3DS Max 2013 - What are you hoping for?
Max 2013 hasn't been announced... yet, but I feel it will be within the next month or two. From what I've seen, they do the yearly deal, and its usually in Feb or March.
Looking at the User Voice Votes, I think it's kind of obvious what people want to see fixed/added.
So what do you guys want to see/are looking forward to, if anything?
Personally I am excited to see a new version. I think Max 2012 did bring some good things, especially in performance with many objects and poly counts, on my end.
The things I would love to see in Max 2013 would be, not in any order/importance:
1. Improved Viewport Canvas/ Mari type painting setup.
2. Faster/More Updated UVW Unwrap Setup with better packing and relaxing algorithms.
3. Faster Load time/less memory usage.
4. Support for even more objects/polies with high performance.
5. Faster Renders via GPU Acceleration (Mental Ray/Scanline).
6. Proper working Snaps and Cut tool!
There are probably more things I could come up with, but these are more of the major ones for now.
Looking at the User Voice Votes, I think it's kind of obvious what people want to see fixed/added.
So what do you guys want to see/are looking forward to, if anything?
Personally I am excited to see a new version. I think Max 2012 did bring some good things, especially in performance with many objects and poly counts, on my end.
The things I would love to see in Max 2013 would be, not in any order/importance:
1. Improved Viewport Canvas/ Mari type painting setup.
2. Faster/More Updated UVW Unwrap Setup with better packing and relaxing algorithms.
3. Faster Load time/less memory usage.
4. Support for even more objects/polies with high performance.
5. Faster Renders via GPU Acceleration (Mental Ray/Scanline).
6. Proper working Snaps and Cut tool!
There are probably more things I could come up with, but these are more of the major ones for now.
Replies
For me it would be improving UVW Unwrap modifier. 2012 update wasn't enough. They should just go full throtle and not just change buttons and add few stuff. Nuke Unwrap and make it how it should be. Better performance. Connected sub object selecting (not separate in modifier stack and modifier itself). Better relaxing!!!
Improving UI. Change caddies into something practical not just looking different (worse). Make UI customizing usable. I had to write my own maxscript to make my hotkeys... Throw out old stuff (legacy purposes ... cmon...) and make it load faster.
For me now its all about performance. I think they should focus on how to improve whats there. Max is really great. Its full package. After so many years it became a mess. They should tidy it up and then move onto new things. Make it smoother, faster, more polished.
PS: THE RIBBON!!!! why the hell its separate ?! Its like two programs in one. Every tool is actually duplicated in ribbon. There are great tools in ribbon but why the hell did they created whole new being for this ? couldn't they implement it into modifiers ? thats what I mean by saying "max is a mess".
But that didn't really need to be added just for that, especially this far in the game.
UVs
- solid face color fill for non-selected faces (so you can constantly see the filled UV islands while packing).
- Integration of some of TexTools tools, like the automatic UV shift overlay (you can do this manually at the moment, but this is 1 button press), as well as some of it's pixel nuding capabilities. It's face relax algorithm also seems to work a lot better than Max's, even though I believe it uses the same one? Not sure how that works. Also it's align island to edge selection is also handy.
- UV subobject conversion mode, like we get in epoly - ie; face selected, ctrl+click vert mode and selected UV faces become selected in vertex mode.
Viewport
- To go along with Nitrous' other viewport shader modes, I'd like to see a texel density shader, similar to the one in the Unreal Editor.
- PROPER NORMAL MAP SUPPORT. We shouldn't have to use third party plugins and shaders to get normal maps to look correct. Max is said to be geared for game development, it's about time it works like it.
Modeling
- A smart chamfer. One that doesn't kill UVs when applied to an object after the fact. There are times when you have to redo old assets, as I had to do in Forza4 from Forza3. Sometimes chamfers were required to add better visual appeal to objects but it often times killed the UVs. There's got to be a better method for that.
General
- Customizable launch parameters. Similar to what Per did with the 3dsclean setup. My work doesn't require a vast majority of the plugins that get automatically loaded with Max. I hate that. Modo launches in like 3 seconds. I want to be able to disable all plugins that I do not use, in an EASY manner, without fear of breaking anything.
It also loads faster than 2010-2011 from a cold boot, and even faster from a warm start if u would.
Otherwise, not a ton has changed otherwise, at least things I use normally. The UV Editor is the biggest change besides Nitrous.
Neox: 2012 added real-time LCSM to UVWs. It's a pretty major improvement. I now take all my characters and do a "2012" pass on the unwrapping (the project is still using 2011). Things like hands are soooo much easier in 2012 when you use live LCSM with vertex pinning.
Make splineIK up vectors work properly.
Put an IK/FK solver in.
Put something in there that'll let you organise your referenced assets properly - the asset manager is shite.
LOL, wut? no. not in the least.
But my true dream is a Preserve UVs feature that works properly. Now matter how much I learn about its behaviour, it's still completely unpredictable.
Also integrating the suite of operations from TexTools would be nice.
Make the command panels wider. we all have widescreens now and i like to be able to read the names of my objects
Viewport Canvas improvement: same viewport feedback like Mudbox, to see Specular, Gloss, and etc. Maps.
A Good SSS Shader for IRay.
Direct X Shaders visible to Nitrous...
i don't need another bag of bugs dropped at my doorstep...
I'm interested in what Autodesk is doing with this, but I guess chances are slim that they'll do anything with it for 2013..
I've got another one (the animators will like this..)
make the curve editor and dopesheet not be so incredibly fricking slow they're all but unusable
Snapping that's worth a damn and doesn't kill scene interactivity to 5 FPS.
Select mode in UV Editor (and be able to use the full range of selection methods - not just rectangle). I hate having to select stuff with a transform tool.
That reminds me.. It would be awesome to restrict snapping to the selected object..
- Maya-like control scheme. Or at least an option to switch between schemes. I know this won't happen, but I can always dream. I currently use a plugin for this that seems to conflict with some hotkeys and makes it unable to perform shift+drag edge extrudes. Do not like. I have a 3D mouse at work, but when I go home, I'd like to be able to navigate without getting pissed off.
- As others have mentioned, Nitrous support for 3PS and Xoliul.
I can't really think of any others. I generally switch between Max and Maya. If I need something one sucks at doing, it's almost always better in the other.
CTRL+N with the cursor in a text field.
much like the old "max doesn't have a repeat last command" thing - it does, they just don't shout about it
and stability wise - on decent hardware (ie intel + nvidia) 2012 is pretty good, it's no max 9 I'll grant but it's a step up from the last couple
Ah. Thanks for clearing that up for me
- UV editing as a mode. Push more of TexTool's features in as well (agreed with the relax function someone mentioned up there)
- directx shader compatability. wtf. this wasn't even fixed in any service packs. wtf.
- do something about the command panel / ribbon duality, and please don't ribbonize everything. it's usually agonizingly slow compared to clicking one of the old and ugly command panel buttons
but
it craps on what Maya has to offer from a great, great height, the quick peel is great and it's finally got itself some alignment tools (i skipped 2010 and 2011 due to horrendous viewport performance so never really did any work with the unwrapper in case that stuff was in those versions)
Also before patches, it was SUPER slow, like unusable at first, even on a box.
But now its pretty good I think. But I do with they just redid it completely as well,
or at least redid its core features, so its faster and can pack/relax faster/better.
But I don't know that it's worth it. That may be great with other stack items, but unwrapping in particular doesn't benefit from that as much. Mostly because you don't really pass any unwrap operations up the stack to the next modifiers as you do with other stuff.
The main problem with it though, is that once you collapse the unwrap modifier, you lose all sorts of information. There's a lot of stuff that only exists for the lifetime of the modifier. Like say UV-seams that you made for pelt (the blue ones), or even selections. Settings get lost too. You have to set stuff, and then hit another button to set the current settings as the default. Otherwise, the next time you use the modifier it's with the old settings again.
How many different soultions did you use for unwrapping? Of course its much better than it was years back, but this doesn't mean its as good as it can be, okay cant tell for 2012 but 2011 cannot be compared to what other packages, even free ones like blender have to offer.
However you can save your relax settings, you just have to save it in the relax dialogue and after that in the unwrapper options.
About the math in textfields, holy crap awesome!
Neox -
There's no save option in the relax dialog on 2012 and saving your unwrapper settings has no effect on the defaults in the relax dialog - this is a major step backward and I am cross about it.
I've not tried many other apps for unwrapping in the last year or two but it's telling that I haven't encountered a situation where I have enough trouble unwrapping something to warrant looking elsewhere. I'll grant it could well be a case of "what you know" but you'd have to get pretty close to a one click solution before you get ahead of the ol' quick peel & relax (face angles, amount 1.0) combo.
I use Maya often enough, have had a go at blender and of course given the zbrush effort a go and nothing's really stood out as an improvement - particularly when you factor in the arseache assosciated with switching apps halfway through doing something.
Neox: How is that different than the way 3dsmax unwraps? You just define seams, then select that shell and hit pelt+relax. Same thing isn't it? It's the exact same process Headus UVLayout does it. And now in 2012 they have live LCSM too.
it'll do more complicated stuff than that if you can find a reason too
I use it a lot but then again I rig a lot...