3dsmax 2019: Airing of the Grievances

Mark Dygert

Biped 

• What the hell have you done to such a rock solid tool? It's a buggy pile of crap now. Is that by design? Are you trying to encourage us to abandon it? 
• You can't select the COM tracks easily anymore, you can't use the standard curve editor with biped because of the COM tracks but the Biped workbench doesn't have the ease of use of the standard Curve editor, so you end up using both, its a "fingers in eye socket" kind of special mess.
• Setting stepped keys on IK nodes doesn't work in Quat or Euler, sweet christmas what the hell!? I have to set double keys to get the step keyed effect, but only on the hands and feet, stepped key works on ever other part (slow clap).

The Curve editor

• In general, the curve is harder to use than it should be.
• You can't zoom extents? 
• Why is the hot key for zoom extents, not the same for the viewport? 
• Where are the buttons to zoom extents? If I can't see curves I can't work with them.

Spines

• Why do spline objects (helix, circle, rectangle) disappear when you convert them to poly? 
• If you want geometry you have to convert them to editable spline, which destroys their unique paremters. Good bye flexibility of the modifier stack, now its like we're in maya with it's flakey ass history.  Why stop there, lets really fuck up one of the most awesome parts about max and make totally like Maya by randomly flipping some of the spline verts, so it candy wrapper twists the geometry! I can't want until that bug is totally inescapable! Look out Modo and Blender, its coming for you too =D

The Ribbon

• It doesn't dock properly, espcially at the bottom of the screen.
• Lags max when the ribbon is out, switching between vert and poly mode with the ribbon out demonstrates this pretty well. Close it? Lag gone.
• It also appears to have a memory leak because it gets worse the longer you let it go.

UV Editor

• Still can't set defaults for tools like relax and pack, they reset each time you apply a modifier.
• The pack dialog box disapears when you hit OK, relax doesn't. It's nice to leave them out and have quick access to them. I use relax and pack more than 90% of the junk on the right toolbar. 
• The right tool bar should be customizable and I should be able to put the tools that I use in it.
• UV shells won't "rescale elements" when UV editing multiple objects at the same time. 
• Cylinder unwrap, why does it not have a cap option that planar maps the caps?
• Why doesn't the default unwrap for cylinders and splines have detached caps?

Editable Poly Edit / Poly Modifier

• WHY does editable poly collapse the Edit geometry section and expand all of the other useless crap? The one section that gets used 99% of the time, you make us hunt for it and expand it!? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK AUTODESK! This makes no sense...
• God help us all if we reorder the menus, that just gives max free reign to randomly reorder them. Put them back? Ha you wish!

Data channel modifier

• Why does this not pass the selection outside of the tool?
• Cool, idea, nice demo, now finish it and make it useful.

Customize menu

• Double tap, we can greatly expand the functionality of the keyboard, why isn't this a thing? What is double tap? Press W once, it switches to the move tool. Press W again within half a second and it toggles the gizmo between local and view
• Many other users and myself have custom scripted this, it is a god send when trying to work quickly. People who don't take the the extra time to learn maxscript or find someone who does, end up setting up convoluted keybinds that twist their fingers into knots (ctrl-shift-alt-F1-G-ddd ahhhh!!! ouch my fingers)
• Separate tabs (keyboard, toolbar, quad), I can't count how much time, I waste finding the tool I want, only to try and drag it out to a toolbar and fail because I'm on the keyboard tab... opps I have to be on the "toolbar tab" which means I have to find the tool all over again once I pick the toolbar tab. GRRrrr It happens every time I upgrade or reinstall max or get a new script, drives me bonkers and doesn't need to be that stupid. 
• It shouldn't be a bunch of separate lists of the same thing, it should be one list that lets me assign a hotkey or drag it to a toolbar.
  
  Anyone else got any gripes? I'm collecting and haranguing Autodesk.

Noren

Thanks for doing this (I have my own file with similar notes that I need to compile one day, but I'm not on 2019 yet), but based on my own personal tendency to find some relief in colorful expression of anger and exasperation, I would try to put this in more neutral language before sending it off. (Also helps if it turns out that some of the problems weren't caused by Autodesk.)

Mink

I couldn't imagine laying 18 hundred a year for what you're describing. People say blender has the fastest workflow on the market for a reason...

sprunghunt

just use Maya instead? 

Swordslayer

Can't really comment on biped, I don't use it, but some of the issues sound as if you tried to use customization files from a previous version, maybe? The loss of buttons, edit poly weirdness etc.

As for converting splines to geometry, there's no change in 2019 from say max 9, helix won't convert to poly unless it's renderable since it's not a closed shape, circle will convert without issues. I don't know what you mean by the other part, you can have say Edit Poly modifier on top of a procedural spline, you can also drive selection in the stack by smothing groups procedurally and so on, no need to collapse anything.

The rollout ordering is unchanged from 2017 and it works in two levels, if you drag rollouts in object level, the collapsed state and rollout positions take precedence over changes made in respective subobject levels. Other than that, I've only met issues with it when running several instances of max at the same time which would overwrite changes made in the other instance.

Datachannel modifier does pass the selection up the stack - it didn't when first introduced in max 2017 but ever since 2018 it does (it's not indicated by the icon in the stack though which might confuse you).

monster

I feel your pain Mark. I've got my own list of things that I've already posted to the Ideas forum and as design improvements on the beta. I know the devs are reading the public Idea forums. In fact each release since 2014 has had at least one major request from the Ideas forum. The problem is Max's user base has historically been much larger than Maya's or Blender's. (Things are starting to even out now). So it's hard develop for such a wide base.

I'm not defending Max's development at all. In my opinion they need to stop features and focus on workspace polish and user experience for a release or two. But I know in general they are listening. As part of the beta my curve editor tools pack made it into the default curve editor for 2017 and newer. My feedback on Motion Paths for 2018 was taken very seriously. 2019 didn't really have much new animation wise so my feedback was limited. But I'm back in full swing with 2020 beta.

For the curve editor:
Check View > Enable Auto Zoom
The Frame extents button is on the bottom right of the default curve editor.
And you can set your track view hotkey to "Frame Vertical and Horizontal Extents"
There is a bug where you need to disable and enable Filters for them to start working. I've reported this, but I also set a hotkey to turn them on and off.

sprunghunt said:

just use Maya instead? 

I bet Mark uses Maya and probably Blender as well. But no software (including games) gets better by avoiding issues. 

poopipe

sprunghunt said:

just use Maya instead? 

With Maya this sort of buggy mess would be considered a good year. 


Is a lot of this not the standard sort of broken stuff that's usually fixed in SP2? 

I'm not in 2019 yet so haven't kept up

musashidan

Well, the good news is that Max devs instantly replied to this on the beta forum and Max dev team is in the best shape that it's been in in many, many years. Suddenly the future is looking bright again for Max.

And for anyone doubtful about the effectiveness of the ideas board forum, one of my ideas got picked up by the dev team just last night. That's all I'll say.

musashidan

Mink said:

I couldn't imagine laying 18 hundred a year for what you're describing. People say blender has the fastest workflow on the market for a reason...

I've started to use blender myself recently, alongside Max. And while I really think Blender is great, it has a long, long way to go to rival Max's sheer poly-pushing power in the viewport.