MAX 2021 gets a new baking Tool!

oglu

Oh yes thats a great addition.
http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2021/ENU/?guid=GUID-566A8DA5-C3EA-472F-B846-AB334616D6BD

PolyHertz

Nice. I haven't used Maxs baker in quite a while (I think most everyone switched years ago due to lack of updates), but hard to believe it's only now getting Mikk-T support considering thats been the industry standard for...at least a decade atp I think?

I also see they've added a weighted normals modifier which will certainly be useful. Will be interesting to see how it stacks up against existing user created scripts / modifiers.

gnoop

or against  Blender modifier.      Somehow  it looks like 3d max is desperately trying to catch up after Blender  during last decade.  But great news indeed.

oglu

I hope one day we can also view mikk normalmaps in maya. 

onionhead_o

I hope one day maya gets a proper baker with UDIM.

marks

Woah what the fuck. Autodesk are actually adding legit good, useful stuff to Max?
Has hell frozen over?

edit: Python 3?! I might actually buy this one.

Noren

marks said:

edit: Python 3?! I might actually buy this one.

*rent
Unless you have a running maintenance contract to update your perpetual version, you can't buy 3ds max anymore.

coven

Hope you guys like the update! There are some hidden gyms as well that aren't really listed.

Kanni3d

Argh, these updates are great, but 2020.3 (i'm using 2020.1)  has a strange bug with the UV editor among other navigation things that seemingly just broke. Wonder if its either rectified or somehow reverted in 2021.

tynew

Some actual useful features in this update, probably the best update they've done in years. The shortcut manager/chamfer modifier was the second best things since 2009. I'm assuming max users should be able to bake rounded corners now properly. Does this new bake tool support match by name _high/_low besides ID? 

I haven't baked in max in years but last I remember you can only have one low poly object as the source? Meaning if you have say a gun with multiple objects, you can't bake it all onto one normal map right?

They really need to unify the tools for such things as the command panel/ribbon. Clean up their tools and remove obsolete ones. Taking the advice from skilled modellers, as they use the tools daily rather than guessing themselves.

PolyHertz

Just saw this in the fixes section:

"EditablePoly and EditPoly modifier now preserves explicit normals when attaching, detaching, and cloning"
"EditPoly now preserves explicit normals."

This has been a big problem for custom normals workflows, so really great to see it fixed.

coven

@PolyHertz Yep, it's progress. There are still areas that break the normals that shouldn't. We worked on unifying libraries that everything will eventually use, but we thought those were a good place to start.

oglu

There is more from the Max labs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STeG47Sy03E

tynew

Saw that video @oglu not sure why autodesk didn't polish it up and put it all into the 2021 release. That video would of really turned some heads. 

oglu

I assume this dude is breaking some NDA. Its not an official video. Plus some of those tools arnt ready to be used.