Which version was your favourite release?

[Brock_Lafond]

The other day I was thinking about my journey with Max through the years. I remember some good times and bad times. Among the good were when new releases would come out with amazing new features.

Aside from 4.2, one of my favourite releases was 3DS Max 6; when it was still all uppercase letters in the name. That version seemed so stable and feature rich. Photometric lights seemed really promising and video playback in viewports was silky smooth. Plugins for everything could be found everywhere. Blur was big on the scene with their beta tools.

Then there was awesome splash screen with the Discreet name attached to it. It made you forget that Autodesk was involved.

It was also an exciting time for the multitude of renderers. Brazil r/s and final Render were the new kids on the block, and Maxwell Render was being born. mental Ray came packaged with Max. There was even an available RIB exporter for Renderman.

Now it's your turn; share your experience.

[doug_bowker_3D]

Funny you said version 6 becasue that immediately popped into my head too. Basically for the reasons you stated. I think once Autodesk bought Maya and XSI, things went downhill in the sense that resources and money was divided.

That being said, I was pretty happy with Max 2012, and the addion of Nitrous viewports completely changed my workflow for the better.

[timd1971]

So far, 2014.

I cannot look back too far anyways as those really older versions won't open all the new files anyways.... So realistically, cannot and will not dwell on it. No point to.... Moved forward... Not going backward.

[nclark]

Always the latest version (+sp1).

Every new release, there is at least one new feature that I can't live without once I've used it. 

[david.rees]

Max9 and 2009, when it was fast, it worked well, viewport switching worked, and icons had colours so you could work faster. It's been a steep downhill from there, though I'm not on 2014 yet, which looks like it addresses some of my gripes.

[timd1971]

When u say viewport switching works (v9 snd 2009).... Wondering exactly what u mean?

I.e. drawing a line from one viewport to another and another and so on?

[david.rees]

No, I mean if I'm wking in 4 vps (eg: top, left, front, persp), I switch to maximized top view then to max persp, that it's the same presp view as before. 2010-2013 creates new persp view from top view -it doesn't switch to the persp view you had before. I think there's a good compromise in 2014, but haven't tried it yet.

[timd1971]

there is a script out there by Jonathon DeBlok that may help?
http://www.architecture-forums.com/thread-74437-1-1.html

maybe google "Fix for Viewport switching"? should be multiple places to find this. The old threads in the AREA obviously are not showing up after they revamped everything.

[david.rees]

I have the script -not as good as old AD vp switching. There's no fix for this (other than 2014, hopefully), but thank you.