Man, I can't stress enough how much faster Max 2012 is for me than 2010. Doing anything with alot of objects is orders of magnitude faster in 2012 vs. 2010. Is night and day difference. I hope 2013 is even faster yet.
Viewport performance, despite Nitrous's already being better, could definitely be enhanced. In scenes upward of 10 million tris, i get major lag when viewportin' around.
Get performance up to speed with other apps, notably Maya. Viewport 2.0 is WAY faster than Nitrous. Fix the horrible command panel refresh problem that showed up in 2010 and never went away.
Don't really care for quad chamfer to be honest.
How about simple, small things? Like when you merge objects from different scene it would actually jump to object named Sphere01 when pressed S etc? Or when resetting pivot point, moving it somewhere move/rotation/scale gizmo would actually follow it? So you don't have to go Rotate and then go into Pivot tab to press Affect Pivot Only just to make the gizmo move....
Or sort out the selection sorting so max doesn't select something 5 miles away just because its wire kinda crosses the thing I want to actually select.
How about improvements to particle flow? The fact that pflow can't use multi-threading is such a pain, most people have a least a dual or quad core processor, so pflow calculations could be 8 times faster on my machine. And if they can accelerate with the GPU then max would have a very powerful particle system. They could also include box 2 or something similar so that particles have some physics capabilities. Perhaps some other pflow elements like fluid viscosity would be amazing, making it similar to using with Glu3D but all real time in the viewport without the need for simulation. Also they could implement more NVIDIA things like cloth and hair. No idea why they removed reactor cloth without replacing any cloth simulator to work with MassFX. On an aside, I reckon they won't call it 3DS Max 2013, think they'll go for 3DS Max Nitro or something lame like that to avoid having the number 13 in their title. Anywho, would love to know what other people think on those points.
I am hoping for a reboot, drop the legacy code and write something that really deserves the price tag.
lol
Max2012 for me is the best max yet, but it still has some weird things on it.
I would personally like to see viewport shaders working with Nitrous, as It's like 1000 faster than the default D3.
Let's see, what else... There's this nasty bug, when you have loads of tris on the viewport, if you use the orbits it still works like butter, but if you use alt+mmb it stalls for a second and it's slow as hell, this is such a small thing but it annoys me to no end.
The new UV editor is great! Would be great if the normalize UV's was off by default, or at least if there's a way to turn it off for good, as I hate to do my projections and each have they're own weird scale, if it wasnt for UV tools 1:1 feature, I wouldnt know what to do.
I'm still hoping for a better Graphite Modeling Tools UI implementation, like vertical organization like polyboost used to be. :shifty:
many people ask for updates for older modules of max but the fact is that often the original engineers that worked on that plugin do not work for autodesk or the 3dsmax team any more.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the PF code is already a bit dusty and just a overkill to make it multi core enabled- its just code from older days that you still pay for.
Its no wonder that they swallow more and more plugins from 3rd party developers and include it in the main application as a reason for people to upgrade. But it doesn't prevent the application to get more legacy code, code that was written outside the core development with its own quirks, UI and behaviour.
+1 for the quad chamfer. Id also love to see proper raycast selections and the ribbon and caddies gone.
Well it's always been easier for Autodesk to acquire a developer of a plugin, than to spend that money on R&D.
I mean they have 3 3D applications that do the same thing, why not unify the best from each package into some new 3D application that doesn't suffer from the legacy code.
We all know they want to monopolise that sector, thats why they bought Maya and XSI, they didn't want them falling in to some other developers hands, because then they'd be forced to innovate.
I also have trouble bending my mind about spending a lot of money when there's free programs like Bender that can basicly do the same.
I realy love working with 3ds Max and I hope this won't change, but from what I've heard was the innovative progress alot quicker when Max and Maya were actually two competing programs from 2 different developers. That's why I'm in hope they realise that Bender will kick their asses if they don't come up with some good updates in the future.
On a side note, I've never worked with Bender, but from what I hear and see about it it's pretty powerfull if you consider that it's free.
What do you mean by raycast selection Ark ? Is there something wrong with present selection in 3ds max ? I never had any problems. And what raycast means when you are talking about selection ?
MrOneTwo: Raycast selection basically sends out a ray from whats visible under the mouse cursor, it allows for accurate tagging of components and its very good for painting selections of components. This also eliminates backface selection aswell.
If you've ever use XSI or Modo or i think even Silo has it, then you'll know what i mean. Max does have something similar with its paint selection/pre-object highlighting, but there not really accurate enough imho.
Dynamically adjusting clipping planes depending on distance to viewport's pivot target.
Working on "to scale" stuff that's smaller than a metre in Max is painful as it ends up clipping half the model unless you work in Ortho viewports or zoomed so far out that selection or accuracy is impossible.
Scale is an issue, but you can work around it if you change the unit scale to millimeters and/or modeling the thing in proportion correctly, but large and then scaling it down.
^
Well, the community is to blame for that at this point, Autodesk started taking feedback on this stuff recently, with User scores and such on their community site, but people cannot seem to band together to make anything worth it.
For example, I would love to see proper RT-shader support atleast for Nitrous, and so far, only a couple of peeps votes for such features as opposed to Viewport canvas which rakes in over several dozen voices, not mention the most votes.
On the other hand, important features like baking, especially Normals, a large part of the community doesn't know about the issues which Normal Map have.
Simply put, Arch-Vis students which grow like wild poisonous mushrooms will always make more noise for stupid stuff, instead of educated crocks for important stuff.
At least caddies got in there. The worst part of max is that with each next release they try to add something new and the truth is they should sacrifice one or two releases to dig out from this mess they created. Throw out the legacy stuff (really old ones), work on performance, improve UI (this one is really really important since max has almost everything in at least two places...), fix bugs and tweak what needs tweaking. I'm sure If they for example will add quad chamfer... it will be fucked up. At least until first hotfix... or even longer. Just like 2012 was unusable at start: "here you have new Unwrap (which is actually something that should be there long time ago) but its unusable!!! You're welcome dear customer!"
Actually give the MassFX the full feature set. Actually i think it's a joke to put in Nvidia PhysX without support for Cuda or OpenCL. Same goes for Cloth, Hair / Fur and Particle systems.
How about a proper Support for Multi Monitor? like beeing able to get more than 4 viewports (maybe someone like me wants the realistic big on the second screen and the 4 (top left front + hidden edge) the other Screen). That would be nice.
Yeah Autodesk should be actually ashamed. I'm really happy that they are making those changes but cmon... its 2012 and it should be there long time ago. Resizable CUI window... ? They needed all those years to come to conclusion that it should be bigger ? Autodesk you so weirdo.
How about a proper Support for Multi Monitor? like beeing able to get more than 4 viewports (maybe someone like me wants the realistic big on the second screen and the 4 (top left front + hidden edge) the other Screen). That would be nice.
Add to this a way to retrieve windows from off screen. If you've ever put a window on your second monitor then gone to work on the file on a system that doesn't have a second monitor you know how frustrating this is. Then you have to delete the 3dsmax.ini file to reset max to defaults and go through the hassle of setting up the UI again.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1094470
I wish just like I wished in 2010 and 2011 that they take some time address the ribbon and its impact on the UI specifically #4, where the ribbon takes precedence over the command panel when it should be the other way around.
Give people the option to load whichever tools are important to them.
If you never use biped, cloth, hair/fur, particles ect... why is it loading? I'm pretty sure no one would mind if it took a second or two to load when they actually went to use it, explaining why its disabled and why its about to load would be some vital customer communication that they normally don't get, and just leads to frustration. That's how the ribbon works now only you don't get a choice if it loads or not, you just get stuck waiting forever the first time you launch it without any explanation why, just "chug chug chug".
Improve Viewport Canvas
- Help it to read layer folders and adjustment layers properly.
- Allow us to see the full material when painting not just the one map we are painting on. It's really hard to paint diffuse and spec maps without the normal map there.
Add HumanIK to 3dsmax
This fuckin rocks in Maya and Motion Builder and really needs to be added to max. It would be awesome if it could be added to existing rigs like CAT and biped so you could use all of the awesome tools in those rigs, plus HIK...
Fix the viewport lag when the curve editor is open
This is so unbelievably annoying. 24 fps drops to 3-4fps with the curve editor open? I can't animate with the curve editor open, not to mention selecting keys and manipulating curves.
Isolate curve for biped objects
Currently this tool does not work on biped objects, I guess because biped doesn't have traditional controllers? Is it really that hard to do?
Curve editor improvements
Thanks for simplfying the curve editor to match other apps but you stripped out some of the useful tools, like scale keys. If Maya and XSI have gimped up curve editors with limited features that's great, but why hobble max. Remove scale keys? Really!? I personally would love to have most of these standard in every curve editor in every app: http://monsterblues.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/keytools/
UV Editor that is not modifier dependent This should be a mode you enter at any time rather than a modifier that clutters up the stack causing you to constantly collapse it. What's worse is when you can't collapse the stack like doing a UV edit to a model that is skinned and animated.
Allow customization of the bottom panel http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336353/3dsmaxBottomBarsRibbon.gif
Most of the time when I'm modeling, I disable the entire lower panel, its useless and eats up space. I've started docking the ribbon down there instead, at least it leaves the command panel alone, which is important for muscle memory and keeps me from scrolling up and down to get to tools.
The type in coordinates boxes are useless compared to the type in transform you get when you right click the scale/move/rotate tools. As for the other tools down there I bet most people don't even know what they are, let alone use them. Even animators (myself included) don't use 75% of that stuff.
I forgot to mention I wrote a simple toggle script that replaces the bottom bars with the ribbon.
macroScript RibbonToggle
category:" VigTools"
toolTip:"Toggle Bottom Bars and Ribbon"
icon:#("ribbon",1)
(-- Toggles on and off the bottom toolbar
fn togglebotoff = (
trackbar.visible = false
timeSlider.setVisible (false)
statusPanel.visible = false
MaxRibbon.SetRibbonDockState #bottomDock
MaxRibbon.ShowRibbon true
)
fn toggleboton = (
trackbar.visible = true
timeSlider.setVisible (true)
statusPanel.visible = true
MaxRibbon.ShowRibbon false
)
if statusPanel.visible == false and trackbar.visible == false then (
toggleboton()
)
else (
togglebotoff()
)
)
To install run the script once from anywhere, Main Menu > MaxScript > Run Script
Then you can find it in: Main Menu > Customize UI
From there you can assign it to a shortcut, drag it into the toolbar or drop it in the quad menu.
I replace the ribbon toggle with this which is set to look the same.
I'd like to see Viewport canvas get a bunch of improvements, like:
-Projection painting and AppLink functionality with Photoshop.
-Be able to view multiple maps at once while painting.
-Improved brush engine (the stroke 'crumple zones' are way too obvious).
-Brush setting presets.
-Folders and Adjustment layer support.
-Paint re-symmetrize function like 3DCoat has.
Working directly on isoline surfaces instead of cages would be nice too (or fixing the age-old problem of exporting TS modifiers set to isoline display). And Swift Loop should create better UVs (they're always skewed).
add cut along the middle of a UVs edge when its snapped to the middle should create more accurate UVs (loops snapped to the middle of an edge should be in the middle of that edge too on the UVs).
I would love to see proper RT-shader support atleast for Nitrous, and so far, only a couple of peeps votes for such features as opposed to Viewport canvas which rakes in over several dozen voices, not mention the most votes.
That's because Viewport Canvas has the potential to be a significant part of Max. Tons of programs support projection paint atp, but unfortunately several of the best ones have been abandoned (DeepPaint, BodyPaint 3D), don't support layers (Blender, Modo, Maya), or other various quirks that cause people to give up using them in their work. That's why people always jump on the hype train when a new program or feature like this is announced (like with Mari), hoping "Maybe this time it'll be done right".
"Technology Previews" keep popping up, so they might announce around at NAB next month (Which is when the packages are usually available after the GDC announcement). If not then, it will probably be at Siggraph in August. Hopefully that gives time for cool new features and improvements that are stable enough for production.
Replies
How about simple, small things? Like when you merge objects from different scene it would actually jump to object named Sphere01 when pressed S etc? Or when resetting pivot point, moving it somewhere move/rotation/scale gizmo would actually follow it? So you don't have to go Rotate and then go into Pivot tab to press Affect Pivot Only just to make the gizmo move....
Or sort out the selection sorting so max doesn't select something 5 miles away just because its wire kinda crosses the thing I want to actually select.
lol
Max2012 for me is the best max yet, but it still has some weird things on it.
I would personally like to see viewport shaders working with Nitrous, as It's like 1000 faster than the default D3.
Let's see, what else... There's this nasty bug, when you have loads of tris on the viewport, if you use the orbits it still works like butter, but if you use alt+mmb it stalls for a second and it's slow as hell, this is such a small thing but it annoys me to no end.
The new UV editor is great! Would be great if the normalize UV's was off by default, or at least if there's a way to turn it off for good, as I hate to do my projections and each have they're own weird scale, if it wasnt for UV tools 1:1 feature, I wouldnt know what to do.
I'm still hoping for a better Graphite Modeling Tools UI implementation, like vertical organization like polyboost used to be. :shifty:
+1 for the quad chanfer.
Snapping that actually works like Maya's.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the PF code is already a bit dusty and just a overkill to make it multi core enabled- its just code from older days that you still pay for.
Its no wonder that they swallow more and more plugins from 3rd party developers and include it in the main application as a reason for people to upgrade. But it doesn't prevent the application to get more legacy code, code that was written outside the core development with its own quirks, UI and behaviour.
Well it's always been easier for Autodesk to acquire a developer of a plugin, than to spend that money on R&D.
I mean they have 3 3D applications that do the same thing, why not unify the best from each package into some new 3D application that doesn't suffer from the legacy code.
We all know they want to monopolise that sector, thats why they bought Maya and XSI, they didn't want them falling in to some other developers hands, because then they'd be forced to innovate.
I also have trouble bending my mind about spending a lot of money when there's free programs like Bender that can basicly do the same.
I realy love working with 3ds Max and I hope this won't change, but from what I've heard was the innovative progress alot quicker when Max and Maya were actually two competing programs from 2 different developers. That's why I'm in hope they realise that Bender will kick their asses if they don't come up with some good updates in the future.
On a side note, I've never worked with Bender, but from what I hear and see about it it's pretty powerfull if you consider that it's free.
What do you mean by raycast selection Ark ? Is there something wrong with present selection in 3ds max ? I never had any problems. And what raycast means when you are talking about selection ?
If you've ever use XSI or Modo or i think even Silo has it, then you'll know what i mean. Max does have something similar with its paint selection/pre-object highlighting, but there not really accurate enough imho.
Working on "to scale" stuff that's smaller than a metre in Max is painful as it ends up clipping half the model unless you work in Ortho viewports or zoomed so far out that selection or accuracy is impossible.
This.
It would be awesome if you could snap like w/ SketchUp where you can move an object relative to other object's vertexes.
this*9000
Well, the community is to blame for that at this point, Autodesk started taking feedback on this stuff recently, with User scores and such on their community site, but people cannot seem to band together to make anything worth it.
For example, I would love to see proper RT-shader support atleast for Nitrous, and so far, only a couple of peeps votes for such features as opposed to Viewport canvas which rakes in over several dozen voices, not mention the most votes.
On the other hand, important features like baking, especially Normals, a large part of the community doesn't know about the issues which Normal Map have.
Simply put, Arch-Vis students which grow like wild poisonous mushrooms will always make more noise for stupid stuff, instead of educated crocks for important stuff.
There are some good votes/points ppl are making here. Not all are good, worth it, but alot are good I think, or would be helpful.
Anyway, i want TOTAL mac compatability
These are the ones that got accepted...
How about a proper Support for Multi Monitor? like beeing able to get more than 4 viewports (maybe someone like me wants the realistic big on the second screen and the 4 (top left front + hidden edge) the other Screen). That would be nice.
You mean somebody asked for caddies?
who are they, where can i find them and does anyone know a good place to hide the bodies?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jBhMPm9HtPc
ohhh and clay viewport mode looks cool.
Double click edge loop selection will be useful although I hope they add something for ring selection too.
This stuff all looks cool but I couldn't help but thinking the entire time, "WHY WASN'T IT THIS WAY TO BEGIN WITH?!"
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1094470
I wish just like I wished in 2010 and 2011 that they take some time address the ribbon and its impact on the UI specifically #4, where the ribbon takes precedence over the command panel when it should be the other way around.
Give people the option to load whichever tools are important to them.
If you never use biped, cloth, hair/fur, particles ect... why is it loading? I'm pretty sure no one would mind if it took a second or two to load when they actually went to use it, explaining why its disabled and why its about to load would be some vital customer communication that they normally don't get, and just leads to frustration. That's how the ribbon works now only you don't get a choice if it loads or not, you just get stuck waiting forever the first time you launch it without any explanation why, just "chug chug chug".
Improve Viewport Canvas
- Help it to read layer folders and adjustment layers properly.
- Allow us to see the full material when painting not just the one map we are painting on. It's really hard to paint diffuse and spec maps without the normal map there.
Add HumanIK to 3dsmax
This fuckin rocks in Maya and Motion Builder and really needs to be added to max. It would be awesome if it could be added to existing rigs like CAT and biped so you could use all of the awesome tools in those rigs, plus HIK...
Fix the viewport lag when the curve editor is open
This is so unbelievably annoying. 24 fps drops to 3-4fps with the curve editor open? I can't animate with the curve editor open, not to mention selecting keys and manipulating curves.
Isolate curve for biped objects
Currently this tool does not work on biped objects, I guess because biped doesn't have traditional controllers? Is it really that hard to do?
Curve editor improvements
Thanks for simplfying the curve editor to match other apps but you stripped out some of the useful tools, like scale keys. If Maya and XSI have gimped up curve editors with limited features that's great, but why hobble max. Remove scale keys? Really!? I personally would love to have most of these standard in every curve editor in every app: http://monsterblues.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/keytools/
UV Editor that is not modifier dependent
This should be a mode you enter at any time rather than a modifier that clutters up the stack causing you to constantly collapse it. What's worse is when you can't collapse the stack like doing a UV edit to a model that is skinned and animated.
Allow customization of the bottom panel
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336353/3dsmaxBottomBarsRibbon.gif
Most of the time when I'm modeling, I disable the entire lower panel, its useless and eats up space. I've started docking the ribbon down there instead, at least it leaves the command panel alone, which is important for muscle memory and keeps me from scrolling up and down to get to tools.
The type in coordinates boxes are useless compared to the type in transform you get when you right click the scale/move/rotate tools. As for the other tools down there I bet most people don't even know what they are, let alone use them. Even animators (myself included) don't use 75% of that stuff.
macroScript RibbonToggle category:" VigTools" toolTip:"Toggle Bottom Bars and Ribbon" icon:#("ribbon",1) (-- Toggles on and off the bottom toolbar fn togglebotoff = ( trackbar.visible = false timeSlider.setVisible (false) statusPanel.visible = false MaxRibbon.SetRibbonDockState #bottomDock MaxRibbon.ShowRibbon true ) fn toggleboton = ( trackbar.visible = true timeSlider.setVisible (true) statusPanel.visible = true MaxRibbon.ShowRibbon false ) if statusPanel.visible == false and trackbar.visible == false then ( toggleboton() ) else ( togglebotoff() ) )To install run the script once from anywhere, Main Menu > MaxScript > Run ScriptThen you can find it in: Main Menu > Customize UI
From there you can assign it to a shortcut, drag it into the toolbar or drop it in the quad menu.
I replace the ribbon toggle with this which is set to look the same.
This. So much this.
-Projection painting and AppLink functionality with Photoshop.
-Be able to view multiple maps at once while painting.
-Improved brush engine (the stroke 'crumple zones' are way too obvious).
-Brush setting presets.
-Folders and Adjustment layer support.
-Paint re-symmetrize function like 3DCoat has.
Working directly on isoline surfaces instead of cages would be nice too (or fixing the age-old problem of exporting TS modifiers set to isoline display). And Swift Loop should create better UVs (they're always skewed).
add cut along the middle of a UVs edge when its snapped to the middle should create more accurate UVs (loops snapped to the middle of an edge should be in the middle of that edge too on the UVs).
That's because Viewport Canvas has the potential to be a significant part of Max. Tons of programs support projection paint atp, but unfortunately several of the best ones have been abandoned (DeepPaint, BodyPaint 3D), don't support layers (Blender, Modo, Maya), or other various quirks that cause people to give up using them in their work. That's why people always jump on the hype train when a new program or feature like this is announced (like with Mari), hoping "Maybe this time it'll be done right".
sigh...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_xMREE8ZPw&feature=youtu.be