Just installed 2012 with a subscription account. I'm not seeing the performance improvements from the videos above. In fact with the hi-poly models I've tested with I get about 50% more FPS from 2011.
Just installed 2012 with a subscription account. I'm not seeing the performance improvements from the videos above. In fact with the hi-poly models I've tested with I get about 50% more FPS from 2011.
Do you have deforming meshes? You can't expect the same preformace you would get animating while you would modeling. Ken said earlier that they haven't done anything to improve the speed of things like skin deformation but they could possibly be looking into things that help, I hope so.
I'm importing a 280K OBJ into a reset scene. If I edit the geometry 2011 drops to 200 fps and 2012 drops to 20. If I change Nitrous to Direct 3D I get the old fps in 2012. What is Nitrous for anyway? Just to see the fancy screen effects? Because I never need that.
More importantly for me, since I'm an animator, I still can't have the curve editor open when I hit the play button or else the fps drops to 3.
oh well, sounds like they have some continuity going on. a nice, steady decline you can be sure of. i assume at least the memory footprint has gone up?
I'm importing a 280K OBJ into a reset scene. If I edit the geometry 2011 drops to 200 fps and 2012 drops to 20. If I change Nitrous to Direct 3D I get the old fps in 2012. What is Nitrous for anyway? Just to see the fancy screen effects? Because I never need that.
More importantly for me, since I'm an animator, I still can't have the curve editor open when I hit the play button or else the fps drops to 3.
Yea the curve editor still kills FPS for me too, there are times I would love to see 3fps.
Here are the results of my tests on my work machine (a below average machine), with a 100k tri mesh.
Vista 64bit Ultimate
i5 2.67GHz
8gb RAM
GeForce GT 240
(I'll test it at home tonight which is a lot beefier system)
Realistic Shading: 2011 DX9 Driver [Ambient Occlusion + HW]
96-155 fps Navigating the scene with nothing selected. 7-14 fps Navigating the scene while in sub object mode. 0-3 fps While preforming operations.
2012 Nitrous [Realistic + Edged faces] Quality 1.0 Default, AO + Shadows, Scene lights on, 3 Omni Casting shadow map
32-60 fps Navigating the scene with nothing selected. 25-50 fps Navigating the scene while in sub object mode. 11-22 fps While preforming operations. Quickly picks back up after the operation is complete.
Summary: 2011 "realistic shading" looks horrible and preforms like ass. 2012 looks amazing and preforms much better than 2011, still would like to see higher fps.
Standard Shading: 2011 DX9 Driver [Smooth + Highlights + Edged Faces]
127-312 fps Navigating a scene with nothing selected.
88-135 fps Navigating while in sub object mode. 5-12 fps While preforming operations.
2012 Nitrous [Shaded + Edged faces]
72-90 fps Navigating the scene with nothing selected. 30- 64 fps Navigating the scene while in sub object mode. 10-15 fps While preforming operations. Quickly picks back up after the operation is complete.
Summary: 2012 DX9 preforms about the same as 2011 DX9. Even tho 2012 DX9 is better than 2012 Nitrous, I use the realistic mode of Nitrous quite a bit when doing lighting so I'll keep nitrous on, the minimal bump in FPS isn't worth doing the driver tango.
OBJ files import much faster.
Converting a large amount of objects to edit poly is much faster.
I can see both blue and green vertices in Skin Mirror mode. (Usually thew blue side was always invisible.)
But actual viewport interaction is slow when running Nitrous. And about the same as 2011 when running Direct3D.
New Uvw Unwrap modifier is cool though. Nitrous... lags sometimes on simplest things but improves performance on heavy scenes... shame max isn't as smooth as modo (don't have a lot of experience with modo but it seems really smooth) but mass fx, new UVW are really nice. Don't really know what are those filters for... seems useless...
Nitrous does lag did you try to use DX? or anything else?
I like the new unwrap can't wait to learn It, but damn It I needs to run smooth.
Anyone try to break It yet? import multi million Tris till It goes Kaput?
The site should mention that information Zip, if It doesn't someone will come around hopefully.
performance wise, it's leaps over 2010. importing heavy meshes (20million + polies) takes no time at all, baking is fast, viewport is much much smoother than 2010.
i want a compattable version of 3point shader though... the new material editor, while fun to use, doesn't give nearly as good results.
So I fired up the Demo after downloading it for 15 hours...
I opened up a scene with 700k polygons, in 2009 it opened up quite fast and was ready to go fairly quickly, I fiddled around with the scene a bit, no problems there. then I tried to set up a camera and record the FPS and so forth.
I opened up 2012, the file took maybe 5 seconds longer to open (no biggie). Then I did the same things that I had done with the 2009 version (and maybe fiddle around here and there, tehehe) to my surprise this is what I got.
The thing is, while 2012 stayed at a constant 9-10FPS 2009 jumped around from 30-40. This is with nitrous. It's also cool how nitrous constantly updates the AA, makes the image looks crisp as fuck.
Still loving the new features, and having way to much fun with this! Thanks for another wicked update autodesk .
I really appreciate the effort the max team is making, but with 2012 and nitrous the performance doesn't seem to be that much of a gain over 2011 if at all.
Imported a 1 million polygon object from Zbrush into 2012, shaded mode only. Viewport manipulation (rotating, panning, etc around object) is very slow to respond to mouse input. Subobject modes still lag as much as before.\ The quad menus take a couple a second or two to pop up.
Stacking this against Softimage 2012, Max is still very far behind in performance. I imported the same mesh into Soft and it was butter smooth with everything and Soft's technology is years and years older than Nitrous.
I would have much rather have had all that effort into real-time shadows, AO, ribbon and all that fancy stuff be pumped into focusing on pure performance first. Viewport and UI being the central focus.
Anyway, I know you guys have to deal with 1000's of video cards and a huge userbase and plugins, but it feels like every year Max is more or less the same performance wise with just more bloated features and fancier display while ignoring the core issues.
Well then lets all stick with max 2009 then ? I mean, I dont think there is anything really needed in 2010, 2011 or 2012 when it comes to pure modeling. Even the graphite/polyboost part is made obsolete by the free (!) MaxRetopo script. Or am I missing something ?
I dont know what you guys are complaining about. I got 2 1/2 yr old hardware, and this runs MUCH better for me than 2010 imo. I can get 100FPS with 9.2 million polys in the scene, across 524 objects.
I can even get like 40FPS with Realistic on, with the highest settings.
This is weird.... I closed 2012 and open 2010... and since I installed 2012, icons in 2010 have changed. Custom Icons I made, now look different in 2010, than they did before I installed. Also, menus seem to be faster/snappier in 2010 since I installed 2012..... :S
so 2010 was screwed up, 2011 less F-ed up, and 2012 is the least srewed up so far. I'm not sure when they mention part of xbr is diet but 2012 installer is whooping up to 3gb, that's insane to compare to 2009 file size.
So far 2012 seems fine to me. I will keep using it for now and see how it goes. Some of the new UV tools are very handy though. I wish some were better, but it should still be nice.
Nitrous is pretty cool. Works pretty fast for me, and no weird issues. I forgot about max supporting Vector Displacement maps now .
So... I ran some more tests with modifiers and all that yummy stuff. This is a little written tutorial of what I did and what happened. I can assure you that it was faster in 2009 (at least 3x faster), but I bet 2012 is much better than 2010 and 2011.
By the way this is a very cool technique, might come in handy .
First Create a box and a Quad patch.
Convert the Patch to a editable patch.
Add a Patch Deform modifier(World space modifier) to the box and Move to Patch.
Now you have a cool box that follows the patch grid, you can move the vertices's of the patch around and then modify the U/V percent of the Patch Deform Modifier on the box.
The framerate should be fine, in shaded view. (around 30)
Now clone the box 5x vertically, and 5x horizontally. They all should still move along the patch together. (FPS around 25)
Keep multiplying the grid again 4x/4x.
My frame rate dropped like balls of steel and hit around 9.
In realistic mode it's, around 7. If I move the boxes together, it's around 0.426. Without the modifiers it did around 11 (901 objects), when you moved then it dipped to 1.761.
I think I really need a bit more ram and a definitely new GPU... I feel like there will be one in the future, but for now I work with what I got . But I gotta say, 2009 is still winning in my mind in performance!
Once again, let me state I am getting absolutely nothing from Autodesk in return for those videos, I just want max to be fast. For my setup it is extremely fast so I am happy but Like I said, theres sure to be some hardware configs that get molested.
I am trying to figure out what could cause that.
On my current project, my viewport fps in 2011 was about 1/2 of what it is in 2012 tonight. My biggest gripe I've ran into since testing 2012 has been that their UV selection tools still don't support subobj conversion. Meaning, I can't select an edge and ctrl+click the poly selection button to select those faces. Really annoying, since it's something I use all the damn time while modeling. I wish that function carried over to the UV tools.
Joshua Stubbles - you can always create your own shortcuts for that... I made them with maxscript and it works great(two weeks ago didn't even touch maxscript now I wrote all hot keys I use... its really simple).
Yeah, Lichy's tools has that functionality as well. But something that basic should really be a part of the standard Max tools. I like Max because it's really solid out of the box. I don't have to spend several days customizing, downloading and installing scripts like I have to with Maya. This is just one of those features I'd like to see standard, as it saves me that much more time.
Hey Autodesk, give me 3-4 of your programmers for a year and we'll make a max branch that will get people more excited than anything the rest of your team can come up with for max 2013.
This sentence itself makes me excited ;] I know its not possible but imagine...damn...that was cruel perna. I always wonder why Autodesk rolls like that. It feels like 3dsmax was made by someone totally different than present autodesk team. Now it seems like they just don't get it... ok they got why uvw unwrap sucked ;]
I just don't get why Autodesk don't go "okay guys, delete everything. Let's do this shit from scratch, from SUPER scratch, using alpha and beta releases for feedback, heavily. Let's spend 5 years developing this" and then make the most amazing version of Max ever released, oh and of course include perna on EVERYTHING.
Especially since they already got the 3 biggest 3d applications (Max, Maya, XSI), take the best ideas and functions from each and make the perfect, fastest functional 3D Program.
I just don't get why Autodesk don't go "okay guys, delete everything. Let's do this shit from scratch, from SUPER scratch, using alpha and beta releases for feedback, heavily. Let's spend 5 years developing this" and then make the most amazing version of Max ever released, oh and of course include perna on EVERYTHING.
Starting a program from scratch isn't a realistic development option. For starters, it would take a lot longer than five years. Look at Modo -- over half a decade of steady development and it's missing huge features like character animation. I'm not saying Modo is an inferior program because Luxology has pursued a very focused development path, but you can't just start over from scratch and quickly end up with a software package as broad as Max or Maya. Lightwave Core is another example (how long ago did they announce it?). In addition, five years without an update for current users? Five years without subscription or upgrade revenue? The best development is always going to be incremental and focused on iteration.
Maya's Viewport 2.0 was pretty shoddy last year and it's improved dramatically this year. Instead of rebuilding Maya from scratch, they built an entirely new viewport system as a good foundation for the future. It's not perfect, but it's headed in a nice direction. Max seems to be headed there, too.
Starting a program from scratch isn't a realistic development option.
indeed, just starting over with a new software and brand is what cost softimage (almost) their entire market share in the industry. from pack leader to fifth wheel thanks to 'sumatra' in like two years - i bet that one really stuck with the makers of CG apps.
not the least - more recently, autodesk wasn't so successful themselves trying to put 'toxik' as a new compositor on the map.
the problem with max has been that going forward traditionally they've never cleaned up their bugs and inconsistencies. if the core features, i. e. performance, stability, basic scene management and content creation tools need improvement, what do we care for new shiny plugins with fancy functionality? much easier to market tho.
i think it has gone worse ever since they went with that subscription model. there's probably just too much incentive to push out a new release to make the subscription seem worth it over taking time to develop and launch a solid improvement 'when it's done'.
Hey guys, im having a problem with Max 2012 in the UVW Editor. When i attempt to scale any uvs, they don't constrain to their original proportions like in any previous version of Max i have used (2010 and 2011). Is there a way to fix this? Has anyone else had this problem? Thanks.
All I can say is you'll benefit greatly from extending and customizing 3ds max.
Yeah I'm not saying that I don't, but I find it very workable from the get go, if required. I mean customizing keyboards, menus and quads is a given. That's also super fast. I don't find that I need a ton of scripts and add ons in order to work, though. Some make it easier and I do use them (textools, turbo tools, a few tiny scripts), but I could work without them as well (albeit a bit slower). My experience with Maya was that I couldn't even do basic things like target weld, without having to get scripts for it. That kind of ridiculous design was something I just didn't want to deal with.
It's very dependent on how the model is oriented in the viewport, how close to camera, etc. But the numbers are close. For me, 2012 is faster, even though the FPS doesn't reflect it. I can select the objects without lag (yay!) and the viewport just seems smoother. I can edit the meshes without any stuttering at all, which is awesome. Still need to mess with the new UV stuff.
Is anyone else having issue with DirectX Shaders? I had to change the viewport driver to from Nitrous to Direct3D.
~edit: I hate these fucking caddies. I never used 2011, so only read about them. Hopefully I'll get used to them. At least they're not moving around, I guess.
I think I agree, I was playing with the RTTNormals Shader max ships with while waiting for the 3point one and it wasn't playing ball with the nitrous viewport.
Max is improving, but it will never ever be as good or better then the previous versions (-2009) in many ways and forms. For starters, we reached that nasty 'mushy' middle of things, where GUI and Ribbons are becoming more common place so that software's don't look like outdated ninja's wearing white pajamas in the middle of a dirty rainy city, (Max 2012 Icons are actually elements, meaning they'll look good regardless of settings you opt for) and this is going to be a nasty ride to try and survive for a while.
Yes, I love my 2008 and ability to export meshes to Crysis easily enough, but the interface at this point is archaic, and while personally, I don't have an issue with that, other people might do, especially many newcomers.
Nitrous isn't bad, but I feel the larger inclusion 'system' a la ShaderFX for the Viewport would have worked wonders (granted, I haven't delved much into it), plus, many of their dummy tests on 'house' systems didn't come out true, since I have yet to see any sort of achievement promised in those dummy tests with gaming PC's.
In short, Nitrous feels like it was created by someone who knows Max's viewport, may even have studied shaders and their benefits when applied in real-time, but has to grasp the subtlety on what actually constitutes a need for performance.
To further the issue, many Scripts and Plugins aren't working, it's great to see Mudbox get it's own version of GOZ, and great going on that, but having the one for ZB (official and unofficial ones) break, just spells doom, especially since the scaling issue in ZB still needs to be fixed. Lest we forget that many, MANY people use Zbrush, especially since great guys at Eat3D know how make the tutorials that everyone wants to learn.
Overall, 2012 isn't a Software ANYONE need to rush to, many pipelines are setup with either 2009 or 2011, Scripts and Plugins work well in the respective areas, and I'm pretty sure we can all survive another year or two with Horrible Icons which have a white-falloff around them, but untill we get the updated Streams we need in 2012, let us sit back, and wait things to settle down.
2009 does still seem to be the pinnacle of 3dsmax, sadly. Considering if you put textools and polyboost in 2009 theres really zero feature loses for modelers.
So far I've been pretty unimpressed with 2012. I still get 100x better performance in 2009.
2 Majors issues I noticed are:
(1) In 2012, you no longer get a performance boost from having hidden meshes. Lets say you have a high detail mesh on a single layer and want to build the low poly mesh on another. If you hide the high detail mesh layer, meaning you have nothing in your viewport, you don't get ANY performance increase (compared to previous versions). Basically this means once you have a high detial object in your scene, even if you hide the mesh to work on lower detail objects, youll be working at the same viewport FPS as if you had the high detail object present.
(2) the UVW unwrap modifier lags down the entire system.
Hmm, sounds like I'm gonna wait a bit before testing (especially since my 2012 gave me a 2011 instead :P ). Might wait for the first hotfix patches like always. Shame really, really like to try and upgrade from Max 9.
They used to have this bug in Max, I don't know if it's fixed or not in 2012, that was a major performance hit. When you hit 7 to have the statistics and fps up in the upper-left corner, it does those operations per vertex (or per triangle or something). Which means that if you have a high-poly mesh in there, even if it's hidden(!), you're getting a major performance hit.
I wonder if that's still there in 2012? Maybe it's even worse now, and that's impacting people's numbers.
So far I've been pretty unimpressed with 2012. I still get 100x better performance in 2009.
2 Majors issues I noticed are:
(1) In 2012, you no longer get a performance boost from having hidden meshes. Lets say you have a high detail mesh on a single layer and want to build the low poly mesh on another. If you hide the high detail mesh layer, meaning you have nothing in your viewport, you don't get ANY performance increase (compared to previous versions). Basically this means once you have a high detial object in your scene, even if you hide the mesh to work on lower detail objects, youll be working at the same viewport FPS as if you had the high detail object present.
(2) the UVW unwrap modifier lags down the entire system.
Sorry but nothing like that for me. Hiding boost performance significantly. UVW doesn't lag the system. It seems new max can act differently on different hardware (don't have any fancy hardware). I read many contrary opinions. For me 2012 is big improvement. Not as big as I expected (seems I'm naive ;]) but step in good direction.
Replies
Specs:
Geforce GTX 560 Ti w/ 1Gb GDDR5
16 Gb DDR3 memory
Intel Core i7 X980 (6 cores)
I should be ripping through these scenes.
I'm importing a 280K OBJ into a reset scene. If I edit the geometry 2011 drops to 200 fps and 2012 drops to 20. If I change Nitrous to Direct 3D I get the old fps in 2012. What is Nitrous for anyway? Just to see the fancy screen effects? Because I never need that.
More importantly for me, since I'm an animator, I still can't have the curve editor open when I hit the play button or else the fps drops to 3.
I think 2009 will forever be installed in my PC... but i'm waiting to download the demo to try out the performance.
Will post update.
Here are the results of my tests on my work machine (a below average machine), with a 100k tri mesh.
Vista 64bit Ultimate
i5 2.67GHz
8gb RAM
GeForce GT 240
(I'll test it at home tonight which is a lot beefier system)
Realistic Shading:
2011 DX9 Driver [Ambient Occlusion + HW]
96-155 fps Navigating the scene with nothing selected.
7-14 fps Navigating the scene while in sub object mode.
0-3 fps While preforming operations.
2012 Nitrous [Realistic + Edged faces] Quality 1.0 Default, AO + Shadows, Scene lights on, 3 Omni Casting shadow map
32-60 fps Navigating the scene with nothing selected.
25-50 fps Navigating the scene while in sub object mode.
11-22 fps While preforming operations. Quickly picks back up after the operation is complete.
Summary: 2011 "realistic shading" looks horrible and preforms like ass. 2012 looks amazing and preforms much better than 2011, still would like to see higher fps.
Standard Shading:
2011 DX9 Driver [Smooth + Highlights + Edged Faces]
127-312 fps Navigating a scene with nothing selected.
88-135 fps Navigating while in sub object mode.
5-12 fps While preforming operations.
2012 Nitrous [Shaded + Edged faces]
72-90 fps Navigating the scene with nothing selected.
30- 64 fps Navigating the scene while in sub object mode.
10-15 fps While preforming operations. Quickly picks back up after the operation is complete.
Summary: 2012 DX9 preforms about the same as 2011 DX9. Even tho 2012 DX9 is better than 2012 Nitrous, I use the realistic mode of Nitrous quite a bit when doing lighting so I'll keep nitrous on, the minimal bump in FPS isn't worth doing the driver tango.
OBJ files import much faster.
Converting a large amount of objects to edit poly is much faster.
I can see both blue and green vertices in Skin Mirror mode. (Usually thew blue side was always invisible.)
But actual viewport interaction is slow when running Nitrous. And about the same as 2011 when running Direct3D.
lol, pretty close. I start at Full Sail in like three weeks. 2011 ships with my laptop, wish it were 2012.
I like the new unwrap can't wait to learn It, but damn It I needs to run smooth.
Anyone try to break It yet? import multi million Tris till It goes Kaput?
The site should mention that information Zip, if It doesn't someone will come around hopefully.
i want a compattable version of 3point shader though... the new material editor, while fun to use, doesn't give nearly as good results.
I opened up a scene with 700k polygons, in 2009 it opened up quite fast and was ready to go fairly quickly, I fiddled around with the scene a bit, no problems there. then I tried to set up a camera and record the FPS and so forth.
I opened up 2012, the file took maybe 5 seconds longer to open (no biggie). Then I did the same things that I had done with the 2009 version (and maybe fiddle around here and there, tehehe) to my surprise this is what I got.
The thing is, while 2012 stayed at a constant 9-10FPS 2009 jumped around from 30-40. This is with nitrous. It's also cool how nitrous constantly updates the AA, makes the image looks crisp as fuck.
Still loving the new features, and having way to much fun with this! Thanks for another wicked update autodesk
Imported a 1 million polygon object from Zbrush into 2012, shaded mode only. Viewport manipulation (rotating, panning, etc around object) is very slow to respond to mouse input. Subobject modes still lag as much as before.\ The quad menus take a couple a second or two to pop up.
Stacking this against Softimage 2012, Max is still very far behind in performance. I imported the same mesh into Soft and it was butter smooth with everything and Soft's technology is years and years older than Nitrous.
I would have much rather have had all that effort into real-time shadows, AO, ribbon and all that fancy stuff be pumped into focusing on pure performance first. Viewport and UI being the central focus.
Anyway, I know you guys have to deal with 1000's of video cards and a huge userbase and plugins, but it feels like every year Max is more or less the same performance wise with just more bloated features and fancier display while ignoring the core issues.
I can even get like 40FPS with Realistic on, with the highest settings.
I got Win 7 64 bit, 8GB DDR2, GTX 260, Intel Core 2 Quad 2.67ghz
Just throwing it out there, I am not sure.
Nitrous is pretty cool. Works pretty fast for me, and no weird issues. I forgot about max supporting Vector Displacement maps now
By the way this is a very cool technique, might come in handy
The framerate should be fine, in shaded view. (around 30)
Now clone the box 5x vertically, and 5x horizontally. They all should still move along the patch together. (FPS around 25)
Keep multiplying the grid again 4x/4x.
My frame rate dropped like balls of steel and hit around 9.
In realistic mode it's, around 7. If I move the boxes together, it's around 0.426. Without the modifiers it did around 11 (901 objects), when you moved then it dipped to 1.761.
I think I really need a bit more ram and a definitely new GPU... I feel like there will be one in the future, but for now I work with what I got
Oh and I hate caddies:poly127:.
Found this on the readme.
Nitrous* To*prevent*issues*with*Nitrous,*ensure*you*have*the*most*up‐to‐ date*system*drivers.**For*specific*details,*see*the*sections*about* * 3ds*Max*2012*/*3ds*Max*Design*2012*found*at* www.autodesk.com/max‐hardware.* Applying*Unwrap*UVW*after*painting*in*2D*with*Viewport* Canvas*and*painting*on*top*of*the*Unwrap*UVW*can*sometimes* cause*2D*paint*to*fail.*** Workaround:*If*this*occurs,*apply*an*Edit*Poly*modifier*on*top* of*the*Unwrap*UVW*modifier.* Civil*View*parameters*can*cause*a*program*error*when* modifying*surface*parameters.* Object*Color*display*will*show*the*objects*material*color*when* set*to*object*color.*** Workaround:*Enable*Use*Environment*Background*and*Display* Background*in*the*Viewport*Background*settings*(Alt+B).* Locking*the*computer*can*cause*the*viewports*to*stop* responding*in*some*cases.*** Workaround:*If*this*occurs,*restart*the*program.* Mirrored*or*negatively*scaled*objects*might*display*face*edges* incorrectly.* The*Soft*selection*Shade*Face*Toggle*does*not*always*properly* display*the*shaded*faces.* MassFX*constraints*can*cause*Dummy*objects*not*to*display*in* Realistic*mode.* Body*Objects*display*tessellated/triangulated*edges*instead*of* the*proper*Body*curves.* Back*faces*display*as*transparent.* Hidden*Line*style*does*not*display*texture*maps*in*the*viewport.* Tone*Mapper*used*with*a*Skylight*set*to*use*the*mr*Physical*Sky* environment*will*display*a*black*background*when*enabled.*** Enable*Gamma/LUT*Correction*does*not*work*on*stylized* viewports.* Very*large*textures*(10K*x*10K)*can*cause*a*program*error.** Workaround:**You*can*control*texture*sizes*with*MAXScript:** NitrousGraphicsManager.SetTextureSizeLimit*512*true* NitrousGraphicsManager.SetBackgroundTextureSizeLimit*1024* true** Or*by*modifying*the*following*keys*in*3dsmax.ini:** [Nitrous]** ViewportTextureSizeLimitEnabled=1* ViewportTextureSizeLimit=512* ViewportBackgroundTextureSizeLimitEnabled=1**War Machine Model- under the Autodesk Content EULA
http://area.autodesk.com/userdata/fckdata/197/file/WarMachine_GW_001.zip
Once again, let me state I am getting absolutely nothing from Autodesk in return for those videos, I just want max to be fast. For my setup it is extremely fast so I am happy but Like I said, theres sure to be some hardware configs that get molested.
I am trying to figure out what could cause that.
This sentence itself makes me excited ;] I know its not possible but imagine...damn...that was cruel perna. I always wonder why Autodesk rolls like that. It feels like 3dsmax was made by someone totally different than present autodesk team. Now it seems like they just don't get it... ok they got why uvw unwrap sucked ;]
Maya's Viewport 2.0 was pretty shoddy last year and it's improved dramatically this year. Instead of rebuilding Maya from scratch, they built an entirely new viewport system as a good foundation for the future. It's not perfect, but it's headed in a nice direction. Max seems to be headed there, too.
okay....
i decided to stay with 2009....
indeed, just starting over with a new software and brand is what cost softimage (almost) their entire market share in the industry. from pack leader to fifth wheel thanks to 'sumatra' in like two years - i bet that one really stuck with the makers of CG apps.
not the least - more recently, autodesk wasn't so successful themselves trying to put 'toxik' as a new compositor on the map.
the problem with max has been that going forward traditionally they've never cleaned up their bugs and inconsistencies. if the core features, i. e. performance, stability, basic scene management and content creation tools need improvement, what do we care for new shiny plugins with fancy functionality? much easier to market tho.
i think it has gone worse ever since they went with that subscription model. there's probably just too much incentive to push out a new release to make the subscription seem worth it over taking time to develop and launch a solid improvement 'when it's done'.
Yeah I'm not saying that I don't, but I find it very workable from the get go, if required. I mean customizing keyboards, menus and quads is a given. That's also super fast. I don't find that I need a ton of scripts and add ons in order to work, though. Some make it easier and I do use them (textools, turbo tools, a few tiny scripts), but I could work without them as well (albeit a bit slower). My experience with Maya was that I couldn't even do basic things like target weld, without having to get scripts for it. That kind of ridiculous design was something I just didn't want to deal with.
2012:
It's very dependent on how the model is oriented in the viewport, how close to camera, etc. But the numbers are close. For me, 2012 is faster, even though the FPS doesn't reflect it. I can select the objects without lag (yay!) and the viewport just seems smoother. I can edit the meshes without any stuttering at all, which is awesome. Still need to mess with the new UV stuff.
~edit: I hate these fucking caddies. I never used 2011, so only read about them. Hopefully I'll get used to them. At least they're not moving around, I guess.
Max is improving, but it will never ever be as good or better then the previous versions (-2009) in many ways and forms. For starters, we reached that nasty 'mushy' middle of things, where GUI and Ribbons are becoming more common place so that software's don't look like outdated ninja's wearing white pajamas in the middle of a dirty rainy city, (Max 2012 Icons are actually elements, meaning they'll look good regardless of settings you opt for) and this is going to be a nasty ride to try and survive for a while.
Yes, I love my 2008 and ability to export meshes to Crysis easily enough, but the interface at this point is archaic, and while personally, I don't have an issue with that, other people might do, especially many newcomers.
Nitrous isn't bad, but I feel the larger inclusion 'system' a la ShaderFX for the Viewport would have worked wonders (granted, I haven't delved much into it), plus, many of their dummy tests on 'house' systems didn't come out true, since I have yet to see any sort of achievement promised in those dummy tests with gaming PC's.
In short, Nitrous feels like it was created by someone who knows Max's viewport, may even have studied shaders and their benefits when applied in real-time, but has to grasp the subtlety on what actually constitutes a need for performance.
To further the issue, many Scripts and Plugins aren't working, it's great to see Mudbox get it's own version of GOZ, and great going on that, but having the one for ZB (official and unofficial ones) break, just spells doom, especially since the scaling issue in ZB still needs to be fixed. Lest we forget that many, MANY people use Zbrush, especially since great guys at Eat3D know how make the tutorials that everyone wants to learn.
Overall, 2012 isn't a Software ANYONE need to rush to, many pipelines are setup with either 2009 or 2011, Scripts and Plugins work well in the respective areas, and I'm pretty sure we can all survive another year or two with Horrible Icons which have a white-falloff around them, but untill we get the updated Streams we need in 2012, let us sit back, and wait things to settle down.
http://www.maxunderground.com/archives/011007_nitrous_putting_together_the_pieces_of_a_max_core_rewrite.html/comment-page-1#comment-1074
2009 does still seem to be the pinnacle of 3dsmax, sadly. Considering if you put textools and polyboost in 2009 theres really zero feature loses for modelers.
2 Majors issues I noticed are:
(1) In 2012, you no longer get a performance boost from having hidden meshes. Lets say you have a high detail mesh on a single layer and want to build the low poly mesh on another. If you hide the high detail mesh layer, meaning you have nothing in your viewport, you don't get ANY performance increase (compared to previous versions). Basically this means once you have a high detial object in your scene, even if you hide the mesh to work on lower detail objects, youll be working at the same viewport FPS as if you had the high detail object present.
(2) the UVW unwrap modifier lags down the entire system.
I wonder if that's still there in 2012? Maybe it's even worse now, and that's impacting people's numbers.
And it doesn't eat less memory at all... it idles at 400k for me... while 2009 did around 200k...
I totally agree with you j_bradford.
Sorry but nothing like that for me. Hiding boost performance significantly. UVW doesn't lag the system. It seems new max can act differently on different hardware (don't have any fancy hardware). I read many contrary opinions. For me 2012 is big improvement. Not as big as I expected (seems I'm naive ;]) but step in good direction.