Autodesk reveals Max 2022 Update 1 features
Jun 16, 2021 by CGPress Staff
68
|
Autodesk has announced the release of 3ds Max 2022 Update 1. Features include:
- Performance improvements to Smart Extrude. In previous releases, there were slowdowns when performing a “cut through” on models with many faces and vertices with Smart Extrude. According to the documentation, meshing operations are now much faster when merging or cutting into geometry. Restitching of intersection operations has also been improved.
- The Smooth modifier has been updated so that it now clears all Normals and Smoothing Group data when it is applied to an object (or a selection).
- Modifiers the perform a mesh deformation operation and use Explicit normals have seen a performance boost of 2 to 4 times. These include Skin, Path Deform, Bend, FFD (all types), Mirror, Noise, Skew, Taper, Twist, Affect Region, Linked Xform, Melt, Skinwrap Patch, Spherify, and Surf Wrap.
- The updated Symmetry modifier now has the ability to adjust the weld threshold used to merge vertices along the cutting plane above or below the 0.01-unit default threshold. This enables artists to fill gaps along the mirror axis in models with gap geometry.
- Editable Poly and the Edit Poly modifier gain two new Optional Culling selection filters, Backface and Ignore Occluded, allow the user to select the components (vertices, edges, polygons) that are visible in their view. Hence, making it easier to select visible components only and preventing you from unintentionally selecting components that are occluded from view. These options replace the legacy Ignore Backfacing toggle. The Target Weld and Bridge poly functions also now perform better with these options enabled.
- A new option exists to restore 3ds Max to Factory Settings using a button found in the General Preferences tab. This has been added to correct unexpected UI behavior or performance issues. Also new in this updated is a feature that allows 3ds Max to detect if initialization has been corrupted in a way that prevents it from launching. In this eventuality, a Startup Failure Detection window now appears.
- Importing models using FBX now supports Vertex Colors from a broader set of sources.
- Legacy Noise Maps have been improved with better multi-threading.
- Improved viewport mesh calculations means users will see faster viewport and rendering calculations when converting mesh data formats to GPU data formats.
- Retopology Tools 1.1 is now included as a part of the main install of 3ds Max 2022.1.
- Fluid Loader has been updated to help VFX artists properly expose Particle ID data.
- Vertex Paint has been improved so that sub-object component selections can now be passed up the modifier stack to the Vertex Paint modifier.
Find out more in the 3ds Max roadmap and the 3ds Max Online Help.
Still nothing on animation.
I’m out!. Blender it is.
The release of a (point version) update is what put you over the edge to leave and go to Blender?
20+ year Max user here. Your scripts make Max super fun and artist friendly for motion graphics and such. It would be sweet to see you port them to Blender. ;P
I’ve considered porting a large portion of my tools to both blender and maya 🙂
Come on John bro we need ya in the Blender Community your a force to be reckon with.
Having Joker Martini, Clovis Gay and Marius Silaghi develop for Blender would be a major boost for it.
Can we get a Like button to upvote this?
We cloud start a kickstarter for this lol j/k As John, clovis and Marius are all busy guys but it would be great to have their tools on the blender side.
Have you seen blender point releases?.
I think autodesk should just be clear with max users on what they want to do with max, and what not.
Or…when should we be expecting even the most basic improvements in any of the animation capabilities in max.
After years now, they can’t even implement what’s on their own roadmap for animation.
i have not, i do agree with you that the point releases times have been lacking in features. If you collectively put together all the plugins built for 3ds Max in a given year, and compare them to the features and things developed in house, that would be interesting to see. I imagine the community produces just as valuable content as the in house devs do.
The saddest part about it for me, is that I’ve been hoping all these while.
Now I realize years have passed that I could have invested in another software. Time and money.
Even the modeling that is teased, is still behind maya and blender.
I saw a colleague retopologizing and unwrapping in maya, and I felt like a dinosaur.
What exactly is MAX exceptionally good at?.
What did they update for animation?
Well, people have been saying along the lines that major releases aren’t as significant as they used to be, and you have to take point releases into account.
So if the major releases aren’t doing what you want, and the point release isn’t either, I can’t really blame them.
Some update focus on fix more. Some focus on features more. 2022 and previous update had many new features.
Watch out for the door on your way o…uch.
same here
Jesus, i’ve tried modeling in blender yesterday, sooo clunky compared to max. Adding edges, moving, extruding, all feels so baaaad…I was expecting something better. So much praise , so great, max years behind. And then ….so much amateurish clunkines in the tools.
When I first started I thought that too.
After pushing my self to use blender for 2 weeks and not touching max going back to modelling in max was slower..
Try getting Meshmachine boxcutter/hops and take your modelling into overdrive.
lasercut, hardmesh,smooth boolean, auto retopo…hardmesh beats all plugins You mentioned….
lol lasercut better than boxcutter? honestly? come on bro lol
How is smooth boolean these days? crashing much?
Same here a few weeks ago with Blender (for Artists, a customized Blender fork) – very uncomfortable for me – but imo it’s always a matter of habit, since in Cinema i felt the same… and Cinema is for sure a pro soft!
Yep, it’s cool till you use it and feel the amateurism behind. For creating a 20 mesh assets, it’s ok. If you need to do a 2000 mesh asset with a complex structure, the software is simply not even thought for this. And the lack of dynamic element highlight in the viewport is so annoying.
I think these perfomance updates affect and boost animation by a lot. What exactly do you miss on animation?
Better skin morph, new constraints like in Maya for creating better facial rigs, easier too, new hair and cloth solutions, new deformers etc.
Let them innovate.
What does Maya exactly has? It is Maya user who are innovative.
Seems like as long as Max is in business Blender users feel less legit. As long as there is Max, Blender is a tool for hobbyists.
The bottom line is that studios would rather pay for Max instead of using blender for free. There is no greater statement against Blender than this. this is also why Blender users are constantly commenting on “leaving Max.”
The edit poly “occluded” feature doesn’t even work unless you click one vert at a time. Make this make sense.
Animation ?
Pretty good list of improvements.
As soon as I saw the headline I went, probably a Chamfer or Extrude update. lol..
Sure enough…
You must be a psychic!.
So you have people whining about tools not being updated and people whining about tools being updated…
And the most funny, its sometimes are the same people whining for booth. XD But yes we have some areas in max quite forgotten, FX and animation need some serious rethinking.
There are no “wow “additions. But the 20X speed performance on smart extrude, and the 2 to 4X performance on over 10 modifiers, its worth enough the update for me. The Fluids loader exposed to particle interface its a very good one too, meaning we can pick now in tyflow or any other particle system fluids simulations from 3dsmax without needing to export prts.
One important fix on this update its the “Perspective match”, that was broken before.
Exactly! FX and Animation are forgotten over a decade now! What could CAT be in the year 2021 if Autodesk wouldn’t have bought it and stopped the hole development with it…2012 was one of the last films mainly created with Max …since then Max got more and more forgotten in this field :-/ … To day, not a single student of mine is interested to learn 3ds Max… It’s now an old man’s tool without any sex appeal 😉
To bad, it’s still a great tool and in dire need of a revival!
ANOTHER CHAMFER UPDATE WTF??
so sad to see such utter shite happening here. what about animation tools. Such a joke, the devs are so lazy sitting back raking in the big bucks rolling out the most minute updates.
In the bullet-point list above where does it mention the chamfer update that caused you to complain in all caps?
chamfer update is an inner joke. he means unimportant stuff. I think there was a year autodesk just updated the chamfer tool as an annual update.. “the chamfer update” phrase is a legacy from that year.
It’s an insult. You can’t be serious…
Haters gonna hate. Try something innovative complain.
Great work, would be great to expand smart extrude to the level of that in zbrush! Good to see old max recieving som autodesk love at last!
I really would like to see if CG-Press staff would add more good links, images and videos into their news posts. There is a lot of convincing material out there which shows the power of these updates very well.
Feature wise this is not a great update. Hopefully they got something cool lined up for next point update. However the improvements to all the existing modifiers (last update had plenty as well) is a very good development. It’s perhaps not the greatest marketing material, but this stuff is so useful for production work, especially the updates to vertexpaint and smooth modifier are very important. I feel they are finally catching up to work that has accumulated over the years. Max has so many great features already, that improving what is already there is sometimes better then adding new stuff.
Don’t hold your breath. We’ve been hoping for years. Before you know it, you become an outdated artist.
‘Hoping for years’ and ‘before you know it’? Nice contradiction…
Beside Extrude Boolean and Retopology modifier are the best of all destructive modelling software (that excludes Houdini). Two features introduced in the last year. The modifier stack is still a preferred dynamic modelling method, so making those multi-threaded and improve performance is a big deal.
And finally, if your artistic output depends on using the latest features all the time, you are doing something wrong. It’s nice to have Maya’s animation tools, Houdini’s data transfer and simulation versatility, Blender’s innovate mix of features, Cinema’s UI, but you will always have to work with sub-standard tools somewhere. Max has it’s issues, but so does every other software out there.
In the 15+ years I’ve been working in the industry, every studio that I’ve work in, supplied nearly all the big modeling software packages, max, maya, zbrush, blender… With that said, one reason I find remarks people make like “I’m leaving 3ds Max for…” unnecessary. It’s rare that I’ve seen any production solely use 3ds Max to do a complete project. Most of the time I’ve experienced multiple dcc’s being used.
Each app brings something to the table that the others don’t. At the end of the day, it comes down to how fast can you do your task ($$$). Yeah there are nice bells and whistles in blender that max or maya may not have, I would still put my money on 3ds Max that a generalist will get it done quicker in 3ds Max than any other application.
I Agree with you! I would challenge anybody on any other software and I guarantee that 3ds max generalists leave everyone else in the dust and achieve amazing results! I think we should all do a CG Generalists Live stream tournament deathmatch 😀
I think it comes down to $$$, yea in the past studios have thrown the cash at software for employees because those were the tools that were needed to get the job done.
However with many artists are now picking and running with blender I would imagine you can get the job done with free software so we will have to wait and see the effect this has on studios in the next few years…
Also lets not forget students that are jumping into the industry are not interested in learning 3Ds max at all.. this will have a big affect on the industry too I predict? Every industry needs new blood, new eyes and innovation and its just going to be hard for max to stay relevant in the future unless there are some big changes
What industry? sometimes people tend to forget that not all work in the world related to 3d are vfx. Archviz as “industry” its still orders of magnitude bigger than vfx, and here for what I see people are still interested in 3dsmax by far. Blender can be a more natural choice for small boutiques/freelancers. On studios, what I see so far is that studios keep adding tools to the pipeline (not ditching them), no matter if they are free or paid.
Completely agree with you Eloi.
To a extent Amazon studio uses Blender for man in the high castle. Gearbox , 343, Avalanche Studios have all used Blender in their pipeline ect. Also a lot more Arch Viz pros are heading to Blender because some of the tools set are much better. For example look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNZGM2XAGw8. Archipack is one of the fastest and best tools for Archviz out there. It runs laps around 3ds max stock and some developed tools. Don’t get me wrong i’ve been with Max since they were Discrete working in max 8 but time have change and Autodesk is nothing more then a greedy company putting out sub par updates were Blender its a community and Devs listen to the community even the Scripter for Archipack which is what enhances a tool making it better. Autodesk just give you what you think you need or what they see on the market thats trending. Good tools are made with constructive feed back something Autodesk will never do.
I dont think everything on the other side its greener. Sure blender its advancing in a good peace in a lot of areas, and I think will become more and more used for everyone in any industry for certain jobs. But all your last part of the post I feel its totally the opposite.
Tell that to anyone stuck with blender 2.79, because the huge regression on edit performance after blender 2.8, that they start to try to fix now. If focusing on a fancy viewport over performance is not “focusing in what its trending” I dont know what it is. If this happen in 3dsmax will be a 500 reply thread in cgpress. 3dsmax for the last 3 years has been focusing A LOT in robustness, performance, stability. Sexy to showoff? Not much. Useful on a day to day production, totally.
I’m not happy with the management and their approach into railroading people into a subscription based service. It doesn’t seem like an ethical company to hitch your wagon to.
The arch-viz market is like a cash-cow that Autodesk is milking the a** off.
Thats what the Blender LTS program was created by the Blender foundation.. Most tools for 2.8 work in 2.79. Blender files are forward and backwards compatible where in max its only compatible to a degree. Yes 3ds has been focusing on performance, stability etc. Though blender has too. In such a a manner that unlike max where autodesk just puts a bandage on it an calls it a day. Blender foundation does rewrites to improve the code and keep it clean thus having less crashes. Sure Blender crashes but not a third in terms of how max crashes. 3ds Max hasn’t had a full gut and rewrite of code since the project Excalibur which happen in 2011. Max will have its place but it won’t evolve in the way it needed to and who the old Max team wanted it too before autodesk took over. Now its the investors controlling what they feel you need and not what you need. Thats one good thing about the Blender community they listen and give the community what it needs and if they can’t do it people who are technical artist do. Browse the blender market sometime and you understand.
3ds max crashes 3 times more then Blender? Care to share what statistic that is based on? 3ds Max should be very stable, if not, your doing something wrong and should contact support.
Also max scripts are fully backwards compatible. Unless you use new functionality that does not exist in older version, but I don’t think you can script for Geometry Nodes in Blender 2.79 either. You are kind of misrepresenting what’s possible in 3ds max.
Blender LTS
“Blender LTS” ??? that is an argument? Please write in full sentences. Also, source your claims.
1.- he is not talking about maxscripts, which is obvious that are backwards compatible since it’s interpreted scripting, the only small changes required are the ones provoked by changes in the API, the same goes for Blender addons.
2.- He is not talking about max plugins, which are not backwards of forward compatible IF there has been an API change, mainly because they need recompilation, something totally normal, and while in Blender is something rare to see, when there is an upgrade in the Python version this is required for those that are done with C-Python or Cython.
3.- He is talking about .max scenes, when you go to Max 2021 you can work in a scene and save it, now the question is, can you open it in Max 2020?
No you can’t.
Now you can say: I can go to Max 2021 and go to file save-as and save as “2020” compatible, but then you need Max 2021 to open it, if you send such a scene to someone without Max 2021 they won’t be able to open it.
It would be pretty logical that new features appear as “unknown”, like when you open a scene that has a plugin that you have not installed, but at least you could access rigs, geometries, and other things as long as they don’t use the new feature set.
But no, you can’t.
What about sending the file to someone that still has Max 2017?
You can’t, since Autodesk decided that you should be able to save as only up to certain version.
What about selling the asset? well you won’t be able to prepare the asset to be widely compatible with as much max versions as possible, AKA: using 2015 as base or at least 2017.
He is referring that you can go to Blender 3.0 alpha, open a scene, modify it, save it and return that scene to someone working in 2.79, and that person can still open the scene, in the rare case that the required feature is so big and deep in the scene that could cause some instability, you can always append without trouble.
He is referring to this.
Regarding crashes: I won’t argue this, it’s absurd, if you are a max user you would know how much times max has crashed on you, if for you is super stable, awesome.
I expect you have been working with Blender releases too to experience the stability level of Blender (releases).
I have worked with both, and with betas fo both, and I have my own opinion.
Now, regarding all the rest of the conversation, if you like Max, if you agree with Autodesk business model, or if you need it for any reason, awesome, go for it, not going to argue about “max being better/worse than Blender”, it’s absurd and has never been my “fight”.
The “fight” is with the abusive behaviour of Autodesk, enforcing rental only, being in control over your business since they can decide whatever they want and you have to comply, them being de-facto owners of your work, since you cannot access it if you don’t pay them, them eliminating perpetual license holders even when they said they were not going to do so, and some other pretty things Autodesk has done.
You agree with all this? Work with them 🙂
You are forced to work with them? The you have no choice, sadly you are supporting all this, but you have to.
You dislike the disgusting Autodesk behaviour? I don’t understand you if you still work with Autodesk software, don’t go Blender, but look for alternatives because there are out there.
In any case, it’s your choice and you may have MANY reasons to keep working with Autodesk even when you dislike them, just put a clothespin in your nose and go on.
Not sure what you are referring to when you say you cant save from 2021 to 2020. I just saved a file in 2021 and opened it 2018. It gave me a warning I had Retopology modifier in the scene, but everything got loaded in correctly except the modifier, which was released in 2021.
What is bad, is that you can only save 3 version lower. So you have to version-juggle your way down from 2022 to 2016… For that you need access to all different versions which is not always the case. That is probably a corporate decisions and very annoying. But it is possible.
3ds Max is back-wards compatible. Maybe not to the same extend as Blender. But then again Blender version 2.79 was released in 2017. Blender 3.0 in 2021. Max default support is close to that regardless.
So you saved a file with save as, as a 2021 .max file and opened that in Max 2018? Are you sure?
Or you went to save as, saved the file as Max 2018 specifically?
Because that’s exactly what I was mentioning.
The main problem is that you need access to a 2021 version to save the file as an older version, so if you send the file to someone, and that person only has 2018, that person won’t be able to open the file or even merge it’s contents.
Sorry, I should have said Blender 2.xx, the backwards compatibility on blender is astonishing.
The Edit poly occluded feature doesn’t even work when you try to select more than one sub object. How did this get through the dev team?.
This is really embarrassing.
I see how supposedly paying max users are finding it difficult to compare max with a free software like blender.
Blender is better in leaps and bounds.
When max team decided to do something about the viewport, I was like, finally. Perhaps, we could be heading towards evee. Alas, it stopped there. We can’t even see displacement in viewport as you can in Maya viewport 2.0.
The road has ended for max where I’m concerned.
FYI.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/stackthis/permalink/1450069428672882/
As a 3DS user for 10 years its great to see them improving the baseline product and not just adding new fancy flashy features. It-needs-fixing and they are doing that. Once its at a better modern level then they can add new stuff.
I would like to see an additional update to the chamfer…. an auto detection and welding of generated edges that intersect.
Point releases feel like a cynical way to deflect from the lack of innovation and, for want of a better word ‘ambition’. ‘Never mind this one – it’s just a point release – there’s more to come’
When I think of the words ambition and innovation, it’s hard to put the word Autodesk in the same sentence – except adding the words ‘lack of’.
said,scared and jealous blener user:)
Projection much?
projection what? I have blender 3.0 on my desktop, no need for jelaousy. It’s slow, clunky so i prefere to model in max 2022.1 :D. Have maya also, and zbrush. All paid by company:D
To be Honest I love how much I learned and grew with Max, Maxscript was my first programming language and Particle Flow, TP and the stack were gateway drugs to procedural workflows and eventually to Houdini and to develop my own tools for the studio, Max’s workflow is flexible and fast and in those days development seemed unstoppable, that is until it stopped of course…. we started to be mistreated and ignored as users, I get that Max has the numbers in other industries which seem to be far less demanding in terms of features, but the statements and actions taken against it’s user base are near Orwellian, hard to believe, even harder to defend, still after 10+ years of using, defending and tying the software to your identity it’s really hard to switch, for me and the studio the switch happened over 3+ years and now in hindsight I see the Software as still good, I really like the updates and there are some tools that seem useful, pluginsphere still is amazing… still is expensive, I can see why it still triggers such passions, at the end of the day you make a huge bet when you learn one of these softwares and you don’t want to feel like you are betting to the wrong horse, so I get it.
What I don’t get is, if the company that owns the software is objectively terrible and has developed such an abusive relationship with it’s users, why would anyone willingly submit to such treatment, why would you put your time and money with people that have a track record of lying to the user, abusing the user, etc. Why would anyone willingly give them the benefit of the doubt.
It doesn’t matter if the software is good(I think it is), we are in an industry that has a wide offer, and I get that switching is hard and that sometimes people have to use the product, but if you have ownership over the choice… why?