Andrew Reid mentioned that there was a discussion up in support.discreet.com/~max (free registration required) on things that Discreet had shown at a roadshow in Paris.
Click on “more…” to read a summary of what was reportedly shown / discussed…
Most of this info comes from Harry Dechering:
“First understand that the stuff that they showed was not FINAL, some beta etc. This is just a small part of it, and things can change.”
New stuff in MAX 4 that will reportedly be unveiled during SIGGRAPH:
- New IK. Multiple chain solvers. Better workflow. Better SDK support.
- Real time Bezier patch enhancements. This is mainly for game-developement.
- State of the art Texture and Lightning enhancements in the viewports. To better mimic the game engines.
Discreet Demo’ed HAVOK.
- real-time dynamics and physics including cloth, particles, softbody’s and fluids
Discreet also showed Character Studio 3.
- Multiple pivot points for biped parts. For example, normally the ankle is the pivot point. You can now choose a different pivot point (heel etc.) and rotate or slide about this point.
- Biped tracks and non-linear animation. Define multiple animations with .bip files. Links them all together with percentages and let CS choose the order.
- Multithreaded Physique performance. Was MUCH quicker. Szabolcs Matefy says he was told it is now 10-15 times faster.
- When viewing physique you could see the envelope information shaded in the mesh.
- Crowd and flocking stuff. Define a bunch of bipeds. Give them rules etc. looked great. Szabolcs Matefy heard through friends, “You can assign so called delegates, and their motion can [be] controlled by a predefined or even a scripted patterns or rules. The example showed ca 200 Bipeds trying to access the same sphere while they try to avoid each other. You can create even teams, stick them to a surface. All in all a crowd control as in Star Wars I.”
- Biped MAXScript and SDK support. Finally!!!
- And this was but a tip of the iceberg. The full version will be shown at siggraph.
Also shown:
