3dsmax 2020

[contact]

Hello,

I just received the link to download the 2020 version but strangely I do not see any information on the subject. Autodesk did not communicate on the release of this version?
There is the help page but it is not very rich in information:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2020/ENU/?guid=GUID-2958CAB3-3C80-40AF-969E-BF23AB4296A5
Do you have more info on what's new?

Pierre

[Anonymous]

This is hilarious. At least no one has to feel bad about not installing that update.  

[brentscannell]

Hi everyone,

I believe the official page is supposed to go live around 9AM this morning with all the info and marketing material for 3ds Max 2020, however as some of you have noticed or were notified by email, it's starting to become available to subscribers and maintenance plan users already. As with every release, it's a phased rollout so it won't show up automatically for everyone right away, but in my experience it should be available within a day or two at most.

I would wait for the official landing page before bashing the feature list from the help doc too heavily, there's quite of bit of exciting content in this release. Personally, as a member of the development team, I am extremely pleased to see "lighter" releases especially around the big yearly releases. In the past, there was always a huge rush to not miss the proverbial boat and admittedly there were times were quality suffered as a result. In the new subscription delivery model, if a feature is not ready in time, it simply jumps to the next point release.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread and will update it as I have more links to share 🙂

[markus]

@brentscannell Did you manage to get the improved dialog options for Cad imports into this release? You know with the options similar to VRED import?

[brentscannell]

Hi @markus 

That particular improvement is still in the backlog, and as much as I want those options myself (I really really really do!), it doesn't seem to resonate all that much with the greater community. I looked up the idea forum thread about this topic, and it only has 22 votes in over a year. It's difficult to prioritize that with some of the ideas that have hundreds of community votes. I know that you've voted already, but anyone else reading this that wants to see it prioritized, please cast your vote here: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/more-cad-import-options/idi-p/8382591

[clemens_at]

Hi brent, 

Thanks for the update!

Can you tell us about some of the implemented features from the idea board?

It's a little hard to keep track which idea actually made it into a release.

Also what's the feature you are most excited about? 

thanks!

[Out-Of-Light]

Possibly jumping the gun, yes, but like I said, I am hoping there is more info coming than what's currently available , that this isn't it, and defiantly more features for my already over priced annual payments...

My problem, and a I know from discussions with my past retailer, a lot of ADSK customers problems, is price for what we get... Over 30% price increase in 2017, and increases every year since, and more on the way!  I paid nearly 1K last year to continue my Max and Mud subscriptions which was under £600 inc tax for both, 3 years ago. I know this is to get maintenance subscribers in line with desktop pricing eventually, but in IMHO it should be the other way around, desktop and maintenance prices dropping to what maintenance prices were back in 2015, to reflect the development pace we get now, and the small amount of actual USEFUL new features we get each year. 

I'd ask anyone here to honestly deep down answer if they are happy with these unjustified price hikes the last 3 years on maintenance, and that they can happily say they think these price hikes are justified, and that they still think maintenance offers value for money for what they get out of it each year?

I think the honest answer is that most customers on maintenance are holding onto their subscription to keep hold of their perpetual licence, and compatibility with the latest hardware, knowing that if they eventually stop subscription, they will face compatibility problems with new hardware and future O/S's, and that if they have to stop subscription in desktop rental, no licence, cant work. New features have now become gimmicks the last few years, I think since the 2016 release, with very little real world use / value.  

We are being held ransom by our perpetual licences, and fast paced technology changes that we need to keep up with, and ADSK know this so can dictate whatever prices they like, but that doesn't make it fair to the customer. They also know that we don't want to have to relearn a completely new software suit by switching to one of their competitors after so many years of learning and perfecting out skills in 3ds max, and if we were all to migrate over to a competitor, ADSK would just buy it up anyway, and we'd be stuck with them again.... I still cant understand why ADSK haven't been hit with countless anti trust lawsuits over their past conduct over this! 

Most customers that follow the development of 3ds max, have known for a few years now that features and fixes now come in several update packs throughout the year, so if you put that all into one package for the year, maybe that would look more impressive on a what's new list, but even if you put the yearly development side by side to a realease, say 5 years ago, and it turns out to be the same(or a little less) it doesn't justify these extortionate price hikes, same development same price, not same development twice the price. That's just bad business. This running two business models excuse made 2 years to justify the price hikes, is a terrible excuse!  Most of the purchasing and updating system is exactly the same, only under another name, and mostly automated. This is all about making more money by forcing customers into desktop rental, and if they don't comply, hike up the prices until they are the same anyway. 

Its exciting times as far as CPU and GPU development go, but for a lot of us, we are already using dedicated renderer's like V-ray. Arnold is hopeful, and is the only interesting development I've seen the last few years with max updates, although it just replaces iray/mental ray, witch was already a good renderer, and I used iray a lot for production renders, but as I have vray next now, its not a lot of use to me...  Speaking of Vray, chaos group have a small portfolio of products so are not over stretched development wise, and offer feature rich new updates every quarter that put annual 3ds max updates to shame. Its good that Autodesk dev teams now focus on the quality of their output , not just rushing to meet a deadline as that's bound to lead to mistakes ( max 2018!) , and I have no problem with the development teams, its how they have been managed that's the problem, and this all comes down to bad management over the years, buying up all the competition, then realising the development costs are too high so greatly downsizing dev teams and personel, resulting in overstretched deadlines and development teams, and buggy / unstable new releases(no dev at all in some cases) And who has to suffer for all these mistakes? We do, the customers by hiking up prices way beyond their worth, and if customers are already unhappy about the maintenance price hikes, there's no way they want to move over to desktop prices for the same software and services. 

Hopefully I will be eating my words with the updates over the next year, but I feel this is unlikely, and that prices will not reflect the development we now get. IMHO it should never have changed from the £500 +- mark.

[RGhost77]

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@ethanAZBRK wrote:

Same, 2020 downloadbox available in Belgium as well.

This has got to be a 1st April release, no? I'm pretty sure it is, the list is a JOKE.

---

If comparing with last what's new in Houdini is not funny joke...

[brentscannell]

Absolutely! The official whats new page will list the ideas implemented in 2020, but in a nutshell for 3ds Max 2020 we've implemented 6 customer ideas from the forum representing 279 votes. These are mostly around a new preview animation tool, being able to customize additional colors in Maxscript editor, better viewport representation of procedural materials, an idea around chamfer presets and user settings, as well as a piece of low hanging fruit around keeping custom modifier names when copy and pasting them from one object to another. I will post up the full list soon as its on my to-do list to go an update their status' today.

My favorite feature in 3ds Max 2020? Hard to say! I'd say that I really welcome the updated preview animation tool, not because I use it regularly but it just gives me this "its about time!" feeling. After seeing some of the limitations on the output resolution of the old tool, I think this will be a welcome change. Otherwise, I always appreciate better viewport representations of my materials. I have an inside edge and see the progress day by day, so honestly it's a bit challenging for me pinpoint the differences between where we were in 2019.3 versus what 2020 includes versus what we are are currently beta testing for a potential update version.

[mg]

Another $700 in maintenance renewal wasted it seems. Sometimes I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship and just sticking around waiting for things to "get better". At least it was a good tax write-off. Haha!

Hoping for some more impressive features and improvements in PU1.

[brentscannell]

As promised, the official pages are starting to come online now, starting with the Autodesk.com domain hosted pages.

New for this release, we are proud to unveil a 3ds Max timeline since 3ds Max 2016, we we started to transform the way we delivered software and updates. Very cool to see it all on one page:

https://area.autodesk.com/3dsmax-timeline/

There are also a number of fresh blog posts about the features in 3ds Max 2020, check them out here:

https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/

And finally, our product management team has been keeping a close eye on what some other products have been doing and what our customers have been asking for, and have drafted a high level roadmap to give you all an idea about what we are working on but that hasn't been made available in a public or beta version yet:

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

[ethanAZBRK]

This is a big lol for me personaly, I still don't see anything else then what was shown in the intial (very) short list, compared to the video you guys uploaded now. It was basicly nice eye candy. The toon shader stuff looked interesting enough.

I'm secretly punching myself in the face, cause I don't want to pay 1600€ for another year of max based on what you guys developed over the past year for 2020 version.

I downloaded and installed the 2020 version, however, Corona didn't upgrade their installer yet, so I won't work in max 2020 for now, so I'm going to hold off on judgement until people have used it.

[mg]

Question about the new Preview improvements...Does the viewport preset drop-down not offer a "User Defined" option in 2020 previews? I didn't see it in the example video, only the Max pre-defined options. 90% of the time I need my preview to use a custom setting that I've set in my viewport, not one of the hard-coded presets. In Max 2017-19 there is a bug that prevents User Defined being chosen for previews on certain installs that nobody at Adesk could every figure out after I reported it to multiple channels.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to have to agree with you all! I have been on maintenance since 2011 I believe. I Used to look forward each year to the next release! Now all we get it seems is vary little and different renderers. I have and still use Quicksilver and it works for me. I bought vray once and it outdated on me so I upgraded again and that outdated on me and I have never used it. da on my part. I had a render farm until that outdated on me because Autodesk quick investing in Backburner. Man that was a disappointment after investing in 4 additional computers and it cost me a ton of time trying to get it working after 2015. Vary disappointed!  Tech support finally told me that Backburner was old technology and they quit updating it years ago. Whats next? Until today I was going to continue my maintenance program now I'm thinking I may not now! 

[brentscannell]

@mg 

As far as I know, the user-defined viewport setting issue is still present, unfortunately. I know the team has logged something and plans to investigate, but I don't know what the current status is. This was recently brought up again in our beta community within the last week, so there is some activity around this bug.

[mg]

@brentscannell Thanks for the reply.  That's unfortunate since it would be the ONLY reason I'd bother to install the update.  Lack of a user defined options makes all the fancy new preview features pretty much  useless to me.  

[Out-Of-Light]

I guess ADSK being more open about its roadmap can be seen as a positive thing, as they have been very non compliance about it in the past unless you join the development program, but that timeline link kind of proves my point really...
 
Looks impressive when its all on the same page, but when you look more closely at the details, a lot of those updates are kind of lacklustre really, and 2017-2018 were the buggiest versions I have ever used, and I've been on max since version 4.2.
 
2018 hardly got any use, and a work around for the main stability issue was released about a month before 2019 came out. Complete waste of subscription money! 2017 turned out to be very good in the end but only after several service packs to iron out the bugs. Service updates look good on that list and help to make the list look longer if you include the 2018 updates, but I'd suspect like I did, most people just skipped using 2018 due to instability and went straight onto 2019....
 
I'll be installing my plugin's and see how it goes. Speed improvements are always good, especially for the detailed models I work with... but at this stage, I’m still feeling ripped off for the third year running.
 
I don't think AutoDesk are ever going to keep their 3ds max customers happy no matter what they do until they realise their mistake in hiking the prices too high for maintenence subscription, and too high from the start for desktop Sub. ADSK simply don't have the workforce to give the amount of features people expect for the new prices they are being forced to paying each year ( ok correction, they do, but its spread over too many applications), which is a shame, because I am sure the developers are very proud of the work they do, but there wont be any thunderous applause until customers are happy about what they get for the price they pay.

 I said this 3 years ago, that desktop subscription customers would also start to open their eyes, when they find out they are paying over twice the price maintenance subscribers are for the same product, and realising that they don’t get a lot of development for that money each year, and don’t have the backup of having a perpetual licence to fall back on if they stop subscription. If I were a new ADSK customer, I wouldn’t be annoyed like I am now about prices the last few years, I would be fuming! And if I were only 1 to 3 years into using max, I'd definitely be looking to migrate to a competitors product now rather than continue to invest time and money in 3ds max at this point.
 
Sort out this pricing mess, and ADSK may actually start getting some appreciation for the work it does again in max. Some companies just don’t get that if the price is right for the product or development, the customers are happy, happy customers spread the word, more customers for the company. AutoDesk know their 3ds max customers are not happy about pricing, so use an alternative method of driving a strong advertising campaign on social media sites about their client success stores to attract new customers.. those stories mainly come from their blue chip studios that get special bulk prices anyway, and don’t have to suffer the prices freelancers and small studios have to per seat...

I’d love to say well done, but cannot… just doesn’t feel right due to the prices we have to pay now and slow development for those prices, and ADSK’s terrible excuses over the last few years for those price hikes. This mess is ADSK’s upper managements fault, and its not fair on the developers or ASDK’s customers wallets! They got greedy, and I know this has cost them a lot of new seats over the last few years from their long term customers, but I also know that new sales are good, but they will also open their eyes eventually and realise they are not getting good value for their money…

[JezEmin]

I've always had a maintenance plan on 3DS Max and this is pushing me very close to that point where I will stop paying and just continue with what I've currently got (2019), or install this and call it quits - because it's hard to justify this madness.

I keep paying annually for software that I've already paid for (but don't 'own' - don't worry AD, I know the rules...) just in case the developer actually develops something I could benefit from.

My biggest concern, because Autodesk have a habit of doing this (as we all know) - is in pursuit of adding these features, what other things in 3DS now no longer work as they should ?  And who fancies being the first to find out and report ? Honestly, I don't have the energy !

PS - can anyone confirm if they've fixed in 2020 the Scene Explorer Dialog box that tries to stick to a menu whenever you bring it close to one ?

[brentscannell]

I'm deliberately going to stay away from the pricing discussion mostly because I don't have any control over that element of the product. I would encourage you all to keep voicing your opinions, however, for every person that posts there are probably 100 who read, including internal Autodesk people. Ultimately I would absolutely love to get to a point where everyone feels that the subscription value is worth it, but I completely understand why some may feel that there is still significant progress to be made.

With respect to the specific question regarding scene explorer docking: this is actually a feature if you can believe it, but you're certainly not alone to be bothered by the current behavior. One of our users has stepped forward to champion the idea of modifying the behavior and proposed this idea: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/please-make-an-option-to-prevent-automatic-docking/idc-...

I would recommend that you cast your vote as well if you are interested. This is something that we are actively researching and that we expect to have a prototype ready for testing in beta in the not too distant future.

[JezEmin]

I have already commented and voted on that thread, and in fact mentioned that there is a checkbox to Lock the UI but that isn't working.......

[brentscannell]

Very good! I will post up in that idea thread as soon as we have something ready for beta testing.