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3DS Max Roadmap

polycount lvl 666
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oglu polycount lvl 666
There are some really cool features in the pipe.
I hope the Texture baking means we get mikk support. :disappointed:

https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3ds-max-blog/3ds-max-public/

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  • CreativeSheep
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    CreativeSheep polycounter lvl 8
    Max is rising from the ashes.
  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    We have to see. Feels a bit like Excalibur XBR.
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range


    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....
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    50 bucks that the implementation will be flawed, normal map seams will appear and after a lengthy back and forth with support and perhaps a petition or two they'll admit that it is only 97% there or requires some other feature to be refactored first. Then they'll hint at a swift update. 'Sometime soon'.

    :smile: I'm going to get rich!

  • zachagreg
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    zachagreg ngon master
    Max is rising from the ashes.
    Careful, Perna will find you
  • Blaizer
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    Blaizer interpolator
    3ds Max 2020 has quad bevels now, or i'm missing something from past releases? The version i still use is 2011  :/


  • Eric Chadwick
    XXXX is in the works ;)

    Been on the beta for a long time and ...
    Hey man, just a reminder here, you signed a beta NDA. Not supposed to share anything from in there. Don't want to ruin a good thing, publicly traded company, etc.
  • Axi5
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    Axi5 interpolator
    I really should get back into Max one day. I know it's a small thing but I found that all the navigation on the MMB was straining my finger and I didn't like switching the hotkeys because it broke stuff. I have a better mouse now though, I should download a trial on my home pc and give it a whirl.

    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.
  • Eric Chadwick
    Is there actually a Youtube thread without shitty comments? 
  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    XXXX is in the works ;)

    Been on the beta for a long time and ...
    Hey man, just a reminder here, you signed a beta NDA. Not supposed to share anything from in there. Don't want to ruin a good thing, publicly traded company, etc.
    I hear you Eric. It was more of an email discussion with Brent away from the beta, but you're right. Freudian slip. Deleted. 
  • spacefrog
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    spacefrog polycounter lvl 14
    XXX is in the works ;)

    Been on the beta for a long time and ...
    Hey man, just a reminder here, you signed a beta NDA. Not supposed to share anything from in there. Don't want to ruin a good thing, publicly traded company, etc.
    Eric, AFAIK  you are on the beta too - no ?   i ask because quoting the freudian slip might break that NDA too me thinks :)
  • spacefrog
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    spacefrog polycounter lvl 14
    Is there actually a Youtube thread without shitty comments? 
    youtube is nice, but i prefer the cgpress comments for that :p

    https://cgpress.org/archives/3ds-max-2020-new-features-revealed.html#comments

  • Neox
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    Neox veteran polycounter
    with the 20% raise in maintenance plan costs we will likely stop renewing max

    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
  • marks
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    marks greentooth
    Neox said:
    max [is] the most replacable tool in our pipeline by now
    Strongly agree with this sentiment.
  • spacefrog
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    spacefrog polycounter lvl 14
    Neox said:
    with the 20% raise in maintenance plan costs we will likely stop renewing max

    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
    I got the call from my reseller with the hint that if i order before May 1. , i only would have to swallow the ( current ) 10% increase )
    My renewal is due to somewhen in july ...
  • Neox
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    Neox veteran polycounter
    that still means the price is higher for something we don't really need anymore

    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...
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    Sounds like all the places I have been at: Max being around mainly because we knew it too well and couldn't be bothered to switch software even when it was falling behind/sidelined in favor of Maya. 2011 for me too is the last version I have really used as a main tool. Afterwards they did me the favor and first broke the viewport for a bunch of versions then came up with subscription - or else I would have never gotten off my lazy ass. ;)

  • Mr Whippy
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    Mr Whippy polycounter lvl 7
    I've just been finishing up a project in 2010 with an old plugin called Clouds2Max.

    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.
  • zachagreg
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    zachagreg ngon master
    @musashidan
    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
  • Shrike
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    Shrike interpolator
    Nice, first time I feel like I'm on the right side of the fence

    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?

  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    @zachagreg I'm still on 2018 myself for day to day. I'm on the beta so test each release as it comes, but I won't be moving to 2020 for day to day for at least 2 point releases. It's not worth it until it's matured and plugs are ported. For me, 2017/2018 is about the same. I skipped 2019 altogether as it wasn't worth it to me. 2020 is a different story and there are some nice features in the works. Also, depending on your workflow the 2020 new hotkey editor and Chamfer modifier might be worth the upgrade.
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    I have jumped ship to blender now, great fun working on it, got my enthusiasm back
  • Slipstream
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    Slipstream polycounter lvl 19
    That roadmap is kinda disappointing when considered against Blender's current feature list and library of addon's. Especially since Blender is free and Autodesk get's away with charging 100+ dollars a month.
  • Justo
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    Justo polycounter
    Is there any user-submitted request for the implementation of a smart sub-object preview selection? Might as well give my yearly post&vote to that.

    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. 
  • Mark Dygert
    Rather than retype my thoughts, I'll just leave this here https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2681712#Comment_2681712

    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. 
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    Started from Max2,5   I am switching in between Max and Blender all the time now and each time I truly wonder how much easier, simpler and in general more convenient Blender is. Even lacking few really cool Max modifiers and tools.
    it's just something MAx devs don't understand I guess.  As software engineers in general from my experience.  Simplicity and convenience. They talk about "elegance of code" sometimes but their elegant code results in crazy indecipherable something for an end user.     I really hope some AI would finally learn how to do it in the future maybe. Not human beings.
    What amazes me most of all they had a few more or less easy tools before which turns puzzling and nearly unusable after "improvements"    Like biped, shaderFX etc. so each time  I kind of afraid of what new pain in the a... they would introduce.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    gnoop said:
    As software engineers in general from my experience.  Simplicity and convenience. They talk about "elegance of code" sometimes but their elegant code results in crazy indecipherable something for an end user.
    IME coders simply tend to not use and perceive the tools like end users do. That's why when they refactor parts of the code you end up loosing all those nice little features that had been added over time due to specific user requests. All your knowledge about workarounds erased in one innocious looking update.
    Instead you perhaps get treated to some nicer looking window framework that ends up eating up twice the memory. But skinnable! :) Or something...


    I agree with the sentiment that Max still has the modelling tools covered pretty well. Not as customizable a workflow as Blender and in many ways more cumbersome to use but the stack is hard to beat for some things. Good thing is that even some really old dusty Max version will do fine on the modelling side for those few times where those specific features are required.

    Do they do floating licenses for Max these days? I'd always would want to keep one handy for those cases in a studio environment.
  • zachagreg
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    zachagreg ngon master
    @thomasp
    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.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    zachagreg said:
    @thomasp
    Do you mean floating for just keeping in touch with the program at home?
    Nah, just wondering if they offer those for studios. I would want to keep it around even if just a single seat.
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    thomasp said:
     All your knowledge about workarounds erased in one innocious looking update.
    Instead you perhaps get treated to some nicer looking window framework that ends up eating up twice the memory. But skinnable! :) Or something...

    es in a studio environment.
    It's  not only that. It starts from just very first  interaction you have with  the software: an open/save dialog.   Blinding white against dark interface, ancient , no favorite folders.

    Then it's  the main screen littered with separate windows and useless panels  like it's still Windows 3.1 .     Confusing  shortcut override system.   Tremendously inconvenient node editor.  confusing everything beyond one single cool feature: modifiers. 

    Coming  from Max to Blender   is like wow , there are   sane programmers in the world,  trying to make not just a huge messy pile of features,   half useless, half  weirdly cryptic and always deep hidden  which  nobody really use  but actually trying to make something convenient, well organized and easily memorizing.   Bet it's probably a result of open source , natural selection kind of evolution.
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    well gnoop, blender is far from perfect htough, weird input keymaps confusion, between versions ie bender vs industry standard
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    it's not perfect I agree and lacks  few features from Max I use sometimes.   It's just more convenient for simple everyday  routine tasks.  And something in how it organized makes it easy to memorize and learn.   
     It's maybe just because it simpler and having less options . less choices.   Less flexible maybe.   
    But I am always  afraid when I hear "flexible" from a programmer . I instantly know it will be something nobody would figure out how to work with, a huge mess of puzzling options and check-boxes. 
      Imo "flexible" is not always convenient.  Convenient is simple,  easy to learn, use and remember.      I already forgot lots of things I did in Max before  and have to maintain a huge Evernote base to keep track of  all those hidden check boxes and necessary conditions for things working properly.  As of Blender I hardly read its manual. Just a few youtube videos.


  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    thomasp said:
    zachagreg said:
    @thomasp
    Do you mean floating for just keeping in touch with the program at home?
    Nah, just wondering if they offer those for studios. I would want to keep it around even if just a single seat.
    They did for 2016 so I'd imagine the answer is still yes. 

  • Wesley
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    Wesley polycounter lvl 13
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    The viewport shading and boolean workflow improvements mentioned in the roadmap are badly needed, glad to see they'll be getting some attention. Blenders Eevee viewport and Hardops tools have been turning more then a few heads and AD needs to respond.
  • marks
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    marks greentooth
    2020 Roadmap changelog: 
    ...
    • Changed color of Maxscript Listener window

    Glad to see ADSK prioritising the real, big ticket items.
  • Orphydian
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    Orphydian polycounter lvl 8
    Following the 2021.2 release, the 3ds Max roadmap has been updated to reveal some of the new features we can expect in the future. This includes:
    • 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:
    Brush Tools Roadmap future previewpng














  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    guess they will never update the hair/fur tools in max, must be 20 years since the last one
  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    They stoped the Hair Tool development also in Maya. The xGen interactive development never finished.
    Rumors say they are on hold until Bifrost will take over.
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