How many programmers are working on Max and XBR?

[dreamlandmodels]

How many programmers are working on Max and XBR?
The reason I ask is the view port is not improved but actually looks and works worse than before the SP1.
I am coming up on renewal time for subscription and am starting to wonder if Max is being phased out by Autodesk or not?
What is the real deal Ken?
Regards, Tom

[companioncube]

i don't understand why you feel its being phased out, i see no evidence of phasing out at all. i was a Combustion user for a longtime and it was pretty obvious in 2008 that development had stopped and then finally this year the product got discontinued, thats phasing out.

[lightcube]

Tom,

I had some initial frustrations in 2012 like it seems a lot of us did. But I personally don't think that the bugs were part of some plot to kill Max. Quite contrarily, the fact that the first hot fix and then service pack came out so quickly leads me to feel that satisfying all us crazy Max users is actually very important to Autodesk.

In the back of my head I seem to feel a little deja vu regarding the release/bug issue. It seems that a lot of releases come out and cause ire... but as things settle down and patches get released everyone forgets that, finds peace and moves on.

My personal feeling is that Max 2012, after SP1, has set a new bar for Max. There are still things to improve... but certainly the improvements to overall performance are signs that Autodesk is serious about the future of Max. I'd rather SP1 had been the release of 2012 since that would have been better for the reputation of Max... but now it's history.

As of today, Max 2012 Rocks!

Maybe there is something in the configuration of your system that is causing a problem? Maybe there is something amiss on account of the two video cards you list that aren't the same model? (Just throwing that out there; I run SLI with two 480s, but from my understanding, Max uses only one. Maybe there is some problem that can occur if there are non-matching cards. If it was my system, I'd try removing the lesser just as a test).

Anyway, I hope you figure it out... as I'd hate to see a fellow Max user lose hope in Max.

[Anonymous]

Yes Tom,
that`s a good question I was about to ask many times, but i did not because I don´t expect a honest answer to this.

After years of outsourcing the development to MR and plug-in programmers, there seems not much left of the prior in-house competence. max2011 and max2012 were epic fails in terms of product quality and development schedule.

That don´t have to be the responsibility of programmers at all. It´s more like the failure of the 3dsmax project management and the short term autodesk philosophy to raise as much money as possible from their customers and invest as little as possible in the product.

Once I was a real fanboy of 3D Studio and 3dsmax. That came to an end in the last years. After installing max2012 I began to test competitors products.

I am totally shocked how far 3dsmax is behind.

If you love the idea of XBR, I can assure you, you can have it all here and now.

- program start after reboot in 5 seconds
- second program start in 3 seconds
- no crashes at all (I did not had one in 4 weeks of testing)
- memory footprint 187 MB
- integrated, modern and flexible user interface
- Windows and Mac version
- viewports as much as you like and where you like
- multi monitor support (you can really use monitors which are added left to your screen)
- enhanced integrated rigid and softbody dynamics
- powerful graphical scripting interface
- Python connection
- plug-ins and a very friendly and generous community (like the 3dsmax community)
- better MR and IRay integration (as plug-in renderer)

The only drawback is, you can´t have it from autodesk. But since autodesk and its philosophy is part or maybe the core of the problem, is that really a drawback?

After more than 17 years of using 3D Studio and 3dsmax I am preparing to switch to another product. Thanks to FBX and global available renderers like Vray and MR it isn´t as hard as I thought.

Regards
SpaceWarp

[ShaunBrettig7993]

Tom

All software releases go through stages which cannot be circumvented, at some point a release to the public users must be made and it known within the industry you will be busy during this time as different users try out the software in all sorts of ways which was not thought of by the programmer, all of the different code paths must be identified and have an operation placed against it.

Currently I'm enjoying the 2012 release, viewport speed under nitrous is great, UV tools have been improved and from what I've seen and heard in the XBR video's they have some very interesting plans, which I hope to see as the product evolves.

Shawn is correct in saying Max currently only uses the 1 video card and you get better performance gains by not using them in SLI mode.

Also I noted in your signature you have specified 8 cores, the cpu you have specified actually only has 4 cores but can run 2 threads per core which gives you the 8 charts you see in task manager (4 core x 2 threads = 8 threads).

Also I recall reading a message from Ken Pimentel the Max team has more programmers than the Maya team. In any case things might still get a bit rough as they continue to do some very significant changes to reflect current and future hardware (Microsoft have already been looking at how to cope with cpu's which will have 100+ cores)

[timd1971]

ha. good luck getting a straight answer.

[timd1971]

well put.

which app are you referring to? C4D or maya?

[dreamlandmodels]

Hi Shawn,
That is exactly what is happening to me. Starting to give up hope.
Granted the guys are working on Max and XBR but did that not start with Max 2010?
We are now on Version 2012. Is that not three releases and they are still not done with it?
Also if memory serves, Autodesk only does a Service Pack if we bitch enough, then after releasing a service pack that is all we see until the next " full " release.

Will be impressed if we see more service pack, even if they have to be full compiles because these fixes are effecting the core of the software.

Remember some very large service packs in the past, hundreds of megs if memory serves.

I remember the days when there could be two or three service packs in a year.
Heck, even E-On software releases a bunch of service pack every six months or so, and that is a quarter the price of Max.

It just feels like Autodesk could put more men on the job, fire about 70 - 90 percent of the beta testers, get new ones that are not part of the good old boy system and get this d**n thing done!!

I mean really! How many more releases are you guys going to stretch this thing out? I remember it was going to take about three releases to get it done. Well, were you being honest with us users?

I am totally discouraged guys. So what are you guys going to do about getting this over and done with?

This is starting to sound like an excuse.

That is broken, or does not work all the way because we are still working on XBR

Ii I performed the way you guys are, at my job I would be fired. Period.

Tom

[timd1971]

Well... Get ready for some clarification on how long or should I say who knows how long until XBR. It's in drawn out phases not 3 release years.

[dreamlandmodels]

Great!

[Anonymous]

not enough!

- XBR takes way too long!
- Nitrous is a joke when it comes to animation!
- SP1 did not address any of the performance problems of Nitrous (Pflow, linked and animated objects)
- Reactor was taken out without a proper replacement
- MassFX is not ready to replace Reaktor
- No fluids simulation (even Blender has it)
- 2012 directX 9.0 is still slower than 2011 directX 9.0
- and the long buglists of HF1 + SP1 shows how worse the situation was and still is.

I reported the PFlow performance issue 3 days after the initial release in April!
In May I got in direct contact with Ken and I send him a sample file showing the issue about PFlow and Nitrous.
I attached the file for anybody who is interested in.
Load this file in 2011 (directX 9.0) , 2012 (directX 9.0) and 2012 (Nitrous) play back the timeline and watch the fps counter.
Do your benchmarks and get shocked and if somebody still say Nitrous is soooooo great after that benchmark.....

I renewed my subscription in May and hoped SP1 would solve my issues... What a mistake!
I am still using 2011!

pflow_performanceissue_max2012.zip

[shineoooo]

I suppose it's about attitude, efficiency and level for developing 3ds max. I cant use the new edition 3ds max from 2010 to 2012 till the new hotfix and sp1 patch publish. I cant believe recently when Autodesk publish new edition for 3ds max with many bugs. What a work for 3ds max is! Although You published buggy 3ds max 2012, you fooled your clients meanwhile, you fooled yourselves.

[Anonymous]

@timd1971: It´s not maya. :-))

[timd1971]

hee hee, thanks. ; ) gonna have to finally give C4D a look....been trying to avoid it hoping 3ds max was going to get a major overhaul....

[timd1971]

"exactly".

[dreamlandmodels]

Here is an example.
Working on a polygon model in edge mode,
zoom in close and try to select an edge. It is not possible all the time.
Sometimes I have to zoom back out to be able to select anything.
What the heck happened to this feature of Max? It was fine before the addition of Nitrous to Max.
For goodness sake guys, stop adding stuff to Max until you get the core fixed.
Stop wasting time on things like adding the ribbon, caddies, and nitrous, and fix this almost unusable software.
This program is how I make a living, so please get it fixed!!!

I do not want to go through all the time investment of learning another piece of software.
I used to love working in Max until around Max 9 or 2009 even, but after that you have continually made efforts to pretty it up and at the same time cause more problems to have to fix.

Cut it out!!!!!

Get back to fixing the core and forget all the kids stuff.
I really do not enjoy posting like this, I would much rather post a compliment to you guys about how happy I am with the great improvements you have made in getting everything in the software to work.
Please stop adding more features for a while and get back to working on XBR 100% of the time.

If you have to hire more programmer then do it! I am really starting to feel like you are never going to have this thing fixed.
I am very disappointed in Autodesk for this reason.
Tom

[Anonymous]

My experience with max was really awfull, i started using max way back at release 3.
The best 3ds max version to me was 3ds max 9.
I will never understand why they started to pile things on top of each other, making 3ds max the software with the heaviest interface on the market.
For obvious reason, every max release means go buy a new hardware, go buy a quadro, go spend another 5k of machine because your GTX460 will just suck in performance.
This is the current status.

I dropped max after i saw the disgrace release that was 2011, and i'm not going back again, i switched to Softimage and with the same machine, the same hardware, the same everything i have a complete insane and different performance.
This is just a signal, this means something here is wrong guys, i admire people who work with 3ds max, because honestly i really cant understand how you guys can work with such software.

I got lucky the dev team from old XSI avid, people who worked at Softimage interface and software itself, kept working under Autodesk, otherwise they would ruine Softimage too.

The day i'll see a ribbon pop up in Softimage viewport will be the day i'm gonna stop doing CG and go fishing.

Honestly i feel sorry, because 3ds Max was used to be a good software, but nowadays its totally sub-par in terms of performance, stability, productivity and..yeah wallet too.
What annoys me more is the amount of money you keep spending on subscription, yet you hope for a better product, 1 year has passed, and what you find? That 90% of the new features doesnt help you in your ordinary work, that most of the new tools arent for you because you need to upgrade your hardware, that the tools they added are unfinished, that the bugs are still there, that mental ray is still half integrated.. and so on.

I think 3ds max lost a lot of userbase lately, and it will be worse, but AD doesnt realize that people are tired to fight with a software, when the software should help them work.

If i had to hilights the worse things max has (without spending 10 forums pages) those would do:

1) viewport performance completely random, depending on hardware, buggy, unstable, almost useless.

2) 3ds max selection is buggy, it works randomly, sometimes you go nuts to select things and object behind other objects.

3) UV editor when you are editing a dense mesh is completely unusable, try switchin to points and select and move UVs.

4) Mental Ray integration is a joke, there are so many things unsupported and not implemented like Irradiance particles, importons, new IBL system, progressive rendering, BSDF shaders, Unified Sampling. (dont tell me there is a script to unlock those, i know, but its not the same thing at all).

5) random crashes caused by unknown reason in the middle of your fancy project causing you to open a window and start swearing.

I promised i wouldnt do a big list so i'll stop.
I share your feelings guys, and i shared your pain, now no more since i moved to Softimage.
I've also tried Cinema 4D and its a hell of a good product.
I would suggest you to stop hoping and wasting time for 3ds max but everyone is and must decide for their own. I already did


Robert

[Anonymous]

@timd1971: If you do so, take some time for it. At first, everything seems to be all around the other way than in max. But after a short time, when you finally find out the programm philosophy, everything works very logical and straight forward. Until the end of the month they also have 25 % discount. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Is see Max 2012 as, in many ways, way ahead of prior releases. The problem is whether or not the things that are still broken/newly broken/removed are deal breakers, and (more critically) whether being "much better than 2011" leaves it still behind anyone else. Much better than 2011 is faint praise.

I have always been leery of 'noble plans' like the XBR thing...it feels like nothing so much as features demanded by the marketing department more than the customers - or maybe execution of wishlist items managed in a poor fashion. I LOVE new features and slick toys, but not at the cost of performance/stability.

I haven't shopped around because on my machine and for my purposes 2012 has squeaked by, but I am now at the point where I'm wondering if the grass is greener, and HOW MUCH greener, somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

Robert,

Your post has a stench of B.S. to it. (To be blunt) Well, either that or you should be posting in 2011 forum 12 months ago. You said that you "dropped max after i saw the disgrace release that was 2011." You are in the 2012 forum and there has been a hotfix and a service pack released for 2012. (a version you have apparently not even used) This is like me going on Nvidia's forum and crabbing about a driver that they released a year ago. Telling everyone of the shortfalls, paying no attention to the praise and fixes that latest driver has received.

Also, if you are indeed not using Max anymore...why are you in this forum? Certainly not to offer help to other users. If you are not using the latest version of Max, I don't see how anyone can take your railing of Max 2011 seriously.

Would it make sense for me to go to the Softimage forum and complain about all of its shortcomings if that is not the software I'm NOT using? I'm just tired of posts like this and had to say something.

...just my observation and opinion....