3DS Max 2014 features revealed
Mar 27, 2013 by Paul Roberts
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(Updated) A complete list of new features can be found on the Max 2014 online docs.
In advance of the official announcement of the upcoming release of 3DS Max / Design 2014 at its “Unfold” event, Autodesk has updated their website with many of the new features. These include Populate crowd simulation, significant improvements in interactive and playback viewport performance, an augmented Particle Flow system (Box 2 & 3 integration), vector map support, DX11 viewport rendering, a new perspective match tool for aligning CG elements to photos, and the ability to pan and zoom in a camera view without affecting the camera’s position. More information about the new features including videos can be found on Autodesk’s website, or watch the Unfold event live at 5pm EST.
In advance of the official announcement of the upcoming release of 3DS Max / Design 2014 at its “Unfold” event, Autodesk has updated their website with many of the new features. These include Populate crowd simulation, significant improvements in interactive and playback viewport performance, an augmented Particle Flow system (Box 2 & 3 integration), vector map support, DX11 viewport rendering, a new perspective match tool for aligning CG elements to photos, and the ability to pan and zoom in a camera view without affecting the camera’s position. More information about the new features including videos can be found on Autodesk’s website, or watch the Unfold event live at 5pm EST.
Source: Julian
This must be the poorest release ever. That’s all???? This is not new version, this is .1 release at most.
My thoughts EXACTLY!! OMG…
there’s not even any mention to CAT Improvements if any…
Does someone Know if at least max 3013 plguins will be compatible with 2014? or do we have to wait ALL over again for re compiles?!
Haters gonna hate…
this is new version or new small upgrade pack ?!
“the ability to pan and zoom in a camera view without affecting the camera’s position” this is one of the more important upgrades ?!!
autodesk M&E developer see any new updates in modo 701 or houdini 12.5 ?
this is more like a joke !
PTEX??
Very funny….
Is that all the stuff we asked for in the “feature request” page?
Is it April first already?
It’s not just MAX, Maya and Softimage are equally bare on updates
http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-maya/features.type-new
http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-softimage/features.type-new
@Robert Freitag
Exactly…
I post on the Autodesk forums, and when I thought this release was sad everyone acted like I am crazy…this release MIGHT be more stable, but it’s basically Autodesk admitting that they will NEVER even BOTHER trying to catch up with the competition…including FREE products like Blender!
That’s why they buy out the competition. One day they’ll own the remaining independents, and charge us subscription costs just for the priviledge!
Innovation will be nothing more than a word in the dictionary.
There’s an additional video not listed in the Autodesk info page:
State Set Enhancements
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us75Wz3_SgI
So the really impressive feature is the new AD logo? OR the co-marketing deal with HP?
Haters gonna hate… paying several thousand dollars for what must surely be a joke.
autodesk pls give 3ds max to other companies for develope before complete die ….
It’s impressive to see how much money AD have put into the new logo and the new advertising campaign. It’s a shame they haven’t spent so much on the software they sell.
Yes it’s poor and yes it was expected (as it was last year). The day Autodesk started ‘subscription program’ (support). That day started to milk the product and most of investments in the product stopped. So recommend all users not to invest in subscription but wait till you see a valuable new version. A version like this is not worth a $300 for an upgrade.
@antonio “A version like this is not worth a $300 for an upgrade.”
If only it was $300! Subscription is now listing at UK £880 inc. VAT (US $1329!).
Just two hundred bucks shy of a new seat of Modo. Oh, decisions decisions :p
great to see that they dont care about uservoice requests
…look at the top 3…
“Refreshing layer manager” … Nov 21, 2010…
or
“A fully node based scene editor”….Feb 14, 2011
read this on Modo Website:
“Based on community feedback Schematic View has been refined in many areas, including improved visual feedback, reduced UI complexity and easier navigation of detailed node networks.”
Really disappointed by the “new” features.
I also find this awfully dissapointing..
Here seems to be a more complete list of the new features:
http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/16/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-AA81EA1A-B4E1-4B47-B3AE-7C4AD62E24FF.htm,topicNumber=d30e3789
Looks like MU should change its name to Modo Undergraound since all the Modo lovers come here,
oh yeah !
modo lover,blender lover,houdini lover,maya,softimage,cinema4d and etc lover
many of the max users now disappointed and desire to other package ….
Modo.
Again Modo guerrilla.
Each time Autodesk makes bullshit, Modo is the ultimate solution for all problems.
I miss almost the times when Blender Fan-boys were hanging here around, they were at least communist-like ideologists with clear, humanistic objectives: Modo costs money and as such the advertising in MU smells…
Grass is always greener on the other side. I attended Mudbox and Softimage events and you should have been there and have seen how angry and disappointed their users are. Specially Softimage users. Also we use Lightwave and Modo at work and they are not produced by Autodesk as you know.
To give you an example, comparing number of crashes and bugs you encounter inside Lightwave and 3dsmax, max loses 1 to 15 for sure. Though Lightwave is great for handling large scenes and it’s render is fast and easy to setup and have a great node-based material editor. In the case of UI Lightwave is horrible (You don’t even have an UNDO in many cases). And Lightwave Modeler (Lightwave has two seperate tools for modeling and layout) comparing to other packages is a crap. But look at shiny feature lists and ads around the web and bullet dynamics and the price and you would say “OMG this is so cool! WHY WOULDN’T MAX HAVE THAT!”; please keep calm.
Or Modo for instance, yeah it’s modeling and UV tools are cool and the UI is innovative (I love it’s UV) and it’s improvement are much more visible in each version, yet you can’t completely rely on it as a complete package for doing your projects. Except for Arch-Vis and motion-graphics IMHO. We usually use it for editing models and painting textures and maybe sculpting and then send everything back to Lightwave to render it.
And also look at how Maya users are angry about bugs and crashes.
Except something good and expect it from Autodesk. But be more realistic please.
and a side note, No matter which software you use, bugs and crashes are here to stay. And if you’re curious why, I’d recommend you to study some basics about programming and algorithms.
Thanks pixelerator7 for your post of reason …
Smells of what?
I don’t have Modo, I stopped at Max 2013 because of the bullshit around subscription extensions last year.
From the examples I’ve seen of Modo’s particle system it looks pretty good, and it’s developing at a quicker rate than Max is, whereas Max just seems to be shifting things around, breaking features and repairing what they’ve just broken.
It’s not some conspiracy to promote Modo (or C4D or whatever) – More dissatisfaction with Autodesk and Max, and it’s about time there was some competition.
Them owning 3 major DCC tools is not a good state of affairs, by the looks of it, that is likely to kill off the most promising one the way they’re stifling softimage.
I agree with pixelerator7 and with guys that follow the development of all the autodesk softwares…it’s not only max that is soffering for the new autodesk directions…
honestly I’m going to stop my subscription..it became unreasonable and I think it’s the only way to make autodesk understand the disappointment of users….
where is the XBR project last step?!?! they promised node based max but they just keep on intgrate 3rd parts pligins or just very simple funcions…why they don’t invest in directions like Genome? or ICE?
exist new directions to take but they look reluctant to do it
It’s so disappointing that they’re pulling this – whether with just Max or their whole line. A while back I put together a rough history of feature adds, and basically Max has been dead for years while other, hungrier companies actually advance.
I’ve been with 3DS/Max since 1990 or so…based on some statements by Frank Delise I bit the bullet and renewed my subscription..probably the single worst business decision I’ve made in a while. The only thing of value I really got out of it is that I have at least learned to never trust Frank or AD on this stuff. To hell with subscription renewals – the other poster had it right: even if it costs me more for a single upgrade if I’m not subscribed, at least I’ll know what I’m getting…and at this right it will likely be years (if ever) before they’ve added enough to make it worthwhile.
You can not judge Max 2014 when it’s not even released. For me the stability and performance gains are well worth the upgrade alone. Of course i don’t know what bugs will rear it’s head after it’s out in the wild, but over all the latest build ( which is not the final release version ) is performance and stability wise really a great 3ds Max version, seperate from judging new features.
@Steve Green: what version of Max are you on or plan to use ?
You expressed your happiness that you canceled subscription and thus will not update to Max 2014. Well on my end i can say, i’m glad that i bit the bullet and bought again into subscription ( which i do not plan to do again when nothing in 3ds Max’s development rate changes).
There has been work on specific code areas during this cycle that really shows and i’m happy that i’m able to update to 2014. 3ds Max 2012 and 2013 are perfomance and bugwise nothing i would use in production currently, but 3ds Max 2014 looks like a good candidate for taht ( in my eyes of course)
I’m on 2013.
An upgrade would cost $3500 because of their new insane policy and seeing how they treated subscribers last year, SI users this year doesn’t give me much faith in the company.
It’s more than just what the features are in a particular release.
I see, yep 3500 for an upgrade would be insane. Are you aware about the 1yr subscription grace period for $100 ( at least i hope that’s still possible ? ). Please note : i don’t want to talk you into anything here nor am i a sales person, jsut wanted to mention it …
Last I looked the grace period was 60 days or something in the UK, not sure if that’s changed.
At the moment I don’t even have the money for renewing subscription anyway this year.
Even if I did, I doubt I would – it’s pointless complaining about a direction being taken and not doing anything about it.
Re the “Grass is always greener”, I know and I’ve preached the same mantra for many years myself. I’ve been using Modo for the past year, for rendering mostly (I don’t like Modo’s UI, it’s like a bloody maze of poorly labelled hard-to-find options), and I’m very close to saying **** it time to change.
A stable Max would be a great thing, and spacefrog’s right it’s far more desirable than new features. But I’ve been using 3DS since version 1 and I’m just exhausted. We shelved using Maya+Motionbuilder 8 years ago because we couldn’t get the artists at the time, and I despair over that sometimes.
Now price is becoming more of an issue. Some of us are really struggling at the moment – we lost three Max subscriptions due to an accounting screw up four months ago … cost-cutting cut the wrong costs without asking what they were lol. Dumb, but it’s put us in a very uncomfortable position…we’ve got to have that conversation with our reseller.
The problem is, being a Max user – and being an Autodesk customer – just doesn’t feel very nice. All I want to do is make stuff .. I don’t want to have to live through that “next year’s version is going to be much better!” crap while paying while I wait. Oh well. Maybe this rental stuff they talked about in the earnings call will come about soon – we use a lot of short term contractors, so there’d certainly be a nice benefit to not feeling tied to year-on-year commitments.
It’s nonsense to desire more stability for your’s money. This is AD problem to remove all mistakes they done in code.
Let’s say civil engineer make a mistake and say to people “Ok guys populate building but it has a problem in stability and can collapse. I do some improvements in construction but pay me more money”. If he does this he will be capture in prison,
Stability it’s not a feature at all. They MUST remove reasons for crashes and old mistakes for free. This is just a politics on non responsibility of own product.
the only case i see is stretch development to eternity.
So Archi. A client comes to you after 5 years and shows you an error in an animations you did. Would you fix it for free?
Аll I can say that we have a choice. There are Blender (fast and free), Silo (good modeler), Modo (cheaper than 3d max), and also we can use old version of 3d max.
Autodesk not earned this money. They sell a unfit tools. They will not get my money.
@Archi
Well, yes and no. Yes we shouldn’t be paying for things to work out of the box, but it’s not quite the same thing a civil engineer has to deal with, unless you know one that’s been adding to the same bridge for the past fifteen years. The more add to the exterior, the harder it is to make changes to the foundations, and I think that’s a fair assessment of what’s going on with Max at least. Bad foundations. Hence all the UI changes (few of which have been greeted with enthusiasm) and viewport (cough, Nitrous) issues in the past couple of versions.
So yeah, bad management, bad decisions. Perhaps they’d have been better off simply re-writing Max from the ground up – and maybe not doing it in Windows as the core OS. Who knows…easy to second guess, harder to put money where your mouth is (and that includes subs sadly).
They have integrated Box #2 and Box #3 into the non-subscription version of Max 2014.
This must be worth something.
Still the plugins I own cost way more then 3ds max 😉
@pigott – yes box2 & 3 is a GREAT addition, and also further adressing pflow performance!
I understand and partly agree with max users frustration over Adesk, for sure 3dsmax has a lot of annoying issues.
But its no different from my colleagues using Rhino, C4D, Lightwave etc.
IMO – Artist behind the software luckily still means a lot
@Christian Saying it’s no different doesn’t really make things better though. It’s like losing a leg, and being told “oh well, look on the bright side, I know someone who lost an arm”.
Ok perhaps that’s a bit creepy and not the best analogy, but the sentiment is that Autodesk aren’t in this for the products, they’re in it for the users. The fact that they’re in a position where users are telling them so loudly what they want (and that’s just going to lead to lots of mixed messages), feels like a company that’s not in control of it’s own business.
Compare *all* of the 2014 release information – New Features, Improvements and Fixes – to the Houdini 12 announcement one year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zgDTYW1WXYM
Ironically for me the content is the least important thing in that video. What I see there is a vendor that’s also a developer first and foremost. They want and need our money as much as anyone, there’s still a business model, but they approach it responsibly and professionally.
It seems that compared to SideEffects or Luxology, hell any of the independent vendors, Autodesk are simply stuck. They have more pies than they have fingers. There’s a lot to be frustrated over, and it doesn’t feel like something that could only ever change if AD actually bought itself out and became independent again (unlikely).
Maya users are equally disgruntled and XBR has proven to be a dud after years of empty promises. The only hope is a brand new core rewrite of a single ADesk 3d app. Too bad XSI got gobbled up, thus ending any incentive for them to innovate.
pretty sad release, I’m still on subscription – it is up for renewal in June 2013 so i’ll get 3ds max 2014. At this point i do not think i will renew but i want to try 2014 before deciding..
I also have Modo 601 and 701 is quite tempting.
Autodesk are playing a high risk strategy pushing people toward suites they do not want or need and making single subs 52% more expensive than in 2012 (UK). Whilst i do not do everything in modo currently it is my preferred render option over mental ray or iray.
Are autodesk making an ‘off year’ for their 3d apps hoping they all jump ship from subscriptions only to put out a stunning 2015 release and get them all paying 70% rrp to jump back on board? VERY hard to believe but i’ll put it out there!
what to do?…
I’m a 15 years 3dsMax user. I’m so disapointed with bugs ans crashes, that i do the switch with C4d height month ago, And I can tell you I’m happy now. I don’t want to make comparison about fonctionalities.
But what i want to say is : YES it’s possible to have stable software. During height months of use I had two or maybe three crashs, and really not much bugs. One of the main reason of 3dsMax (and now Maya) unstabilty is, among other things, the lack of testing due to the frenetic ryhtme of releases.
I think developers do what they can, but Autodesk POV is financial. Nothing else.
It’s nice to see other people going through the same thing as we are here. I just wish Max wasn’t so fully integrated into our pipeline. Our whole studio would be in favor of switching to almost anything else. The longer we use Max the more we just feel pigeon-holed into subbing for the next release, hoping for fixes and much needed features… what are we even doing?
I wish AD could help us with the answer.
Has anyone been tracking ADSK? Here’s a link to there yearly trend. https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:ADSK
ADSK Overall is up. This mean Carl Bass’s strategies are working. At lease make money.
If we all bought one share of AD stock. Then we could attend the stock holder meeting and get are points heard.