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What’s that? Not a single proper question or question at all about animation, rigging, skinning? Oh wait there is one question about skinning directed at Thomas. Please allow me to give Autodesk a proper answer since Thomas didn’t provide a good answer for that one.
Answer:
Oh yea we need a total revamp of the skinning rigging system inside Max. you see guys, while you’ve been busy with some retopo tools and USD (things I consider to be important but not really deal breakers because at worst we can always jump to another cheap or affordable or even open source free modeling program to Auto-retopo quickly or to import USD and export back to max. What we cant do is simply jump into another program to skin, rig and animate without buying a full blown 3d package and learning that one from scratch, such as Maya) So as you can see we have a serious character tool problem inside max.
1 – Skinning is slow and cumbersome, its archaic tools are not keeping up with the competition out there.
2 – Max interface does not help skinning interface: I can’t see all the bones being skinned because i am forced to look at a tiny drop down screen with a scroller instead of proper large window fully customizable to display all bones and tools.
3 – Skinwrap while a good tool is still slow and hasn’t been touched in decades. Furthermore it gets buggy and un-attaches itself at times on higher res objects.
4 – Cloth hasn’t been touched in decades and still runs on a single core!
5 – I was busting my balls going back and forth from motion builder to max again when I have biped that could do more but hasn’t been touched in decades.
6 – CAT hasn’t been touched in decades and its interface layers also need customizable window as well as bug fixes and features added.
7 – Guys we don’t have a proper working spline IK yet in max. Any news on that?
8 – Where are the muscles and skin sliding inside Max, you guys had SkinFX once and killed it.
9 – I am investing in Bones pro to make up for lack of Skin features but even Bones pro doesn’t solve all my needs and jumping back and forth between skin and bones pro is becoming a mess.
Meanwhile Maya guys are laughing at my tools.
Oh yea by the way guys we have a serious perspective view problem, its a bug or an issue with Max basic code ever since Max existed. You see anyone working in cm would not be able to place objects in the viewport anymore properly when that object exceeds 500 cm from world zero point. Meanwhile back in Maya and any other software for that matter, you will be able to work in kilometer placements with cm system unit scale without a single issue.
This means guys if you wish to place a car in the street in max which is half a kilometer away you need to resort to ortho view in order to avoid extreme snapping and jitter.
Nice huh?
I suppose this is a bit of the start, I hope I have been informative to this webinar, lets take it to John now where he’ll be discussing how great Max will be but can’t promise anything.
I’m sure someone will tell me to join the Beta and make a difference. the more I watch these webinars the more I think joining anything is a waste of time, maybe I should aim to become a millionaire and build my own 3d app.
I have put object at many km from origin and had no issue.
Does MassFX still get new bugs every new release while getting no improvements at all?
For those that like to use it the best version was 3Ds Max 2012 or 2014…
PERFORMANCE!!! Multicore, revriting!!! All in it’s time. No need for crappy features, like in blender! They are doing it the right way:D
I’ve been looking into MassFX recently and noticed it wasn’t using my GPU. Max 2021 is using PhysX SDK version 2.8.5. Nvidia’s PhysX version is on 5. So it looks like AutoDesk stopped supporting PhysX several years ago.
I think it safe to say MassFX has been abandoned.
I would not mind it being abandoned at V2014, but they instead are inserting bugs in it.
3ds max, is, undoubtely, the most powerfull polyediting tool on market for now. The most eficient poly modeling tool in performance/power and ….eeeee…..everyting. Sure, there is a lot of thing that can be improved, but, all in it’s time. Im a modeler, so my view is biased as hell, but, well:P. Modo was on it’s way, but ….luxology have sell it to wrong people:(
My question will be…. why bother with MassFX at all? I see it as a really bad implementation, useful just for very very basic things. Just use tyflow, you will learn the basics in one afternoon, updated to the latest physx, gpu ready, and way, but way more flexible and with more possibilities. (and free).
I will rather devs spend time in things not possible to do for a third party dev, and keep things that 3rd party devs for them since they work better this way.
Tyflow is impressive but I am wary of getting too dependent on it without knowing how much it will cost. I don’t want to be lumbered with more overheads.
You could extend your argument further; why bother with Max at all and just use a modern 3D app.
With 3ds Max API, so many things are possible that following this logic, core 3ds Max devs should not be doing anything at all, since 3rd party developers can do pretty much anything in Max: Viewport, Renderer, Modeling tools, Modifiers, even Scripting language implementation, Animation tools, Rigging tools, Material editor, etc…
And then you end up with a dumpster fire where you pay around $2000/year subscription fee (including VAT) and about $1000/year worth of all the plugins you need to get basic stuff done on high quality production level, just to get every single unique 3rd plugin with their own unique take on user interface, naming conventions and nearly no integration between them.
Every time any of those 3rd party plugin devs makes some new feature, you need to wait for all the others to support it, assuming they even want to, which doesn’t always happen.
What you are saying makes no sense. Why would you want the essential stuff to be done by third parties. It will almost always lead to worse integration with the software, and even worse integration with the other third party tools. And added costs on top.
One thing is getting used to/learning to live with this kind of situation. But actually wanting it, desiring it, that’s whole another level of masochism right there.
Not desiring it, but keep working on a failed implementation, based on a not solid structure is not something I wanted neither.
Lets say, you keep working on the MassFX implementation, updating to the latest Physx libraries, fixing bugs, adding gpu support. Will you be happy with that? Because I will not use it neither even with this changes!!!
Max needs to rewrite the whole particle interface in max. Then, and only then, tyflow and others will not need to write his own interfaces to overcome the limitations in max.
This its only possible by max devs, rewriting the mesh datastructure in max can only be done by max devs, writing a powerful instancing at rendertime solution in max can only be done in max. Doing just the last one will avoid every third party renderer to come with his own instance solution, and then having each particle third party to implement solutions for each renderer available. It just doesnt make sense.
This things are the ones I am talking about. And obviously I am the first one to be tired to depend of third party developers for what are basic things on my day to work, but core functionality can only be addressed by max devs no one else.
If when the foundation its solid, yeah, I will like to be able to have solutions within 3dsmax to overcome this problems, we could talk about a massfx solution but that its actually scalable for different types of works and needs and not a rigid blackbox tool very limited in any aspect. But at least, if its well done, will make it possible for any third party tool to hook in a much easier way to what max offers, making it easier to develop over, but more important to access information.
MassFX worked in 2012 and 2014(but cloth lost functionality ), my record was a building facade cracking and crashing with around 1400 elements. It worked. It was fast to make a sequence of cracking. You just had to say what frame it went active.
Then they started inserting bugs in it, object passing each other, but scene corruption was the worse of all, after while the sim did not worked anymore or wacky things started to occur in it. In V.2018 was pretty much unusable, so i stopped using Max.
Send scene with reproduceable bugs to 3dsmax dev team and they will check.
Dont fight guy. Just shift to houdini. This is the more flexible out there. Particle interface. Etc etc. Its all integrated. Almost no black box there.
houdini is the future of VFX. Max is oriented into architecture/visualisation/games. Maya for animation and more.
Certainly the workflow is better in max than houdini (simpler) . There is some tools or function you miss in houdini for archiviz?
I miss? Im working in game dev, in max and zbrush mainly.
Long time max user since the day of them being Discreet 3ds Max. I just switch over to Blender because in Autodesk eyes certain areas of max don’t need to be updated. Blender has some pretty powerful procedural animation tools as well as rigging tools. Also if its not in there the plugins aren’t expensive and most devs of the tools give life time updates which is nice. Yeah Autodesk can die or let go of 3ds max just like they did with Sketchbook.
blender is too damn slooooow…..lots of tools but clunky, unpolished and with performance of a turtle.
Compared to 3ds Max specifically, Blender is slower in two areas – mesh editing and mesh modification, and both of those are being addressed for 3.0.
3ds Max is incredibly slow in pretty much any other area. It’s absolutely unacceptable to wait actual *!!seconds!!* for bunch of 2D UI elements to redraw while blocking your mouse and keyboard input in 2021.
Stuff like drawing UI elements without software freezes was figured out already in early 90’s, so it’s just embarrassing that there’s still software like 3ds Max out there that didn’t get its shit together for over 20 years now.
And this is especially important when you consider the actual probabilities of improvement based on past track record. Chances Blender will get the mesh modification and mesh editing performance together are high. Chances that 3ds Max will finally get the UI slowness and freezes together is nearly 0, given that the trajectory is actually going in the opposite direction past few years.
Your comment is just so short sighted. You have a tunnel vision of seeing one or two things 3ds Max is better at, performance wise, while either ignoring and having a Stockholm syndrome of all the rest it’s so much worse at.
Better UV, Better modeling , Great auto retopo, smart extrude, great edit performance (probably best of all 3d apps), UI is being rewrited to QT right now and works well already. Chances blender with get max performance are LOW. There is no another software with perf similar to max, it’s not easy. Blender barely made it to get back 2.7 performance.
Lol, what? UI is being rewritten to Qt since 2017 (5 version/5 years now) and has managed to get just more broken and slower than ever. You are just delusional if you believe it’s getting better.
Delusional? I work with max everyday , in studio. UI is much faster now. It was bugged , started with max 2013 onward, is much snappier now in 2022.
The trajectory argument seems sound. Things are moving fast with certain companies, so Blender will certainly be significantly better in 6 months etc.
Hater gonna hate. Blender can’t even undo. So many areas in Blender are SLOW.
It’s a good thing you can switch to another software. I hope it works out for you. Why though, do you feel the need to call for the demise of another?
This is the one thing that surprises me the most about some Blender users. 3ds max has so much value to so many people, Blender is an amazing free tool. Lets all be happy and constructive about this.
I started blender 1 week ago. I want a new modeler. I was a modo guy but switch because of the direction of modo is taking. Blender still suffer some stuff in my opinion but i have more faith in blender than modo, max or maya so iam learning it . Houdini is still my main tool btw