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.

[Anonymous]

I'd be happy to see some improvements to the Animation toolset for the 2017th version of 3ds Max.

Even though I'm still wondering if 3ds max is going to die next and completely replaced by Maya ... 

[Anonymous]

I think Maya will die next.
3ds max have more extensions releases then maya.
Core mayas  and bifrost developers like Adrian got laid off due restructuring plan

[Anonymous]

If you see the article, and if you see the recent features of the newest versions of Maya... you'll see that Maya is improving its modeling tool set, whereas Max isn't getting big improvements

[spacefrog_]

Guys: you talk about a post/video which is from 2014, thus 2 yrs old

The situation and outlook for Max has greatly improved since then. Back then things for Max certainly looked a bit gloomy, as the longtime product manager has left, with the one PM following only showing up for a short intermezzo. Also back then some forces in middle managment were actively working against Max and pro Maya. This situation has long been cleaned out and 3ds Max development now sees great progress and commitment.

None of those two apps will be "phased out" - it would'nt make any sense

It looks as Autodesk finally recognized that Maya and Max users are two totally different breeds. I for one have my fair knowledge in Maya, but still can't stand it ( though at the same time being faszinated by some of the great tech in there, coming out of the box )

[Anonymous]

I just want MAX new UI!!!!

[Anonymous]

OK...want to expound a little about what you don't like in the current UI?

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous

seriously stfu. its people like you who want the "ribbon" 10sec to load interface.

@Anonymous

"The original Polyboost interface was just as horrible as the ribbon."

polyboost is so much faster than this **** "ribbon". wtf are you talking about?, u favor "slow interface design" over application speed and stability?

max is becoming more clunky/buggy/unstable/bloated....

autodesk has not created anything "useful/productive" for 3ds max, they simply "buy" it.

[lightcube]

That's certainly mature.

I, for one, like the ribbon. AND the command panel. I just don't like how slow either of them are.

There are many things that AD has done to make us all skeptical over the years, certainly. And even when they are not doing everything the way I'd personally do it, I have a good hunch that 2017 will make a lot of people very happy.

[Anonymous]

"I have a good hunch that 2017 will make a lot of people very happy."

that's always the same generic response we get. and u did not respond to the fact that 3ds max is getting slower/bloated....

but yes, You keep hoping. but the majority of max users are not happy.

ive just listened to a few segments of Mckay's interview with Perblerg. And Autodesk seems to want to take max to a different whole new direction(AR, VR, 3d printing, game engine, story-telling).....The talented and smart people at Autodesk seems to know what to do with 3ds max's future, more than the users themselves. maybe they can remove the crappy modifiers with a "better" "workflow"

"you know?"

[lightcube]

Well, I suppose that's fair, as you don't know me. I've been as skeptically vocal as almost anyone over the years about things going on at AD for us Max guys-n-gals. This is the first year participating on the Beta program, however... and my optimism is up. I have already tasted the next Max... and I made sure to renew my subscription this month.

[Anonymous]

RE: "a different whole new direction(AR, VR, 3d printing, game engine, story-telling)"

I sure hope not. They continue to insist that they aren't giving all the good Vfx / film stuff to Maya, despite all evidence that they are. I once again (Stupid me perhaps) took them at their word.

If 2017 is a move away from those solid film / Vfx told and into something like 3d printing, it would be like me renewing my subscription to Popular Mechanics based on promises, then finding out 3 months in that they decided to focus on articles about wedding planning.

[Anonymous]

Meant to type TOOLS, not "told"...3dsmax has always both benefited and suffered from the Swiss Army knife approach..continuing to tack on MORE new entire areas is going to make the suffering worse without adding many benefits.

[Anonymous]

Only time will tell about 2017, but then again time was going to tell about 2016 and 2015 : )

Let's see this time..

Swiss army knife is a good thing if it's done right, here's a hint and seriously I say that 3ds max version 9 is good enough and more for any architecture work "Civil view" people : ), (no archviz designer goes without Vray installed anyway). Stop all architecture/design/ motion graphics/ CAD work on Max Development not to mention "3d printing" ( which is a big Hype these days, funny that it is so easy to do I don't know what the big fuss is all about you just have to plan right for it just like any other thing, but its not a novelty to invest tech in software development and ignore the community, move on.

Lets not bother integrating max with a game engine, hint Stingray... (by the way if it was Unreal integration I wouldn't have complained, just for the record, because it can actually be used in production, instead of an engine being advertised for some aristocrat "design" house showing off its sorry excuse of an interior render realtime to their gullible clients in VR going "ooo, aaa"  while getting screwed by an overpriced price tag and horrid quality output (I can only imagine a few places in the world who would fall for this kind of cr*p, while you could do the same and much much more with any other engine for free or quarter of the price) But i'm stearing off now.

Instead focus all effort on  performance and restructuring: Character tools, animation layers, rigging (Spline IK new form of reaction manager etc.., muscles, Cloth, skinning (honestly extension 1 2016 had a slight slight glimmer of hope, voxel and heat deformations OK effort but not good enough if painting weights with skin is utterly useless not to mention the Horrid performance, even the guy in Autodesk tutorials ended up using Vertex selection he ended up putting in sharp values for the skinning, he is lucky that the mesh is so low poly that he could get away with that!

Come on guys this is not 1998, we are dealing with millions of poly counts and hundreds of layers. Compare the experience with Maya's skining tools and weight painting and then come and talk about it. ( Also improve biped to start with, that thing has been sitting there for a decade and no one has touched it, yet it is the most used skeletal system in Max and far more stable and production ready than Cat with far superior features. yet it is neglected. Although I secretly wish it was 1998 those were the glory days of true innovation, you could feel every effort and see it in your tools!

Finally some of you mentioned what can be done about the interface. Well the interface in max personally is good and straight forward but it lacks customization, you can't scale windows in cetain modifiers or control tools for instance, also introduce shortcuts for modeling tools such as those in Maya's which are intuitive, at the moment I have a very hard time assigning shortcuts to any Ribbon modeling tools I have to resort to Scripts! Some of the tools are not even exposed for proper shortcuts in there. Oh and someone mentioned that I can "remove" the file menu box at the top left corner which is eating up my screenspace for no good reason other than "to look good" apparently, if so please show me how becuase i honestly haven't seen this done before.

Last but not least, I mentioned Zookeeper, I hope the good folks from management at Autodesk take good products out there as reference for good implementation, the current state of Scene explorer in Max is in a shameful state in performance and intuitive workflow, don't go too far just download outliner for 3ds max 2014 it's a free script, work on that for a few hours then try 2016 scene explorer and tell me how it feels.

For FX, I've said it before guys at best you can ask for and probably will get is a fluid system to make quick smoke/fume and maybe some clouds, but anything more I doubt Autodesk would invest the time, effort and heart to even come close to Phoenix or even fume fx for some of the other stuff. Believe me just invest in those and you'll be happy for your money well spent and made up for.

With all that said i'll be happy to be proven wrong in 2017.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@Anonymous

seriously stfu. its people like you who want the "ribbon" 10sec to load interface.

@Anonymous

"The original Polyboost interface was just as horrible as the ribbon."

polyboost is so much faster than this **** "ribbon". wtf are you talking about?, u favor "slow interface design" over application speed and stability?

max is becoming more clunky/buggy/unstable/bloated....

autodesk has not created anything "useful/productive" for 3ds max, they simply "buy" it.

---

Stuffing as many buttons on a floating window as you can is not interface design.  And where exactly did i say that i favor "slow interface design"? Where did i say ribbon is faster? Did you even read what i wrote? No, of course not, you guys never do.

[Anonymous]

Wow guys, chill. This isn't a Fb forum.

[Anonymous]

I don't care, I want complete overhaul of that archaic interface, NOT the UX!!! Just a new fresh metro/material style, and take that ribbon out too!

Just this:

[Anonymous]

Interface of 3dsMax is OK for most of the users. Most experienced people use it for 25 years and can find the necesary tools almost blind. On the other hand including Chaos tools; FX, V-Ray, Smoke FX e.o. in 3dsMax as standard can be a good idea.

[Isaac_Zuniga]

To be honest, as a Max user for the past 7 years, I have liked how it has progressively gotten more cleaner and polished than what Max once was, but as with everything, I do believe that there's always room for improvement.

What could this "improvement" be? To be honest, I'm not 100% sure myself, but I do like hearing other people speak what I feel like I'm leaning towards: Beter fluid simulations and/or a better rendering method.

I have tried Vray and I'm very impressed with it, and I kind of wonder why 3ds max has not integrated Vray within it, or at least Nvidia acquire some Vray-like attributes and implement them into Mental Ray. I do not mind Mental Ray, but it's kind of a stick in the mud to me. While the "unified" rendering method is nice, it reminds me of Vray's rendering methods and it feels siilar to it, I do believe that building on that foundation would be nice.

But let's be honest guys, while there's a lot of things we all wished that they could have done in 2016, I'm sure Autodesk is thinking about implementing some nice stuff in 2017. (I sure hope so, or else it's a repeat of 2015 all over again...) With the obvious Windows 10 support, I'd like them fix the newly-implemented physical camera's motion blur calculations, as it's a bit broken in my opinion, but other than that, all I can say is that we should all gather a seat and see what surprises Autodesk may or may not have in store for us this year.

[Anonymous]

sort of fascinating the lack of any sense in these discussions. 

the idea of "integrating" some of the often used plugins as "standard", whatever that means, is beyond nonsensical. 

- the people that are interested in vray, already have it and use it. 

- the users that need fluids are already on phoenix fd or some other solution. if you really needed it for a project, you would certainly not wait for it to be developed by autodesk. you would buy the plugin and get on with the job.

people bitching about it are not interested in fluids, only bitching about fluids. phoenix is less then a yearly sub ffs and can do both fire and fluid.

-implementing these or any third party plugin as "standard" is impossible without buying chaosgroup outright (how else should this work), which isnt hapenning. and thank god for that because if it were be possible it would mean death of these plugins - as autodesk has a infallable track record of buying plugins and leaving them to rot. when is the last time anything happened to catrig?

- thinking that nvidia can "acquire" bits of vray and "integrate" them into mentalray...i mean really? i dont even know where to begin here. 

moreover the users that indeed have these plugins would recieve far less value than people that dont have them. how is that fair? so again its absurd really. sort of shocking grown folks come up with these ideas void of any reason.

i dont have high hopes for max. with the amount of bugs encountered with each release its more then clear that it needs a complete overhaul, something we were promised with excalibur. turned out autodesk was only joking. 

with the recent layoffs things will not get better. but that is ok because autodesk is primarily interested in making money not software. that is why i am phasing out max and it feels really, really good. i only use it as a polymodeler and intermediate these days, and looking into modo for that.

autodesk intends to keep its customers by strongarming them. its not easy to switch to another 3d package and they know it.

so people stay on like in some disfunctional relationship were the stakes are to high to call it quits. 

your really need to try clarisse ifx and see how software is being developed. it will change your life - i am not kidding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaDu4OH2F78

move on people.

[Isaac_Zuniga]

Nice opinions/facts... (I can't tell which are which at this point.) Ultimately, like I previously stated, all we can do is sit back and see what Autodesk has at this point.

All people have ideas, and trying some of them out in some sort of way won't make or break a program. I'm sure Autodesk has ways to get around that situation since they do have a team of people, rather than just one person, helping keep the company going. - Like I said, all we can do is sit back and see what they have in store for us this year, which might be quite interesting after a nice release last year with the 2016 release.