PBR(ish) in the Max viewport

musashidan

Just thought I'd share this here in case fellow Max die-hards haven't seen it. The man himself - Master Zap - demos the nice results we can achieve in Max's Nitrous viewport, which funnily enough have been there for a few years now.

It's not perfect, but it is being actively worked on. Fully modernising Max's viewport to a full IBL PBR environment has been a bit of a crusade of mine on the beta forums for a few years now. Here is my thread from the Max idea boards(which the devs actively monitor and implement from) with 159 votes. Feel free to add to it. https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/pbr-viewport-shader-environment/idi-p/6806116

Once MikkT is implemented and the roughness issue is resolved we'll finally have a PBR-compliant viewport in Max.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82hhg8Q1nus

oglu

Voted! 

Eric Chadwick

I love Zap. The roughness-IBL issue is the biggest killer for me, and not properly supporting AO maps. Hopefully they'll address these!

sacboi

I voted too.

Truly astonishing, when considering Blender's new RTR engine is actually capable of previewing PBR materials accurately enough as to not having to hit render at all. I'm only a partime Max user and really just for polygonal hard surface modeling, at that so I hope ADSK for everyone's sake are taking note.

Justo

Voted! I've been moving away from Max for the current project at the office, but I'd love to see this happen nonetheless for when I eventually return to Max.

oglu

The Surface Shader does also have a whitepaper now. This is getting bigger.
https://github.com/Autodesk/standard-surface

musashidan

Yes, Zap - Max shader wizard with MR arch & design(miaX I think in Maya)first rounded edge shader, and OSL in Max on his resume - is one of the team behind Max's render-agnostic Physical Material. It works perfectly between ART, Vray, Arnold, Corona in Max. 

This, and aistandard plus Material/ShaderX are hot on Adesk's 'to-do list'.

We've already seen MaterialX support in its early implementation in Arnold.

jRocket

It's unbelievable that they haven't already implemented PBR in their viewport.

marks

Is it though? This is autodesk remember

Justo

musashidan said:

Max shader wizard with MR arch & design(miaX I think in Maya)first rounded edge shader, and OSL in Max on his resume...

Wait, I didn't quite get all that. There's a functional rounded edge shader in Max now?

musashidan

Justo said:

musashidan said:

Max shader wizard with MR arch & design(miaX I think in Maya)first rounded edge shader, and OSL in Max on his resume...

Wait, I didn't quite get all that. There's a functional rounded edge shader in Max now?

That was in reference to the MR rounded edge bump effect which was the first one created and written by Zap, but yes, out of the box Arnold has had a rounded edge shader for a while now.

musashidan

jRocket said:

It's unbelievable that they haven't already implemented PBR in their viewport.

Well, thankfully it's finally being realised. I've been fighting this corner for 2 years now on the beta. The thing with the Max beta is that there aren't too many of us from the games field so it can be difficult getting across our points to people from Arch-vis and Vfx industries who know practically nothing about our workflows. Funnily enough, in the last year or so game tech has been catching the eye of the Arch-vis crowd and they are finally catching on to the fact that Max has really let itself go on that front.

Max is, and probably always will be, the go-to for Arch-vis and that is a massive market for the software. Adesk have even partnered with Unity on this front as they know that the Arch-vis field is moving towards real-time more and more. Their own attempt with Stingray was a miserable failure as they just killed the software with no warning.

spacefrog

Justo said:

musashidan said:

Max shader wizard with MR arch & design(miaX I think in Maya)first rounded edge shader, and OSL in Max on his resume...

Wait, I didn't quite get all that. There's a functional rounded edge shader in Max now?

Afaik Arnold had a  rounded edge shader for some time  now ...

musashidan

Also,(I can say it now because it's been officially posted) Max RTT has been entirely rebuilt from scratch(still being worked on) It is now the BTT(bake to texture) toolset, built around Arnold(but can bake from any renderer) this means we should be able to bake rounded edges in Max in the (hopefully) near future.

Sage

can it write to mikk tangent space?

musashidan

Sage said:

can it write to mikk tangent space?

in the works......

Justo

musashidan said:

That was in reference to the MR rounded edge bump effect which was the first one created and written by Zap, but yes, out of the box Arnold has had a rounded edge shader for a while now.

Oh, you were talking about his resume, right. Justo reading comprehension a 0. I didn't know Arnold could do that now, excellent. If the new BTT tool can eventually become a competent baker to rival apps like Substance Designer, I'll be eager to jump ships   

gnoop

Justo said:

 the new BTT tool can eventually become a competent baker to rival apps like Substance Designer, I'll be eager to jump ships   

Their BTT have always had a few goodies like proper /smooth response on changing baking ray direction. I always managed to get nicer smooth  projection and view angle compensation with its RTT for faking a few things on extremely low poly environment models.    But once they dropped mental ray it became so much of a pain in the a.. I couldn't tolerate it anymore.

Same with nice view-ports. There was a number of approaches already including what  was cool and simple  Shader FX plugin.  But they have a special ability to make  what was formerly  easy and simple  to the very edge of unusable .  I bet once we got PBR viewport  it will be so inconvenient  nobody will really use it and it will be hidden somewhere.  Same as with slate material editor  and half of graphite tools.

musashidan

@gnoop I definitely agree with you. Setting up a fancy Nitrous viewport has always been such a pain in the arse that I just couldn't ever be bothered. Buttons and checkboxes and menus all over the place. Blender 2.80 nailed this. So simple.

The new BTT workflow has been modernised(still a WIP) and a vast improvement to the archaic RTT(which I suppose is over 10 years old now)

musashidan

New BTT demoed at Siggraph. MikkT finally added to Max(another crusade of mine on beta),roughness maps now display correctly in VP, auto-retopo modifier in development, and Bifrost procedural modeling environment is on its way.

We're getting there......

Also, in case anyone missed my other thread, rounded edges can now be baked with Arnold to normal map.

Thousand

Hi, thanks for pushing this topic. 

the video posted in the first comment is one year old, anyone happen to know, if there are improvements to this wicked workflow?

anyone happen to know, which version of 3dsMax was used in this video? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=82hhg8Q1nus&feature=emb_logo

oglu

Its the 2020 version.

srsface

There are improvements in 2021. Way faster to set up cos of a new simpler PBR material and a new Environment OSL map. Better screen-space AO in viewport too. Check this more recent vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDtz_lpWi4g

poopipe

The new BTT workflow has been modernised(still a WIP) and a vast improvement to the archaic RTT(which I suppose is over 10 years old now)

Just cos I'm old.  RTT was introduced in max 5 which came out in 2003 ish and never changed. 

gnoop

Is it  same good as in Blender now  and its Filmic tone mapper dealing with over-saturated, over exposured  things?

I still smell something wrong in the sky piece  behind this helmet picture