes vfx).
Also yes instancing would be great if you mean something like forest pack, but I suppose implementing such a tool is relatively far less of a serious task than the character tools. I’m sure Autodesk wont have any problem working on both instancing and character tools should they want to.
color management, like… OCIO or similar, they are imprescindible on any big pipeline. Forest pack does instancing, but because max has not a native instance at rendertime, forest pack needs to adapt to each renderer. Then you have problems where every renderer needs to give support to each particle system in order to instance at render time, instead of a global solution like in houdini with packed geometry, where all renderers just give support to the global option defined by the main app. then you get rid of problems and incompatibilities.
Not saying one is more important than the other, but this things ARE important, as much they can be an up to date character system, and because its affecting every area of use for 3dsmax, its affecting even more users.
I see you mean things like OCIO or ACES etc.. But aren’t those a little all over the place, they are not yet very well understood or integrated in many studios including ones i work with. Maybe it helps to make the workflow more unified but I’m not sure the time spent setting it up and then setting up render and textures to match those and convert them back. Its just too much hassle unless they come up with an automated way.
Also their usage on pure 3d work is still questionable maybe its better used for live action plate integration stuff.
It’s funny, I’ve used Max for many, many years and still occasionally make the mistake of trying to Shift Drag to extrude polygons. Would be hard going back if I ever get to used to this workflow.
Are these changes worth the download and risk of upsetting a working 3ds max setup? For me, nah. I’m sick of paying subscriptions when Max 2020 – heck even Max 2014 did all that I need.
“All that I need” is subjective. I could never go back that far. I have to use 2014 every once in a while to convert old scenes, it’s not enjoyable, especially if you are on 4k displays. I’ve grown accustomed to the newer Path Deform, Normalize Spline, and other little things that would be missed. Kind of like trying to go back to Photoshop CS6 to get off subscription, you really notice the changes when you actually use the updated tools. Granted, I’m still using 2019 for most projects, only due to nPower not updating their plugins for some reason. And I’m not against stopping at 2021 since that will be our last maintenance license before being forced onto subscription. That might keep me going long enough for Blender to iron out the CAD imports and a workflow supporting the organization of more than 20 layers, and thousands of objects better.
@badbullet Once a software package has matured, the incremental steps are less impressive and the argument for subscription gets weaker.
What I’m saying is that ‘for me’, I’d rather stay on max 2014-2015 and keep the subscription money for other stuff (£1400 a year for 5 years adds up).
Now we’re at Max 2020, it’s annoying as heck to pay out subscriptions for updates I don’t care for or need. I have a Max2014 perpetual licence that I can’t use!
I move from max 2016 to 2020 at work. With very heavy scenes, heavy pointcaches, huge number of xrefs… some tests I did I went from 2 fps to 20fps. Opening curve editor from waiting for 1 minute to open to be in less than 2 seconds…. this things even they are not a “revolution” for sure make me more productive and worth it (for me), but everyone has different needs obviously.
@David: “Once a software package has matured, the incremental steps are less impressive and the argument for subscription gets weaker.”
This isn’t true at all in my opinion, just look at the update for each new release of Houdini.
Every time, I’m really excited about what’s new. Though I’m not saying Houdini is perfect (far from it), nor comparing prices, I’m still really hype every time, but I don’t get that kind of feeling with Max for quite some times now…
And I’m not even speaking about SideFx Labs (formerly Game devs tools), which are delivered on a regular basis, and brings a lot of good tools.
Worth moving from 2014 to 2020+ for sure. But not from 2020 to 2021 etc.
2020 is suuuuper quick, snappy and more efficient compared to 2014.
I’m grabbing the popcorn for the 100+ comments.
There is one important update for MXS. Don’t miss it!
http://cganimator.com/3dsmax-2021-1-custom-default-parameter-and-the-manager/
Ohh this looks nice. I don’t know how much time I’ve wasted altering the defaults every time I use it. Cylinder height, smoothing angles, this will really speed things up.
Fingers crossed the update fixes the VRay/Custom Defaults Switcher bug.
Make MAX Great Again！！！
Don’t or it may be fcked as America.
America got fcked because of Autodesk like entities or individuals. If the emperor was in charge he would’ve fired Autodesk CEOs and managers and truly made Max great again!
It’s hard to stay motivated with Max updates. I personally have recently stopped using Max and have migrated to blender.
Blender just released 2.83 with a nice cool video to show the new features.. it feels alive and on fire.
The updates on the Max side are simply to slow compared to the open-source competition.
Viewport updates are nice but too late, I have been using blender now for 6 months and don’t need a max eevee viewport.
For modeling I find workbench viewport much better than Max viewport..
Yeah blender looks incredible, I’ve been considering the switch for some time now but I’m still not there.
How is your blender UNDO? Is working? How is Bledner edit poly performance, 20 times slower than max? Stop your funny propaganda.
Undo has been fixed. Performance has improved considerably in 2.83..
Undo was improved but it’s still slower than Max. I would say it’s on par with Modo now.
And still 20 times slower than max’s…If you use blender simply don’t troll max news. Crazy blender fanboys became nothing but annoying and boring. Last two versions of max are great and full of big features. And that’s why blender trolls attack. Funny you dont attack Maya news, you simply see Max as competition for your saint blender. Just use whateveer you want. But stop trolling.
i didn’t spend 15 years of my life using maya so I can’t comment on maya news.
I still love 3Ds max, and for sure in some areas its much better than blender, but the big difference is blender is free and getting updates much faster.. it’s not if it will replace other software as industry-standard, its when.. open source is unstoppable and for everyone involved having a free open source 3D software as good as blender is only good news.
Definitely but if there was only blender as 3D software, what a boring world would that be.
Options are always better.
For sure, hopefully Autodesk realises how important it is for the sustainability of there software, to have lower entry requirements ($$$) to use.
No, undo has been improved in 2.83, not fixed. Now its half usable on simple scenes, still slow and crachy on any medium scene.
Yet, slower then 2.7x. That’s progress.
Blender is not perfect but improving faster and FREE that’s the point.
And if you model in Zbrush, do vfx in houdini indie and export everything (even fluid sims now thanks to openvdb in Blender 2.83) to blender for render with Cycles, you have a very cheap solution that beats everything else in term of price versus quality for sure!
If you model in 3ds Max + 3D-Coat, do sims in PhoenixFD and render in Cycles for Max, it’s even cheaper. 😉
I always feel reading this forums that most 3D artists are broke, since free is always what you look for the most. Don’t you guys make money? Are you charing too low?
If it’s a business, you should be able to pay for the tools, specially with Indie becoming worldwide soon.
@Mauricio
How about professional people who want to make high-end 3D art as a hobby at home or improve their skills?
Think about the cost of 3DS, RC, FP, V-Ray, Corona, Phoenix FD Adobe, Substance + all the scripts and other plugins that are required etc.
I think people would much prefer not having to blow large amounts of money away just to be an artist.
3DS Indie is the only thing that has saved me from switching to Blender.
Hey JMB,
I totally agree with you.
I was talking specifically about professionals who switched from Max to Blender for client work. I also do hope they are investing in Blender as it needs money to develop.
I’m starting to like Blender a lot too. At first it was weird but now its growing on me. But one thing that I don’t like is the blender boys. Its almost a religion. Let others users whatever they want. I don’t even go to blender forums as I don’t have the patience for this attitude. I miss a nice community forum like the old Modo one or Max underground.
Like I said before, a world of only blender as 3d software available would definitely push me away of 3d.
If you’re a proper artist, you make money with it. From this money you buy your tools. If you’re not a good/proper artist, you make no money, and you don’t get to buy tools. Very simple.
Moving around and managing data “IS” the money. I rather use good proven renderer than free Cycles.
Blender 2.83 was released today !! That is an update ! Take that Autodesk!
Undo now takes 5 seconds, super fast:D
Main menu bar contents no longer appear white and inconsistent with dark UI styling. Quality!
Here’s an idea. Autodesk please launch 3ds max Lite, a new perperpetual licence for those of us happy with the tools necessary for archviz / visualisation – and don’t need n-th degree tweaking of the peripheral toolset.
The closest you’ll get is an indie license. Perpetual, let alone a slimmed down version, will never happen. Sure there was gmax years ago and they used to split up 3ds Max into two flavors, which was a horrible idea…it doesn’t pay to develop two apps.
I do not know which is better – a blender or 3ds max…
TyFlow for 3ds max is fantastic, it’s convenient to use, quickly, and new “OpenVDB” like Houdini’s have also appeared, beta remains for free.
Because it is the same “OpenVDB”, SidexFX didn’t develop OpenVDB. Dreamworks did.
so, is there a new roadmap?
Hi! In my opinion max doesn’t need so much new features, cause max allready has an extreme huge range of functions. The main problem is, that Autodesk doesn’t keep these functions and features up to date or develops them. So they are outdated and slow and don’t use the benefits of new technologies. The almost biggest disadvantage is that so many functions, features and tools are still not multithreaded f.e. Maxscript. I know max comes from a time before multithreaded computing was state of the art and that its not so easy to change that that overnight or write a software new from core, but lot of time has passed until now and the programm-parts they made multithreaded are still to less for such a big software studio. Max is a good tool and thanks to many excellent plugin devs, its very powerful with the right collection of plugins. The great accessability for plugins is definately a part of max’ philosophy and i think this is good as it is. The problem regarding this is that max is just too expensive for beeing a plugin container. Another problem is that there is no non-commercial access to the tool f.e. for newcomers or personal learning. In older days much young people who wanted to join the industry used cracked versions. But today there is no need for for beeing criminial in that case and take all the effort of bringing it to run. Cause there are free tools like Bender or Houdini with its full NC Version. I think Autodesk underestimates the importance of that. Also there are less young people who propagate max as influencers and make it attractive to other youngsters. Another point is, that many 3D people don’t really know the range of functions max offers and start complaining too early, cause its not intuitive and many things are well hidden and Autodesk does not enough to presentate and explain the possibilities in a modern or viral way. I could keep writing the whole day …
So thats my 2 cents. Greetings!
Many good points and observations here.
The point is, if max’s BIFROST is released in the next version, all disputes will end!
Autodesk don’t make tools for the user, they provide bullet points that the stock market will respond positively to… which would be great if the stockholders were animators?