Some Common Things.
greentooth
I am going to GDC this march, and I'd like to take something with me. That thing is a list of common 3dsmax problems, which I will present to someone at Autodesk.
What are some common issues you have with max? What small quirks does the program have that causes you annoyances, or hurts your workflow?
I'll get us started with some small items:
1) When they first introduced the automatic unwrap options, you could apply it regardless of what selection mode you were in (vertex, edge, polygon), but for a few versions now, it's been polygon only. this is obnoxious because it makes me select polygon mode every single time I want to slap a quick unwrap on something and then tun it.
2) The relax tool in the uv editor starts on "Relax By Edge Angles", which is generally crap. "Relax by Face Angles" is much more useful and first in the list, yet for some reason , max defaults to the second one in the list. default it to "Relax by Face Angles".
3) Create -> lights should default to "STANDARD" not, photometric, it adds a useless step whenever someone wants to put some generic lights in the scene.
What are some common issues you have with max? What small quirks does the program have that causes you annoyances, or hurts your workflow?
I'll get us started with some small items:
1) When they first introduced the automatic unwrap options, you could apply it regardless of what selection mode you were in (vertex, edge, polygon), but for a few versions now, it's been polygon only. this is obnoxious because it makes me select polygon mode every single time I want to slap a quick unwrap on something and then tun it.
2) The relax tool in the uv editor starts on "Relax By Edge Angles", which is generally crap. "Relax by Face Angles" is much more useful and first in the list, yet for some reason , max defaults to the second one in the list. default it to "Relax by Face Angles".
3) Create -> lights should default to "STANDARD" not, photometric, it adds a useless step whenever someone wants to put some generic lights in the scene.
Replies
Now the reason this annoys me is that it used to be different (I think max 9 or 8?). Turning off wireframe turned the wireframe display off. For everything. Just as you'd expect it. Nice when trying to properly align stuff when UVing without distracting red lines all around. (I like to grab whole faces and move them around)
I know there's a workaround - just leave sub object level. But then if you hit F4 again you don't see what's selected in the UV editor and you have to manually choose vertex/edge or whatever in the Unwrap UVW modifier....
Still not as convenient as just pressing the F4 button and have everything go away ...and hey, it worked okay just a few versions ago, why "improve" something that worked? Sometimes I really wonder what those guys are thinking when they come up with new "feature"....
2) does max 2010 run on Win 7 with certain nvidia gforce cards yet? Some people had problems, including me. Maximized perspecive viewport display would lag like mad and give you like 4 fps - all other viewports were okay and perspective not maximized also worked okay.
Supposedly they changed some code dealing with viewport display from 2009.
3) Python?
can't think of anything else right now. But I think it's great that you're asking here for people to post their max annoyances. Cheers
"Detach" ?
it's in Mesh, so I always just convert to mesh and hit 'explode' but I'd think it was built into the Editable Poly modifier as well. But it's not something I do enough to remember to search for an alternative.
- there seems to be alot of problems when it comes to assigning custom shortcuts to quad menus. You always have to have right-click something. This should be flexible to let the user assign them to regular hotkeys (modelling quad menu : alt-m for instance)
- need presets for viewport anti-aliasing. It works for wireframe, but for shaded objects one need to mess with Nvidia settings (at least for max 2009)
- unit setups are confusing
- some of the snapping just wont work. Copy Maya.
- inserting controls points to a spline in perspective goes crazy far in the viewport
- circular renderable spline creates some sort of weird diagonal edges at the cap of the tube.
- RTT dialog needs to be rewritten to incorporate simple target/source/map type controls
- Navigation scheme changes should be a built in feature (instead of having to purchase NEX)
- EDU folders are a pain to deal with. There should be an option to easily switch everything back to the old system (where everything goes to program files/autodesk/3dsmax/UI etc etc)
"Explode" <--This. It's in Edit Mesh and I am not sure if the same function is in Edit Poly.
I ask because Autodesk's booth, usually, is the biggest and most elaborate and just going up to someone with a sheet of paper and questions may not be the best approach.
- shitty selection tools (xsi got it right)
- why is there still and edit poly vs edit mesh
- need of an easier way for camera / object rotation origins
Everyone - Can you please only list specific examples, and organize them as clearly as possible? Copy and paste ready numbered items would be a great benefit to me if you're all willing to contribute.
I'm hoping to get something useful together for all of us.
-Overall the program is just bloated by functionality that isn't really necessary, or doesn't feel relevent to what you're doing at the time. There are plenty of buttons that if i think hard i could kinda see how it has a purpose, but overall just makes the program clunky. Take for instance soft selection, if i decide i want to soft select something a GIANT rollout pops open and totally throws off my workflow because now everything needs to be scrolled to to see, how about just a soft selection box and a rollout that contains the more detailed functionality of it that only opens up if i need it? The UI is too dynamic, opening and closing various rollouts shifts things too much and you're never quite sure where the button you want's going to be, and it's a nightmare trying to find it's function to hotkey it. It changes for each mode you're in: vertex, edge, face, poly, object (a necessary evil i suppose, but further adds to the confusion). To top it off if I have an edit mesh modifier on, or an edit poly modifier on, suddenly all the hotkeys shift. Come to think of it, Maya did a much better job of handeling this. You chose your mode and all the stuff you use once in a blue moon were displayed at the top in the usual rollouts, and the bread and butter buttons were in the usual easy to access places.
-When pressing the scale or select key multiple times, it cycles through type. 99% of the time i want to select in a box, and scale with the main scale tool. Most don't cycle these enough to warrant an auto cycle.
-Having to rename items on export, it'd be nice if it assumed you want to name it the name of the object in max. Often times i'm reexporting something and i need to hunt down the original to replace it, be nice to just name it once in max.
-Having to center objects on (0,0,0) for certain export types, it would be nice to have a checkbox in the exporter to have it assume you want it centered on its pivot rather than world position.
2) Collapsing the stack with certain modifiers will change it from EPoly to EMesh.
3) The Cut tool changes cursors when it's over an edge or a vertex, but about half the time it adds a new vertex right next to the existing one anyway.
4) The Graphite tools only appear in the ribbon (unless you manually add each tool to your quads), and they disappear completely instead of just being grayed out when they're not applicable, and the bar takes up the same amount of screen space even if it's empty, and even when they're not contextually hidden half the options (like SetFlow and strip length) are always hidden under an additional flyout that requires a hover click to access and there's no way to keep them visible. Polyboost had everything visible in like a third of the screen space.
Stuff like this is difficult because it may be a useless step for you but for many people, photometric is what they want/should use. I doubt you'll see this one change especially since max has been pushing the whole MentalRay+Photometric Lights+LinearWorkflow+MR Photographic Exposure and I don't blame them, it results in -much- better renders.
Seconded. I'm having to deal with this right now.
Speaking of the cut tool. the main gripe I have is that if you orbit your view/camera in mid-cut it cancels the cut tool. I don't understand why, but it is really annoying.
Graphite modeling tool. Tools are great, but the interface is made of concentrated fail. Interface is redundant in and of itself (these tools should be able to be accessed in a way that more people actually use, command menu, quad menus, custom keys/shortcuts), has redundant tools in the interface (many of these tools reside elsewhere), and is way to large.
Why not simply integrate the damn tools into the editable poly command menu? Why create a whole seperate menu on the OTHER side of the screen for a small number of added tools that would logically fit in with the pre-existing e-poly tools. This one really makes no sense and smacks of flash over function.
i has come bearing gifts (script by stefan-morrell)
( --detatch all elements to objects o = $ while polyOp.getNumFaces $ > 1 do ( p = PolyOp.getElementsUsingFace $ 1 polyOp.detachFaces $ p asNode:true name:"detachedObject01" ) delete o )All that stuff in tech talk about max's normal map bakes.
It works great in Maya, so why cant they get it right in Max too?
I think you mean Switcher, not NEX.
* Edit poly modifier and editable poly should share the same hotkey sets.
* Preview selection needs to be fixed, right now it pretends to select everything when you hold ctrl to deselect things. I say pretends because once you let go of ctrl, it doesnt really select everything.
* XYZ Coordinate input boxes should be draggable onto the main toolbar
Also just fyi, you can press f12 to bring up a floating window with the coordinates boxes.
This was the only thing I was going to suggest...annoys me so bad.
Besides it getting rid of my custom shortcuts for Editable Poly it changes viewport shorrcuts too...
Press T for the Top viewport and it tesselates my model...press F from front viewport and....it flips the normal? Is that what it's doing?
Why isn't it the same as Editable Poly? :poly127:
X B R
Seriously make it so my fucking UI doesn't crash especially if you're going to move more of the UI over to the fucking ribbon.
Now that's not getting PeterK anywhere :P But I do have something to add in terms of UI:
1. Those new white menus they added in 2010 for Graphite modeling tools and such, I really wish they wouldn't drop down on mouseover. They should change it so you have to click to open the menus (or at least give us the option to change that). I can't tell you how many times I have wanted something that was under that bar and then it decides to pop out and I have to wait for it to go away (happens a lot when I want to change the viewport settings!)
Batch Render:
- Using batch render hurts my brain in so many ways.
- You need "active time segment" or "range" selected in the render set up (totally differnt dialog box) if you specify any range of frames in batch render. If its set to single it will render all the frames to a single frame overwriting it every time. It never did that before 2010. A range of frames listed in batch render was a range of frames output.
- It's absolutely retarded that you can't select a bunch of views in batch render and change settings for all of them, you have to do it manually for everything. Example I need to only render 1 out of 100 views, I need to uncheck 99 of them, totally retarded. This isn't 1992 any more get this crap updated and fixed.
- I won't get into the horribly inconsistent maxscript they serve up as a back water way to get around its horrible functionality... but its a nightmare.
EDIT: I found this Batch Render Assistant script that deals with a little bit of the awkward issues that come up when using Batch Render. I would be pretty pumped if this was used as a base to build off of, or at the very least included.http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/batch-render-assistant
Asset Tracking
The Ribbon/Graphite Modeling Tools/new polyboost UI
Biped
Help Doc and Memory Issues
Sounds:
- Scrubbing the bar with too many frames active kills max when there is sound it needs to phrase. It could be one long sound clip and if you scrub too many frames too fast it crashes without saving.
- Why only 100 sounds? When I can load in 99 click to add more and load in another 99. Soundtrax put the cap at 100 because they thought that was a good number. Get rid of the cap and fix the scrubbing issue.
Fix this crap, don't break anything else in the process and get crackin, 2011 is not that far off. Honestly all of this crap is 2010 service pack2 bug fixes people should get for free.oh, snap!
Also:
Holy shit Zookeeper
That's completely different in 2010 now. I think you should only really name issues that are present in 2010...
I have some:
-DirectX Shaders have an annoying bug where it "forgets" which lights are set for that material if you re-open the file.
-Scene Effect loader is super bugged and barely works anymore after what seems like years of neglect. It also does not work at all with viewport Ambient Occlusion.
-The well-known tangent basis problem when baking normal maps, they really should look into this after all these years.
I second this one, I thought it was just the shader I was using, but I guess not...
nuke it
e/ also you know when you're baking normals how it previews a complete map instead of the normal map? They should fix that like five years ago
I think they should shut off the preview window when rendering with RTT, and just give a progress/cancel button, then maybe open the files when they're done?
I use that to look for missed rays, if I see red, I cancel it before it gets any further. It is dumb that it just shows the complete map, but like you said, I don't want a bunch of windows for every map I bake.
Editable mesh still has its uses. It allows non-manifold meshes, which Poly cannot because it has a manifold ruleset, apparently so it can support "smart" topology like loops/rings/isolines/etc.
But seriously.....
OpenGL Modern Shader Support
OPEN GL SHADER PREVIEWS and Shader export. Dont stick us with DX to see shaders. Open GL is fully capable of seeing shaders, and its used on more platforms. Open GL mode is also less buggy than the DX mode. If they would just add the shader support and up the texture rez... Could be soo much more powerful.
Oh and as others have mentioned, Increase the number of polies that can be seen on screen without choking.
I watched the same thing. They do seem to listen a bit, too bad it really doesn't translate into anything dramatic for the end user, for every bug they fixed in 2010, a new one must've appeared. I've seen so many crashes with 2010 among the students at school, I find it hard to believe they fixed over 400 issues.
The webinar I just watched:
http://adinc.na4.acrobat.com/p23782361/
Blog posts about XBR:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/shane/3ds_max_x_day_is_born
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/excalibur_xbr_notes
Oh sh--! Thanks for the links Eric, this is my first time hearing about any of this.
Render window semi-off-screen. When I render a large image, Max renders it in a window at full size, half off-screen at the bottom of the screen and spread horizontally over both of my two monitors, so basically, I can't see shit. I have to resize and move the window, which is a dicy thing to do while Max is chugging along with a render (this sometimes causes Max to crash).
Couldn't it work more like FryRender or Maxwell, opening up the render window either at a smaller scale in an unobtrusive way, or in a full-screen mode centered in one screen? Maybe I'm missing some setting that I need to change.
If you change it to "Relax by Face Angles" and go Options > Save Current Settings as Default, it will be that way every time you open the editor window. Works with their render template settings too which I was constantly changing.
You want to use "refine" not insert. Yea the spline tools menu is a mess.
I think that happens most often when you try to cut in vert mode. Sometimes switching to edge or face to cut works better. I think they changed the cut tools in newer versions like 2009 and 2010?
Doesn't it default back though after you restart max? I just learned to live with it haha.
I've talked to some of their devs and didn't get that impression at all.
They've got a lot of different users and they are attempting to maintain legacy support for their product which is where a lot of the issues come from.
Thought of another one:
- Make it easier to work with non-square maps (eg. 512x256). Even when you do get everything set up right, things seem to slow down? I find it easier to unwrap it in half the UV space, then stretch it out vertically. In my opinion, thats not a good fix!