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These videos are absolutely rubbish and only shows off menu’s from a leaked beta build. It is not the latest version and not official videos, just someone trying to harvest youtube views from an old download.
Yeah … but at least we know that Maya will be coming with BiFrost (as it appears).
I searched the net and found about this leaked beta and some people who downloaded said there hasn’t been much change in 3ds Max apart from some new operators in PFlow.
For me I would actually prefer if 3ds Max was faster and more responsive.
They are so bad at marketing. Who ever thought this would be cool as a “Sneak Peak” has no clue.
Joe: don’t play unfair – those videos are apparently produced with the above mentioned leaks and in no way connected to anything Autodesk wanted to Sneakpeek for their 2015 releases…
I agree with Spacefrog,
by the way, videos are no longer available.
I’m sure there will be some official underwhelming videos in due course.
one thing that caught my eye was when at the end of the maya video he opens the about maya dialog and you can see t-splines and also rhino mentioned as trademarks, you have got to be kidding me, i’m coming to the conclusion that the law of the land at autodesk is that as long as you are maya we’re going to give you everything whether you really need it or not, and if you are called max you won’t get sht even if you really really really need that sht!
max is the one that really needs better nurbs and sub-d modeling tools, maybe they are package blind? that explains a lot, they probably think that they’ve also put bifrost in max, poor things, IT’S THE OTHER ONE GUYS, MAX IS THE OTHER ONE.
Enough of all this nonsense about new hires saving the day at Max. I’ve pretty much lost all respect for people involved with Max at Autodesk– -that used to be reserved for the higher-ups, but now it’s clear that everyone from top to bottom is just blowing smoke and trying to get people to keep renewing their subscription.
Watch this space one year from now, and I’ll be you a sandwich Perlberg (or whoever takes over in four weeks) will be on here talking about how Max 2016 is going to be full of goodness, just like Frank D who basically lied directly to me.
It’s a joke, and the people forced to keep lying about it are becoming jokes.
There is one tiny addition in max, to the populate system. You can now setup seated people…. I know!! Still no stairs up and down (at least from what I can gather), but seated is happening.
Jim, please keep your comments free of personal arguments against people here. Do not take things to a personal level. Thank you.
Regarding your bet, I’ll take it and raise it to a toasted bread sandwich. Considering Tom Hudson, Eddie Perlberg and Martin Coven are involved, we’re bound to see some changes coming up.
Jim… I’m not a fan of the things Frank D did or more importantly didn’t do for Max at the time, that’s to say the least, and I don’t know what he has told you, but at least he has kept true(or so I’ve heard) to one thing he said right in this blog, which involves a certain feature he said he’d like to see in all of their products, that’s all I’ll say about it…
Well I’d say wait and see..
Chances are the new hires were brought in well into the next release cycle, gotta give them a fair chance..
As for the vids, I’d love to see some official ones pop up for Max, Maya and Mudbox.. C’mon AD, send us some teasers 😉
The best tools for modeling in max are those written by one person as a plugin, and now are part of software. Paint connect, swift loop, conform tools. Why don’t they hire this guy to boost 3ds max.
His input to max is incredible workflow-wise and in terms of usability.
I tried retopo with 3dcoat, modo, topogun(?)
and 3ds max kicks ass, but that’s not gonna last with such lazy politics. Not to mention crappy inconsistent interface and lack of consistency among tools.
At the least, it appears something will pop up. The latest and strong rumor is that Softimage is gone after 2015 and I can’t really believe it.
Quotes from si-community.com.
“There are some tweets from people around that have been discussing it, here is one of them:
https://twitter.com/sanders3d/status/438453216498688000”
Guys from London big studios … and we all know London is a big Softimage place.
And http://area.autodesk.com/expertchallenge#ask … no Softimage in sight this year.
There’s also some declaration about the why of Maya LT, but it has been edit. I should have taken a print.
That Softimage dies in 2014 rumor originally generated from someone on the softimage mailing list. It was not well recieved in that forum of course. If it now proves to be true ( and i slowly tend to believe it ) this sure is a big issue for all the softimage fans …
BTW: totay Autodesk presents its Q4 earnings, maybe it’s no plain coinsitence that the rumor appears now – maybe some investors already got a summary of whats on the agenda prior the official presentation…
Forgot to add that the rumor i was speaking of has appeared about 2 months ago, if memory does’nt fail me …
I must say this time it feels very very real. Lots of people on the community complaining about it.
Anyway, if that is confirmed … I’ll say bye AD and hello SideFX. Because if that happens with Softimage, I’m pretty sure 3ds Max will be put aside as a viz toy and all game and film development will only be focused on Maya.
As was hinted with the creation of Maya LT.
But don’t the guys at Autodesk have it great? Now everyone is saying “Well, these are new guys brought in between cycles..”
So AGAIN Autodesk gets to slide, and to find out if you’ve been fooled again you have to renew your subscription.
If I were Autodesk, I’d do this for the rest of eternity…release mediocre updates with tiny tweaks, change the team, and then suddenly no one can be angry because “Hey, these are all different guys!”…very convenient.
All the great people you mentioned now work for the Max team, and so they have no more power than anyone before them.
Honestly, wasn’t that EXACTLY the ploy with Frank DeLise? Bring in someone known to be popular with the Max crowd, believed to be a big supporter, and then suddenly people believe things have changed and they resubscribe. But of course you can’t expect good things in Max 2014, because he’s just joined. Then POOF! he’s gone, and here are new folks known to be fans, but they can’t be held to any results because they just started….as far as I can tell the hiring of those people will have ZERO impact on the product, and is just meant as another PR move.
Next year in comes Gary Yost – but don’t expect big things right away, because….
Well, that depends if you’re on subscription or not. I also never really believed that Frank would influcence much, there are decisions made which are out of the product manager hands.
It was still disappointing that he seemed to be just hired as a recognisable name, then shifted sideways. But Autodesk seem to be more creative in disappointing me than in innovating in Max.
I let my subs lapse when they screwed about with subscriptions, and nothing I’ve seen since has made me think that was a bad decision.
An upgrade now costs 70% the cost of a new seat, even for one upgrade.
Come Feb 2015, it will be the cost of a new seat, so there’s little incentive for me to upgrade until they make it worth my while. The longer I leave it the better value (relatively) it is for me.
Like you, I’m sick and tired of the constant WIP of new hires, give them a chance etc. With the upgrade policies Autodesk can no longer punish me any more for holding back. It’s down to them to actually make an upgrade/new purchase an attractive option.
The rate of development, it’s at least going to be 2016, possibly 1-2 releases after that before I’d even consider it.
Steve – you’re a smarter man than I. Thinking about it, I should just start skipping subscriptions, and if I start feeling bad about not being loyal to Max after 20 years, I can just put the money in the bank…and by the time they finally stop jerking us around, either Max will be dead, or I’ll have enough to pay full for the newer version.
NewProductManager: Hi, I’m the new product manager. We need to add fluids to 3ds max
Autodesk: We can’t
NewProductManager: Why?
Autodesk: We don’t want to invest in this…
NewProductManager: Ok, then lets add bullet
Autodesk: Can’t…
NewProductManager: Why???
Autodesk: We’re moving to clouds…
NewProductManager: What?
Autodesk: To cloooouuuuuds…
I’m not sure smart had much to with it, just a feeling of alienation by autodesk made me question why I kept paying them.
There’s a quote from the Investors meeting
“[At the minute] they [customers] buy maintenance and they buy upgrades. Well, you know what? In a little over a year … they’re not going to be able to buy upgrades any more.”
“This is a logical change. It’s something we’ve been conditioning the [user] base to for many years. We’ve been making it clear that maintenance subscription is the best way to stay current [with our] applications. So as of February 1, 2015, they won’t be able to purchase an upgrade any more.”
When they talk about ‘conditioning’ that’s when I just want to walk away.
Oh man … this talk about ‘conditioning’ really pisses me off also.
It won’t piss you off once your conditioning is finished 😉
People keep talking about fluids not going in because of cost/investment, I have as well….but based on Perlberg’s recent posts it’s become clear to me that it has more to do with product differentiation.
So great news! They are going to continue to deliberately keep Max inferior for film/VFX so that it’s clearly differentiated from Maya!!!
If you bought Max for film/VFX….tough…buy a suite…To me that is so annoying, because I didn’t buy it for ArchViz, or for Design, and I sure as hell didn’t buy it for “General 3D Purposes” — they fought like heck against Maya and others, then once they bought Maya Max lost for VFX…
pathetic…and the worst part is, as shrill and annoying as all my complaining likely is to them, their accountants are going to hate it when we STOP complaining.
Well, not only film and VFX. Games is also a lost sector, and one of the most rentable sectors around.
I don’t have anything against Maya per se. I even like it … but I prefer using Max and Softimage a lot more than Maya. So, looking at the competition, I would rather go to Houdini than transition to Maya.
And they keep talking about VIZ. I know that aside from architects, everybody that works, as a single user/generalist or a small studio is changing to Modo or even Cinema 4D. So they are also loosing ground on this. Better wake up.
Anyway, let’s wait this cycle to have a clear picture.
Houdini is definitely a better option than risking a move to Maya with as insane as Autodesk is acting. Learning curve, but it has all the toys. I think they are assuming that if Max is allowed to rot, people will just take it or buy the suite, but I’ll just add another seat of their competition.
I certainly don’t think that Max is at the ‘Weekend with Bernies’ tribute act that they’ve done with Softimage – yet.
I can’t see myself ever shifting to Maya either though.
This really shows the frustration of Max users. A little video with hardly any content just gets peoples blood boiling. The thing that annoys me is that everyday people come up with great scripts and plugins that really show the potential of max. But from Autodesk we get half assed tools that dont play nice.
Haha ROFLMAO “conditioning” that is a load of crap, it is more like “lets see how far we can push before we irreversibly piss off a majority of the userbase” That’s is how I read it anyway. Playing head games with your users is a dangerous game.
I am really curious to know how adobe is weathering their change. It doesn’t read well to me and I hope I am right. They keep trying by offering “more enticing” plans, first it was one year price lock, now it is up to three. LOL If they get to 10 I might actually begin to consider it.