still no news about 3ds Max 2017?

[Anonymous]

As you can read in my note at beginning of last year "Still no news about 3dsMax 2016" there are some important conclusions. One of them is possitive: Autodesk came with a new 3ds Max 2016 with important improvements...yes. Comparing to their previous releases is was impressionant. Comparing to Maya..comparing to 'free' Blender'? ..hmm. For 'psysics' sims, fluids, smoke etc..there was nothing included. So Max users had to wait for another year. Hopefully Autodesk decides to include Naiad in Max as they did in Maya and perhaps with some advancements. That's what I should do..the one year better for Maya the other year better for Max, so that all potential customers and existing users stay in the 'Autodesk' camp. If they don't...I garantee, not max will loose, not Maya will winn, but' s Autodesk who will loose the marketplace. As with most of Marketleaders they get arrogant as some points. They decides to kill some competences of people (Combustion, Edit, Max, Toxik, Composite e.a.) buy competitors and promote it as new products. Not saying it's wrong to buy in new technology to accelerate plug ins of an existing product. As long as your efforts in training are garanteed for a lifetime. In the nineties Discreet and even Autodesk where beloved companies. Not any more now. O contrary...So I can understand the users are aware now and begging for 'Bitfrost' or even better in Max2017, I can understand they never will move to Maya, I can understand If necesary the will rather move to competitors paid or free..Max need to be revamped asap including everything possible..kratatoa, thinkbox, bitfrost and other good FX tools. If not..goodbye Autodesk.

[Ihno]

There are bigger Problems than this fx stuff.
Yes, it should have a fx sim solution out of the box but:

Fx sim tools are difficult to setup and you need a really strong Computer to get it done in time.

As allways, sims tent to do what they whant and its allways a long rocky road to success.

This is why there are Specialized Artist which do that stuff 90% of there time.
Don't think you'll get a one-klick solution which is computing in some minutes, that is not Possible.

Its more like a secound rendering process without beeing able to see just frame xxxx without simulating the frames before.

Also i think that all users who really need this fx stuff, had allready buyed a Pugin to do that.
They put jears in it to get a feeling for it and they'll continue using there Pugin even if max includes its own one.

For me it would be way more important to finaly get the big Features which are not or (just "sort of") avalible as Plugin:

Viewport Tear off!!!!!!!!!!111
Note based wire parameter Editor
Skin Sliding and Muscle jiggling

[Anonymous]

Agreed partly with Ihno. But I wouldn't hold specialized artist argument for lack of implementation.

This subject matter has been talked to death, Autodesk is Autodesk.

Regarding Max and FX, If I were to implement things in max:

A - I would not prioritize it, because even if you hire the best of the best and 100 of them last year they still need another 3 to come up with something production ready, thats a fact. Instead I would strike a deal with chaosgroup to implement the excellent PhoenixFD into max, and you wouldn't look elsewhere trust me, especially if you are a freelance FX guy. couple that with fume fx if you have the cash to spare (but Phoenix should be enough) and a 200 buks worth of a destructon plugin and you are good to start. 

But ofcourse Phoenix costs $$$, which is why if a deal is made to implment it while keeping same price of max would be ideal. But all this is wishful thinking

B - I will throw mental ray (a once great and powerful renderer )  and again implement Vray making a deal with Chaos.

I'm not sure how this would work though given the subscription model, but it's this or I can't really see this proritized, and even if they are implementing a fluid system in 2017 it wont be anywhere close to phoenix or fume to be production ready and with those guys being years ahead of the game, so I fear it may be another half baked approach that i'd rather pay and implement plugins instead.

Ideally I would invest time in character animation tools and muscle system in max plus cleaning the software up from useless code and fixing the interface performance (why does it take 1 second to refresh properties every time i click on an object?) why do I have Civil view and Autodesk cloud cluttering menus, who uses these in serious productions? you want archviz stuff there's max design put those there please.

I cant stress enough of how much max is lacking in the character department.

Skin is useless yes utterly useless forget that quaternion they added it wont cut it buy Bones pro

No muscles buy Hercules

Morph is absolute garbage buy morphomatic

Cat is half baked buggy mess only useful for low end quick slap together rig, in any case no serious rigger in a serious production would consider it.

Hair buy Ornatrix (this may be an exception no software out of the box has good hair system not even Maya, but Maya's native hair workflow is ten times more usable than max's native build ones) Ornatrix is superior though.

Biped an amazing tool is rotting please someone knock on that door!

Maybe update the bones systems and spline IK?!

Please update cloth make it multithreaded at least!

And the other thing, the new scene explorer is still bad and clunky and slow, I had to install that free script outliner to work smooth again. You want to see a real scene explorer go check out Zookeeper.

You want to know how much the above costs to just get you started, most of these are the basics and we don't have them!

Don't get me wrong I would pay double for the above plugins and for Chaos if I could, and I have bought most of the above already, otherwise no way to finish work on time or at all! Simply put i'm getting my money's worth every penny of it plus great support. I simply don't feel the same for max out of the box, I feel like i'm buying or soon renting an empty shell worth tons of cash just to start glueing wheels on it so I could go to point B.

Hard to believe 2017 is going to be any different.

[Ihno]

and again implement Vray making a deal with Chaos.

Hopfully this never happens. Every time AD bought something, it goes EOL very soon.
Exept a view (much to less) bug fixes nothing happens.
The full modifier list sometimes feels like an graveyard.
Nealy every of the old features you pointed out to be replaced, ones was an exiting and good plugin AD bought...
Hair, Cloth, Biped, Cat and countless other corpses are rotting in max's guts. 
They are not native, ther code isen't from AD and it seems that AD's Developers can't continue developing it.
Maby because they can't handle the 3th Party code. Maby they're just to view to keep all those features up to date while making new ones.
Maby the problem is that they forced ther selfs to make a new version with new features for us ungrateful users every jear.

Don't let this happen to Vray!
Chaos is a incadible good Plugin forge. They should continue to do what they want.
I don't want AD to have a finger in that pie.
The Features AD writes are working mutch better than the Features they bought.
I want them to make there own muscle, rigging and hair system's.

[Anonymous]

I'd buy max 2017 if it had zero changes and just fixed the thousands of issues with stability and reliability max currently has. These issues are left by the wayside constantly by autodesk and ignored when pointed out on forums in favour of headline new features.

[mhaZe23]

while they´re at it:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/dreadful-3ds-max-viewport-performance/t...

😉

[mhaZe23]

oh, and why not only cut the staff of the company (which is, without irony, quite sad of course) but cut the crap code from the healthy and completely reprogram the whole tool for a 2018 release.

this would give the opportunity to just incorporate half of the fine scripts out there which make sure this tool is worth working with, because without them it would´ve lost it´s life years ago.

just read about the bug in this thread and it´s gonna be clear Max has become too instable because of patchbuying tons of features:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/3ds-max-2016-sp2-bug-with-group-ungroup...

i say it´s time to build from scratch, fresh, no more excalibur-nonsense!

[Anonymous]

Even at the risk of sounding combative and harsh...I'd like to say that if any of you that come to these forums griping every so often care as much as you say you do, you'd sign up to be a Beta tester (if you haven't already).

That's the one way to get your voice heard, see the future of the software, and test it before it comes out.  Put that discontent and disappointment in the past to good use, in a constructive way.

These yearly gripe fests about "still no news" don't help anyone, because you should know by now that no, in fact, there "still" is no news - nothing is made public until right around or exactly at release.  We're still a little over two months away from the usual April release.  Like it or not, this will never change so long as Autodesk is a publicly-traded company.

While there were disappointments and real head-scratchers in the early 2010's, this new development team hasn't given us a single reason to not be optimistic about the future of this prodcut.  2015 was lackluster, but didn't they take over mid-cycle (I forget)?  2016 was much improved and the team delivered a nice product.  I have high hopes for 2017 and forward...and you should, too!

[spacefrog_]

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@mhaZe23 wrote:

just read about the bug in this thread and it´s gonna be clear Max has become too instable because of patchbuying tons of features:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/3ds-max-2016-sp2-bug-with-group-ungroup...

---

Bought 3rd party tools is certainly NOT the reason for the groups bug in SP2, and it certainly was not the reason for the Nitrous memory leak in SP1. Quite the contrary: those are  typical bugs that may happen just because they touched core parts of Max. In those two cases it certainly and definitely was QA dropping the ball: Such things never should slip through final testing...

And don't hang such layoffs onto dev teams - ever . Those are the people who got no warning and are hit by it in their personal lifes. If you want to rant, rant against people who are really responsible for this style of running a business .

[dgorsman]

Just so that new testers are aware, they are to be BETA testers.  Not product managers.  Not setting the direction of the product for the next decade.  Not throwing on the breaks because they want/can't stand something.  If you have an idea, great; if you can spell it out clearly, even better; just don't expect it to added to the release you are testing.  I've seen quite a few people sign up only to be disappointed they "aren't being listened to" because their expectations were different than the role.

[Anonymous]

An important distinction, to be sure.  haha 

[Anonymous]

Oddly enough, I thought one way for us to get our voices heard was to use the official vote-based request system....but clearly that isn't the case or I'd be hearing more about fluids in Max

[Anonymous]

To Ihno: Of course I wasn't implying Autodesk buys off Chaos, God forbid that ever happens, besides I don't think they are the selling type. I was throwing an idea of cutting a deal with chaos for the implementation of vray as a default renderer and phoenix as a default fluid sim while at the same time keeping them completely independent. But then again this is wishful thinking and it will never happen.

Regarding beta testers,  they are good for finding those bugs but like you guys said they have no say, so if Autodesk throws populate at you to find its bugs thats all you are going to do, you think they will care if you tell them it's useless unless you can give some kind of crowd control functions and customizable characteristics and animations, or how about just improving biped crowd while we are at it and forget populate?

The only way to be supposedly heard is through the voting system, I rest my case there, when animation tools have one of the highest votes and instead we get quaternion as an answer, might as well tick that box checked and move on.

And like I said before and will say again, having a native fluid solution in max at this stage should not be the priority, you will never get anything production ready never, this needs lots of time to implement and Phoenix has already beaten everyone else in the game when it comes to fluids for max, other than that you are better off with Houdini and a port for it to max.

Anyway these are discussions that will sadly get nowhere in these forums, but I will bet you to have similar complaints in any of the forums hosted by Chaos, Ephere, Pixologic about their products.  Trust me they will have solutions for you in the next release if not in days yes days! And these guys have a miniscule amount of the budget of Autodesk and some are just a few guys in a room! It' about attitude, commitment and good business. A solid relationship between client and company, that's how you are respected.

[Anonymous]

A MCG enabled native Bifrost implementation would potentially blow Maya out of the window.

And i don`t think that`s something THEY want.(THEY==middle managment).

[Anonymous]

They have had more than a year...if this release isn't absolutely mind blowing they should fire the whole team and start over...fire everyone, including any superstars who were brought in to make everything cool again.

[Anonymous]

This will have been two major times when someone from Max's past was brought in as a white knight and nothing really moved...looking forward to them proving me wrong.

[Anonymous]

you seem to dump the problem on the actual dev team.

do you really think they have autonomy over the longterm positioning of max?

it has been decided and things are set in stone: maya for the fancy stuff, max the archviz crowd.

you dont even have to read between the lines, since as much has been stated on more than one occasion. 

start switching to other packages and vote with your wallets. 

[Anonymous]

I blame the do team and team leads because they continually insist that Max IS getting attention and NOT just archviz...as soon as they agree that they are being told to focus on arch viz I will accept that.

But then make THAT the response to the #1 voted feature...officially announce that you don't care what users vote, Max is archviz and isn't getting fluids.

[Anonymous]

how would that benefit them? it wouldnt, so they dont.

thinking a corporation should be honest with its consumers is adorably naive.

there is PR and there is reality of things. customer feedback programme is a part of the former. it is painfully obvious that no one gives a single f what people write over there.

secondly, the speed and quality in which third party plugins are being developed shows often what one motivated person can do.

i suggest not waiting on the feature x and buying a plugin instead. only that way does max stay even half relevant today.

i dont want to get on about it. just spent two days trying to export fbx without crashing on import.

but seriously people, start looking into other packages. 

things wont get better.

http://cgpress.org/archives/autodesk-announces-restructuring-925-layoffs-planned.html

and then this:

http://investorplace.com/2016/02/autodesk-layoffs-adsk/#.Vrd7SPkrLpQ

quality is irrelevent for adsk to keep making money. 

[spacefrog_]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I blame the do team and team leads because they continually insist that Max IS getting attention and NOT just archviz...as soon as they agree that they are being told to focus on arch viz I will accept that.

But then make THAT the response to the #1 voted feature...officially announce that you don't care what users vote, Max is archviz and isn't getting fluids.

---

They insist because it's a wrong assumption on your side. And a fantasized, magical fluid solution will not happen. Are you actually aware how limited Bifrost in Maya is right now? If you seriously have a need for fluid simulation so badly now, go for a 3rd party solution.

It's plain ignorant to shut the eyes on the good things which happened since the Max 2014 release.

Even more so since Eddie took over and brought the team up to speed...

Are you aware in how many areas Max has to be improved to provide a stable platform for the future?

Eg.: Do you think they should ignore High DPI monitor support ( which will be a HUGE undertaking in Max , by the way ) ? Or the internal performance bottlenecks (which piece by piece get attention as one can simply verify by comparing performance from release to release). Max core code  is a 20 yr. old monster, ( i bet big parts are even older and coming from 3D Studio DOS ). It's impressive that it still keeps up with todays demands...

BTW:

What version are you working with, somehow i have the impression that you are one of the persons who sticked with Max2012 or 2013, because they were so disappointed by the lackluster features (and  viewport performance) of those releases.