Anyone else underwhemed by 2025?

[Mr.Mxyzptlk]

Not meaning to diminish the work these guys have done but it feels like this could have just been an update to 2024.3

When will you be switching production to 2025?

[hwoRX6FJ]

3ds max is dead

[dmitriy.shpilevoy]

It kind of is 2024.3 it just happen to come out at the time when version number switches to next year. As I've been told - autodesk doesn't hoard features to put in next %year% version. It goes into next version as it's ready. So in theory 2025.1 can be better than 2025.0.

I do agree that 2025 doesn't look big enough to switch to it asap. Pretty sure our project's environment team will stay at 2024 for a while.

[hwoRX6FJ]

The best thing that has appeared in 3ds max in recent years is the smart extrud, which they have been finishing for several years. Now smart extrud is available in Maya. 3ds max is useless.

[bostlund]

I've been using max for 20+ years, being underwhelmed by a 3DS Max release is just part of being a 3DS Max user. It has been incremental additions throughout the year since perpetual licensing was introduced. Yearly updates are not the big presentations as in the early days of new releases. 3DS Max updates will continues to grow on a bloated software that is generally good for most applications and gets the job done, but doesn't excel in any particular area over other applications. Max is a generalized base platform for 3rd party plugins designed for your specific skill set or needs. This is done so that Max can be more widely available to all users and legacy features remain for backwards compatibility.

Autodesk knows quality of life improvements are what the average users want with updates, faster loading / saving, the ability to access all of our modern computing architecture, better menus and searching are all needed in some way. They just are not the shiney new and improved thing that gets you excited to use the program that for a lot of users is their main source of income. 

I agree making OCIO default (something you could set up in 2024) is not a release feature to be excited about, its a bullet point on the release notes. Search was already pretty good, the update is also a bullet point, but something they wanted to highlight. These are the sad beige incremental updates that companies drop while working on other major releases.  

You probably find yourself asking, where is the modernization of this program? Why is there not a integrated AI chatbot help instead of a search? Why are they pushing arnold GPU rendering when they could be doing AI image generation like Veras for Revit? With the amount of money Autodesk has how are they so behind on these tools?

My hope is this is exactly what they are working on and will release on the coming updates through the year. Because 3DS Max is such a widely used industry standard they are not going to release those modern tools until they are very well tested because a failed update could cost companies a lot of money if they studios come to a halt with a poorly integrated feature. Autodesk has a lot to lose if they screw up an update and won't release a future feature on their roadmap until its fully tested. 3DS Max is the turtle in an industry of hares. 

[hwoRX6FJ]

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@bostlund  написал (-а):

Because 3DS Max is such a widely used industry standard they are not going to release those modern tools until they are very well tested

very well tested

[vizualnie]

Indeed, where did 2024.3 Update 3 go? 😄 

Creating a completely new vintage version is a requirement for producers of hundreds of plugins to release a newer version of their products

Looking at the lists of changes, improvements and bug fixes in subsequent versions and versions of ZBrush, Houdini, etc., compared to the lists of changes and improvements in 3ds max, they are dozens of times larger 🙂 The number of new lines of code that Houdni producers introduce from version to version probably exceeds number of lines of code in the entire 3ds max 😉

Either way, 3ds max is used by hundreds of thousands of companies, especially architecture studios, visualization studios, design studios, and those related to the gaming industry, hundreds of thousands of freelancers use it. He is alive and well as long as he is improved. Maybe rewrite the 3ds max kernel? Modernization, optimization using AI (to improve the code, catch errors, optimize the kernel code and the entire 3ds Max to work faster on modern processors while maintaining compatibility with plugins from several years ago? 🙂

To this day, in the Floorgenerator plugin, which is very often used around the world, all you need to do is add it to the wrong Poly surface and the entire 3ds Max crashes. It would be nice if plugins worked similarly to web browsers as independent processes that never crashed the main browser process 🙂

[JasonLuckett]

It's very difficult to be positive about updating software that kicks out all your plugins and scripts out. We all know the core and menus should be rewritten, alas the small team of programmers haven't got time to do this.

The very least they could do is improve the core and UI, pretty much nothing since the ribbon update way back. It's an embarassing piece of software which is nothing special without plugins.

Why would anyone upgrade to 2025?

[diabedon]

I do agree that 2025 doesn't look big enough to switch to it asap. Pretty sure our project's environment team will stay at 2024 for a while.

[doug_bowker_3D]

I take it as a point release with this feature set. I do appreciate the new Color system, but again, it doesn't seem worthy of a version.

[fpatry]

I forgot it was even released...

😴

[insanepoly]

Autodesk doesn't care about 3ds max or its users. This is not like the old days of Gary Yost where the developers actually cared about the software they were writing. Nowadays its just managed by some faceless corporate ghoul whose most immediate concern is to keep costs down by reducing developer headcount. I have been using 3d studio since release 3 and 2004 is probably the last time I was impressed by a new version. Nowadays Autodesk is just adding a couple of new features here and there to justify their subscription model. Character Studio, CAT, Shave and Haircut, Cloth and Particle Flow has barely changed since they were incorporated into 3ds max. There are bugs in Character Studio that are still there since 1998. The software architecture itself is almost 30 years old ffs.

Autodesk and Adobe has been nothing but a bane to their users. I would not be sad if maya and 3ds max got killed by blender one day. Studio pipelines built around these softwares is the only reason they are still alive, not because they are great or their users love them.

[RobH2]

I for one don't look at each new yearly name iteration as some big thing that's finally here and expect a bunch of new tools. The Max team rolls out features all year long as has been mentioned. I think of the March/April new version each year as just the next bug fixes, some new features and genarally speed increases. 

While it can be frustrating to find that plugins cease to function until they are updated, I'd imagine there is no way to have a base SDK that will last forever. To implement new functionality core changes have to be made that force a recompile. Again, if you are a seasoned Max user, it's something you are used to and not frustrating, "it just is." 

Having used Max from before it was Max and was the Yost Group's "3d Studio" before Autodesk bought it, I just take each new release not as a big rollout, but as just further refinement. That's kind of the way it's always been and some years we get a pile of new toys, other years not so much. That doesn't mean the new version is a failure.  

[mbrinkmanJVJFC]

Completely underwhelmed.

so I'll just link to this 7 years old request:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/consistent-tools-workflow-and-experience/idi-p/6840252

@mbrinkmanJVJFC - this post has been edited due to Community Rules & Etiquette violation.