3DS Max 2016 review

Workflow improvements

A host of new and updated features have been implemented in addition to the fantastic MCG and Alembic support. Many “small annoying things” have also been addressed.

The legacy layer manager was retired in 3DS Max 2015, replaced by a revamped Scene Explorer. Sadly, it should have been called the ‘Scene Destroyer’ as it was simply not ready for production, missing key functionality and contained some colossal scene-destroying bugs. I’m very happy to report that the scene explorer has seen continued development in Max 2016. It is now at the level it should have been like when it was first released. Double-click a layer to select all of its children. Locating and managing objects is effortless and it is full of customization. It’s still not perfect, crucially, it’s hard to identify the state of sub-layers and layer overrides do not propagate to sub-layers correctly. Perhaps we’ll be waiting for Max 2017 for that, but simply put, working with the scene explorer in Max 2016 is a joy.

The new “Physical” camera aims to replace the dated ‘standard’ camera with a customisable modern camera. This is actually based on Chaos Group’s fantastic V-Ray Physical Camera, though welcomed improvements have been made to its viewport representations and to the UI. V-Ray users will now find that the VRayPhysicalCamera is no longer available via the ‘create’ panel – Chaos Group want the new 3DS Max Physical camera to supersede it, too. Sadly, there is still no way to set render resolution, overscans and safe frames on a per-camera basis, a popular user request which would be a fantastic workflow addition.

Max 2015 Extension 1 improvements

Camera sequencer has been further improved since its debut in 3DS Max 2015 Extension 1

Features first added for subscription customers in 3DS Max 2015 Extension 1 have been further improved upon. The 3DS Max camera sequencer has received a number of usability improvements making it easy to setup a multi-shot sequence using a NLE-style timeline. The implementation of Opensubdiv has also been improved, most noticeable is the addition of adaptive subdivision. As the camera becomes closer to an object, the surface will subdivide and add detail to the areas that need it. This works like a dream in the viewport though I have not been able to get this feature to work with a 3rd party renderer in my tests.

Dual Quaternion skinning was added to the Skin Modifier and remains unchanged since Extension 1. Sadly this has been the only character animation improvement in this release. And developer Raylight SRL have offered a very inexpensive DQ Skinning plugin for years, making the omission of any other character animation tools all the more noticeable.

Scene I/O

“Autodesk Translation Framework” has now been incorporated into 3DS Max, vastly improving support for popular CAD formats

Aside from the additional work on the .abc format, 3DS Max 2016 has seen some extensive improvements to its interchange formats. This is great news if you use 3DS Max with a lot of CAD Formats. The main addition is the implementation of the Autodesk Translation Framework from the Autocad family of products. Open the import dialog and you will see many new “ATF” importers for popular CAD and geometry formats. While working on a promo for the new 2015 Toyota Camry I used the ATF IGES importer to import the various parts of the car and was literally able to drop a car paint material on the geometry and instantly render without artifacts. There are some issues with the ATF but as a whole, it provides a quicker import process with better options.

3DS Max also now natively imports SolidWorks files (SolidWorks no longer needs to be installed or running on your system to import SolidWorks files), supports Sketchup 2015 and has a much improved integration with Autodesk Revit. The latest FBX 2016 has been included with Max, which has far improved interoperability of ShaderFX shaders between 3DS Max and Maya.

Shading and rendering

Instantly noticeable to existing users is the redesigned Render Settings Dialog with the ‘Render’ button controversially moved to the very top of the main window. For those that are constantly switching between renderers, the new drop-down menus will be handy, but many will agree that the render button is best kept at the bottom where it was and certainly doesn’t require as much screen real estate! There have been a few developments for both the Iray and Mental Ray implementations in 3DS Max. Most significantly in Mental Ray is the light Importance Sampling (LIS), which should allow for faster renderings of scenes, though in practice I have found little improvement on render time or image quality.

The Render Settings Dialog has been re-designed in 3DS Max 2016 – many do not welcome the change

3DS Max 2016 also includes Autodesk 360 cloud rendering, allowing still images and sequences to be submitted to Autodesk’s cloud rendering infrastructure. Payments are made via cloud credits. I don’t see this as practical for many users that rely on 3rd party plugins & renderers or those who render multi-element sequences requiring 100s of megabytes of data per frame. I am also unsure how this would be any better than the dedicated render farms that have a few years head start.

ShaderFX has continued to be developed with expanded node patterns and improvements to the node browser and there is a new “Stingray” Shader for Autodesk’s upcoming Realtime graphics engine. We will have to wait and see how this ties into Stingray. The release is rounded out with a few extra features such as Multitouch 3D navigation support and many tweaks and bug fixes that are all very welcome.

There have been no improvements to Particle Flow, which aside from some small bug fixes and a revamped UI, has failed to see any serious development for many releases. In fact, many viewport and workflow glitches remain after 4 releases. No dynamics, fluids or meshing tools have been added to Max either. FX artists will be disappointed, though they will benefit from the other areas the development team have chosen to focus on this round. What is important though, as a signal of development trend, is that the 3DS Max 2016 release notes show us that the developers have tried to address the majority of the top requests on 3DS Max User Voice.