3dsmax 2018 - Excuse Me, i seem to be looking at 2017

[jacob]

Dear Autodesk.

Thank you for my update email. I have downloaded and installed my 3dsmax update. I do however seem to be looking at 3dsmax 2017 with arnold included. Is this correct?

You need to get your new feature list online pretty darn quick because i cant see anything other than Arnold in my maintenance subscription update i just installed.

I think you may get just a smidge of backlash about this update if that's all it is, given ourselves and i think many others have moved onto Vray or Corona or FStorm or many other 3rd party renderers.

[BrianBradley8572]

Simple matter of executive choices ... NOT anything to do with the software. Look at the list of big name plugins that were made for Max long before they had a Maya version!

[gothmoth]

what i meant was more integral parts like a proper fluid simulation etc. the really big stuff.

look how long they worked on the viewport.. and it is still not really good.

if something is meant to be modular (planed from the start) like for example prman than it´s easier to code for it.

and i think i read maya is more modular than max.

[pavel.3dtv]

Glad to hear about new max.

So, 2018 it's now fixed 2017, or it's not fixed yet?

Is there gpu accelerated animation curves and possibility to save/load ui schemes without their crashes?

[BrianBradley8572]

The fact that they sacked the entire Max team who were working on the Nitrous viewport (Shanghai) LONG before it was finished has a LOT to do with that. 🙂

[OccultMonk]

I don't even think it's a good buiseness desision to let Max Die. Why would I want to switch to Maya? Autodesk just destroyed my 15 years of accumulated knowledge. Creating a common core and code base for both 3dsmax and Maya would have been a very big investment and long term project, but it would have allowed users to retain their workflows. 3dsmax has such a great user community with plugins and scripts that almost no other application had. Now it is being overtaken on all sides. Even Maya seems to lose customers to Houdini.

[Ihno]

Haha the Maya users actually think its maya which is getting worser and worser.
And the viewport performance of max is one of the best in industy. Way better than maya. But also better than modo and blender from what I heard.

[gothmoth]

autodesk will not kill max. why should they?

it makes them money.

a car manufacture does not just build one car either.

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And the viewport performance of max is one of the best in industy.

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really?

what i am doing wrong?

with heavy scenes it often takes 10+ seconds until an object is selected.

for example i just work on a a scene with 20000 coins and massFX.

when i want to select one of the coins it takes ages until it is selected. 

[OccultMonk]

They will not kill it, but they will also not save it. It will just exist in limbo, slowly becoming irrelevant.

[gothmoth]

can someone answer my two questions?

1) does arnold support GPU rendering?

2) do we need recompiled plugins?

[gothmoth]

yeah well i am not sure... people saying that forever

but afaik the number of 3d max seats still increase.

[Swordslayer]

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@gothmoth wrote:

do we need recompiled plugins?

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Yes, you do, 2018 is not binary compatible with 2017.

[NilsWille]

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@bertrandbenoit wrote:

... The good thing about this is that it makes one feel pretty good about dropping maintenance and not getting on board with subscription.

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Yeah, I think it is time to abandon the maintenance and see 3ds Max 2018 as an effective EOL for me.

I just hope that 2018 will be solid, but I have this nasty feeling that they wont cure the bugs before a 2018.1 release and my maintenance will probably have lapsed by then. I feel more as a hostage than a customer to be honest. I wonder why. 

[SuperRune]

Some more first impressions here:

While it's pretty awesome to have Arnold instead of MR, at this point Arnold supports almost none of the existing materials or textures in 3ds Max. No gradients, no noise texture, not even the standard material! The only textures supported are Bitmap, Checker, Marble and Substance. In addition to the Physical Material, only the multi-materials seem to be supported. Arnold comes with a staggering amount of low-level textures and utilities, though - and those look super-powerful (a TON of math nodes!). But anyone looking to convert scenes with procedural textures are going to tear their hair out.

I'm very interested in rig playback, so will be checking that later.

[pavel.3dtv]

>> Creating a common core and code base for both 3dsmax and Maya would have been a very big investment and long term project, but it would have allowed users to retain their workflows.

Yeah. I'm telling them same thing. It's the only way to save these apps and make them better. First - unified tools with connectors, then unified core, then new unified/customizable ui. Because at this point it seems like coders are very limited with obsolete x32 core features, maxscript, overall ideology.

It must be very flexible to create new tools, adapt to technologies, hardware capabilities. With high and low level approaches to projects.

[jcdeblok]

enabling the 'show uncompatible' will fix that for most.. long story why it is that way 🙂

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@superrune wrote:

While it's pretty awesome to have Arnold instead of MR, at this point Arnold supports almost none of the existing materials or textures in 3ds Max

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[SuperRune]

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@pavel.3dtv wrote:

>> Creating a common core and code base for both 3dsmax and Maya would have been a very big investment and long term project, but it would have allowed users to retain their workflows.

Yeah. I'm telling them same thing. It's the only way to save these apps and make them better. First - unified tools with connectors, then unified core, then new unified/customizable ui. Because at this point it seems like coders are very limited with obsolete x32 core features, maxscript, overall ideology.

It must be very flexible to create new tools, adapt to technologies, hardware capabilities. With high and low level approaches to projects.

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The amount of work to make that happen is just staggering! The core code for both packages are probably millions of lines of code, and they differ fundamentally in the way they work. Maya has probably the most elegant and simple core (check the dependency graph patent issued waaaay back), so merging the programs would most likely mean pushing 3ds Max aside. And despite all its issues, I still think 3ds Max is the superior package to work in.

I'd rather see someone build a new 3D package from scratch to compete with 3ds Max, Maya, Blender and Houdini. With some solid investor backing and a solid team of developers, I think the timing is pretty good for for an alternative to appear...

[SuperRune]

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@jcdeblok wrote:

enabling the 'show uncompatible' will fix that for most.. long story why it is that way 🙂

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Weird! Looks like most textures are compatible! But not the Standard material, unfortunately.

[stephen.d.green]

I wonder when some poor employee from Autodesk is going to stick their head above the parapet for this one?

[pavel.3dtv]

Mostly agree. But anyway, one can't use obsolete architecture forever. Hardware evolves fast, there are new approaches everywhere.

I was looking for a software to switch to from max, but still there are  no superior candidates.

[Ihno]

Yep but it takes 10 years to code such a big piece of software. Its not like Affinity and Photoshop..
Whenever the time would be great or not, I'm afraid no one who's not already in business right now will come up with something new and usable in the next years.