3DS Max Roadmap
polycount lvl 666
There are some really cool features in the pipe.
I hope the Texture baking means we get mikk support.
https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/3ds-max-public/
I hope the Texture baking means we get mikk support.
https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/3ds-max-public/
Replies
Been on the beta for a long time and this is about as excited as I've been about Max's future in a long time. We have a fantastic dev team.
Please don't mention XBR...... I felt a shiver down my spine....
Despite the negativity on the Youtube pages I'm glad this community is positive about these updates because you're the guys I listen to seriously. Very intrigued by the environment layout tools they have on the roadmap.
https://cgpress.org/archives/3ds-max-2020-new-features-revealed.html#comments
i guess in the long run, max will be replaced by blender for us. it's the most replacable tool in our pipeline by now
so the new features get a big fat yawn by me
My renewal is due to somewhen in july ...
all our clients switched to maya over the years, the clients who still use max files i can count on ONE finger
so where the models come from doesnt really matter anymore, max is only still around because we are comfortable with itl but the amount of maya artists in the studio and among freelancers has also been raising over the years.
heck i have all max versions installed but i still work in my 2011 without maintenance...
For some reason the license server for that plugin is down, so I fired up 2017 to do some last point cloud reference work. Oh jeez.
So 2013 plugin for point clouds = super powerful, bug free, fast, tons of features. PTS imports, exports, editing.
2017 built in RCP support. Well it seemed to have friend the entire UI, making selections go bad, viewports culling go bad, etc.
We're now in 2019 and I'm assuming the point cloud support is still lacking any really useful features like texture baking or draping.
Don't get me wrong, I love Max. I've been using it since they moved from 3DS DOS.
But nearly everything they add has been done years earlier with maxscripters, plugin makers etc, and usually when the Max version arrives half a decade late, it's still like a beta implement with missing features, and then never gets truly finished.
I had the same excitement with Mental Ray coming in, in 6 iirc... great renderer. It took lots of hacking away at settings and files, or waiting until 2010 for it to get properly useful.
And then just as it became a reliable go-to rendering system that you could lean on, it's gone.
Anyone remember the photo-matching application, so you could take pics of buildings etc, and choose similar points in all the photos, and get a bunch of camera locations to fire into Max? You could even do basic modelling and texturing inside it.
Afaik it was a subscription only software addon that sat alongside Max, after the initial release in 2008/9 ish.
Suddenly it was abandoned in favour of Fly3d, which was then some photogrammetry capture... but that was a completely different thing.
That old tool was so damn useful. It *should* have become the default camera matcher in Max... but no, they give you the super-basic right-angles camera aligner (assuming everything you want to match is made of squares), or the old Kinetix matcher which isn't great unless you know real dimensions.
In my view Autodesk are running on popular inertia now. Even easier when you have everyone on subscription and unable to leave. A truly great investment vehicle for share holders... until it's not.
So do you think 2020 is worth the upgrade right now? Is it stable or should I wait for some of the updates to come down the pipeline. I'm upgrading from 2017 anyways so I wonder if I should just go for 2018 or 2020
Cinema 4D R20 basically introduced a "make highpoly" button with the voxel volume builder (although very laggy)
that is perfect for my type of lazy highpoly baking
To be fair, 3DS was a patchwork monstrosity back when I used it, with each feature seemingly done by one different remote guy on the other side of the world, future is not exactly what it signaled to me
Btw I can't really find the future roadmap? It ends at 2020 but isnt that the release of right now?
The Editable Poly preview selection that's always been there only works when you hover directly over the element, which is pointless almost, and I believe there were some bugs with it too, though I haven't tested it in newer versions nor remember what they were exactly. After using Maya for a time, there's no going back to Max' finicky subobject selecting without slowing work down considerably.
TLDR: Max still has rock solid modeling tools and workflows, it falls apart when you consider it for animation. A modeling pipeline can usually support Max and Maya, but an animation pipeline can't really use Max. If a studio has to choose only one, it will probably be Maya.
Do you mean floating for just keeping in touch with the program at home? Educational license is free for non-commercial use so if you're just brushing up on Max to go into a specific studio pipeline I think that would be a viable option.
https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/3ds-max-20201-and-public-roadmap/
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Glad to see ADSK prioritising the real, big ticket items.
- improved Brush tools
- a new Asset Depot
- a modernised Trackview Treeview
- UV-less decal texturing (using OSL)
- OpenVDB-based Volume Booleans and native OpenVDB support
- procedural scattering and kitbashing
- Bifrost integration,
- several new animation modifiers
- Populate customisation and improvements
- rendertime instancing
- improved colour management
- USD rendering
- a new Slate Material Editor SME 2.0
- and much more.
Some sneek peaks:Rumors say they are on hold until Bifrost will take over.