It seems currently 3ds max 2017 uses 2.4.0 version of opensubdiv lib. Since version 2.4.0 to 3.1.x (latest) opensubdiv obtaind a lot improvements and new features. Please update Opensubdiv modifier with newest opensubdiv lib and keep it up to date. Please do not make us wait 3-5 years for update and use obsolete technology. Show More

I'd really really like a road tool implemented in 3d studio max. We're dealing with sloped roads with fills/cuts, intersections, curbs, etc in landscapes all the time. The whole archviz community is screaming for a road function, and currently we have to fall back to bad 3rd party plugins that doesn't really do the job dynamic enough.   Why is it so easy making roads in Cities:Skyline and not in 3d studio max? Autodesk, please remember that civil view is not enough. We're not working with Civil 3d. We're combining realism and engineering with creativity, so we need flexibility with the tool. A road tool where you can change parameters for just about everything, just like the stair tool. The road needs to conform/blend with the terrain with any given cut/fill angle/distance parameter, with a 0-100% priority between terrain conforming to road or road conforming to terrain.   Take a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxaozEap4-A     And you'd bet that when you finally have made that road somewhat realistic, your landscaper, client or engineer tells you that the road has to be moved a bit, or the slope has to be in another angle, or the road is coming in from the other direction because of some regulation or clients wish. Legitimate hours to invoice for, maybe, but we have got customers in the waiting line for the next projects coming up. Road is a massive black money hole. Projects with roads are always hard, and the same problem keeps showing up: A lack of a good road tool in 3d studio max.   If it's impossible to make, I'd like to hear the argument. Autodesk will go a huge step ahead of competitors with a tool like this. I made this suggestion a year ago too. It got some kudos, but it's gone from this site now, don't know why it has been removed.   Show More

We have a copy of 50 boxes, we want to add lenght segments to all of them. Is not possible to do it since selecting them nothing is displayed on modifer tap. We need to use Maxscript. Can we have an elegant solution that when we select objects that are the same type (all are boxes, or all are spheres, or all has the same modifier), we can modify them? I will say if we introduce a new value, this value will override whatever we had before, and if we use the spinners, this values will be added or substracted to anything existing. Show More

It's very frustrating as a TD not to be able to query what is in a .max file from outside it other than a list of objects and materials.   It's essential for us to be able to read the list of layers and which objects are on each layer, so we can build our own Merge by Layer utility and make other useful utilities.      Show More

This in my opinion would be a mini-revolution in the way Max is used. I've been told by Changsoo its extremely difficult to do but man it would be cool. It would save so much time for teams and individuals and encourage the sharing of knowledge. It would make complicated modifier assemblies so fast.  Do it Max Dev team. You'll be my hero.  Gavin Show More

Procedurals maps are very useful. They could be improved to make them more powerful : offer more noise types, more controls, etc . An excellent starting point would be looking into BerconMaps Show More

  Pls. open the provided illustrations in full screen and download the attached files containing collages of them in full resolution!     Ten years ago, this kind of option would have been considered an optional, of marginal use or a fancy tool that is better tackled by scripts. However, it pretty became basic nowadays and most of the software out there has more than decent built-in solutions for these kinds of tasks. One cannot grasp the utility and versatility of such tools until it starts to use them and realizes how much has missed it all this time. This is useful when, for example, when you want to cut out perfect circles on any surface, when you want to build structures that jut out of existing shapes etc. One can use circularize with other modeling operations to model shapes quickly. For video examples for traditional polygon modeling, it's enough to hint at older or more recent Arrimus 3D tutorials with both Blender and 3ds Max (link1, link2). For Modo here is a quick video from Pixel Fondue (link)   Now, that 3ds Max team has come up with some fast and versatile solutions for direct modeling like the Interactive Smart Extrude functionality and the much quicker Working Pivot alignment, a competitive solution to rearrange selections into circular arrays (and N-sided shapes) will only exponentially advance the possibilities of the new workflows introduced with these tools. Lesser need for Boolean operations, lesser need of using cut operations and cleaning work (with traditional Quad modeling this is even more critical), lesser need of creating extra primitives within smart extrude etc. The quick designs made up with Smart Extrude will look less blocky and more interesting much faster. All these tools combined along with a future updated Multi Cut tool (that “slices and dices”) will pretty much make 3ds Max the king of direct, straightforward polygon modeling.   There are at least 3 methods to (kind of) rearrange selections into circles in 3ds Max natively. For example, one can use the Spherify Modifier, which is nice because you can also morph, or one can use the Geopoly in the Ribbon Tools. And ofc there is the old Loop Tools Circle Command (from Ribbon). But none of these is convenient enough to use and each of them fails in many cases. Therefore, they are not good alternatives to scripts that already do this conveniently and work in more cases like RapidTools fastEdgeLoopRegularizer (link). Loop Tools Circle Command is buggy, slow and doesn’t work in many cases, at least not without workarounds. For ex, as some of you have already noticed, Loop Tools Circle Command can only circle edges where there's an inset around them.   3ds Max doesn’t need 3 unsatisfying ways of doing the same thing, it only needs a fast, versatile, up-to-date, refined, competitive and well-integrated tool. Furthermore, built in solutions for tools that pretty became basic nowadays are always common sense. Autodesk should go beyond fixing and updated it by taking the lead at least on this low-level polygon modeling functionalities and make it super versatile.   And ofc, there is The Competition. Maya 2018 (if one can considered it as competition) also received an awesome Circularize Components function (link) with bunch of neat options. It’s ridiculous how polished and versatile is that tool in Maya, a software that isn’t, by any means, focused on modeling. It seems they have thought of everything. Cinema 4D  which used to have a limited amount of modeling tools came with a slew of improvements with S26, one of them being a quite competitive Fit Circle tool with lot of control after the software used to relied on scripts to do that (link). Blender has its default addon LoopTools with a Circle functionality (link) that works surprisingly well. And last but not least, there is the Modo’s Radial Align tool (link) introduced by the milestone 901 update was inspired by a largely used popular script and this is showing because the result is just brilliant. Apart from the obvious circle arrangements, this tool also supports N-sided shapes defined by user which results in triangles, pentagons, hexagons etc. dispositions. It also has a unique option (Rotate) to reconnect the proper edges when the results get twisted (check this video around 0:30 link).   This new tool should reside in the Command Panel not in the archaic Ribbon Submenus (as part of the badly integrated Graphite Modeling tools) and by default accessible from Quad Menu (or a future updated modern context menu but that’s another story). Consistent Hotkeys are also needed. Its Options should be added to a 3ds Max Caddy Controls.   The most obvious and common-sense place where Autodesk should get the concept and maybe the tech for a new tool in this area is the Circularize Components of Maya. But, it should definitely get the N-sided mode and Rotate reconnect features of Modo or the Influence and Radius from Blender, as well as a couple ones I came up with inspired by other tools (like Randomize, Semicircle mode etc.). When comes to the name of the tool, considering all of these, it can be diffiicult to properly choose one to accurate depic the function of this tool. In essence it rearranges your selections in regular or N-gons or put it differently in radial patterns. Therefore, Radial Regularizer or Radial Align would fit the best, but, for the sake of consistency between Autodesk software, Circularize should also do the work.   MODE Controls the alignment procedure: Circle - adjusts the selected positions to align along a circle specified by the Radius value and the calculated center position. N-Sided - aligns positions along a polygon specified by the Side and Rotate values. If the number of selected positions is less than the number of sides, it interpolates the remaining points between the corner points of the polygon. Semicircle - aligns positions along a semicircle While rearranging your selections into perfect circles would be the most used mode, triangles are always nice-to-have details in scifi designs and having the ability to define a shape with the number of sides of your choice ofers way more flexibility. This will alleviate the need to use the cut tools and reduce the post cleaning work. In Architecture and furniture design arches or semicircles are even more common shapes so I think this mode can be tackled inside the same tool even if this doesn’t enter in the same field of radial dispositions.     TYPES OF SUBOBJECTS   The tool should support all subobjects (vertices, edges, polygons). For it to work:    For vertices: You must select at least three vertices. The number of selected vertices will determine the shape of the circularized area (i.e., three creates a triangle, four creates a square, five creates a pentagon, etc.).  For edges: Circularize is performed on each closed edge loop.  For polygons: Circularize is performed on each set of polygons that share at least one common edge. For the other N-sided mode, in Modo, if the number of selected positions is less than the number of sides, the program interpolates the remaining points between the corner points of the polygon.     TYPES OF SELECTIONS   Like it's Maya countepart at least, (and to a certain degree, by what I've been testing so far, in Blender as well) it should work on selections whether being previously insetted or not (unlike the LoopTools>Circle) on single or multiple groups of selections (identical or different in count and size), on multiple groups being planar or not, if they consist in multiple cross-section loops, simultaneously on both internal and external border selections (even if not aligned or different shape or count) etc.     TYPES OF SURFACES   It should work on Planar or Non Planar surfaces, on Corners areas, with Cross-Section selections, Surfaces with Curvature etc. All this use cases are illustrated below and you can also watch this YouTube video of a comprehensive review of Maya 2018 from 14:32 to 17:48 (link)     OPTIONS   The Tool should provide at least these options found in Maya, Modo and Blender:    Radial Offset: Adjusts the initial radius of the circle. If interior components are also selected, then they will scale along with the offset as well.  Twist: Determines how much rotation is applied to the components around the center of the circle. Evenly Distribute: Specifies whether or not circularized vertices are evenly distributed along the circle's circumference.  Relax Interior: Adjusts the spacing between components so that they stay within the circle while remaining evenly spaced. Lower values will enforce the components' original spacing. Rotate Reconnect: Changes which edges get connected if the initial result geometry gets twisted (check this video around 0:30 link) Normal Offset: Adjust Normal Offset to move the circularized components (and interior component, if selected) along the average normal.    Influence: The force of the tool. Zero percent influence means no changes will be made to the mesh. 100% influence means that the input will be fully transformed into a circle. Radius: This overrides the radius calculated by the tool. Useful if you wish to create several circles of the same size, or if you need more precision. Normal Orientation: Determines which set of components normals (face or edge loops) are averaged to orient the circle.  Random Radial/Normal Offset: Having a Random Range Value for at least Radial and Normal Offset is a quick and handy way to get instant diversity within your groups of selections. Ofc with radial offset this is only needed when the groups themselves have the same count or size because otherwise they already have differences after being circularized. Add Divisions: Adds additional vertices to the current selection, which results in smoother circles.  Supporting Edges: Add supporting edges to the added divisions to avoid n-gons; choose whether to apply them to the inside, outside or both sides of the circle.    Alignment: Use Alignment to define whether or not the circle conforms to the original object. With Automatic the circularized components are rotated based on the average normal direction of selected components. With Surface they conform to the surface of the original shape using individual vertex normals or the normal average.   ____________________________________________________________________________________________   MY OTHER IDEAS   MODELING   [Smart Cut, Multi-Cut tool] Unify, enhance and speed up different cut operations similar to Maya's M... - Autodesk Community [Inset Tool] A full-fledged tool comparable to competition: Offset Even, Edge Rail, Quad Corners, Au... - Autodesk Community [Custom Pivot] Versatile on-the-go interactive pivot manipulation (Align, Pos, Orient, Aim) similar ... - Autodesk Community [UI & Modeling - Command Pannel] Unify ribbon\graphite modeling tools with Editable\Edit poly tools ... - Autodesk Community Extra Primitives: Mechanical, Pipe Joints, Jewelry, Abstract (Illustrated Idea) - Autodesk Community Data/Normal Transfer modifier to fix normals (booleans or shrinkwrap cases ) - Autodesk Community View image plane/easily add reference images like in Maya [Spacing tool] Correct Z align when distributing copies along a spline - Autodesk Community [Brush Tools - Public Roadmap] Support for Dynamic Tessellation, Sculpt layers, Ptex, Retopology, Ra... - Autodesk Community Build End and Build Corner to work with Edit Poly not only in Editable Poly - Autodesk Community [Hinge from Edge tool] Hinge from Center, Hinge from Vertex, Quad corners, Width segments and other ... - Autodesk Community [Smart Extrude] Follow Taper, Edge Constraints support, Rotate Tool support and other improvements - Autodesk Community [Splines] Improved creation/editing capabilities and precision - Autodesk Community [Splines] Improved procedural handling through both updated and new modifiers - Autodesk Community [Splines] Flat shape and Curve controls within Renderable Spline Modifier - Autodesk Community [Splines] Scale, Rotate, Twist along Shape within Sweep Modifier - Autodesk Community UI AND VIEWPORT   [Viewport] Default Sub-Object selection related colors to use Max brand UI colors like Turquoise, Ye... - Autodesk Community [Viewport] Wireframe fade effect behind model (Houdini Wireframe Ghost alike) [Viewport] Vertex and Edge auto-scale display size based on distance from view [UI UV Editor] A more clean, tidy and fresh UI like the new Maya one - Autodesk Community [UI] Update all UI with the style of new modifiers and the new previewed updates [UI Track View] A more clean, tidy and fresh UI like the new Maya Graph Editors [UI Footer] Improve layout, style, functionality, customization and use of space [UI Icons] Complete the update of the many remaining legacy icons [UI Icons] Add the many missing icons and replace the placeholder ones [UI Quad Menu] An updated modern style inspired by new 3ds Max QT menus, Caddy Controls and Maya's M... - Autodesk Community [UI Scene Explorers] Design and functionality improvements ideas - Autodesk Community [UI Scene Explorer] Include Crease, Material Explorer etc. into its modes [UI Scene Explorer] Thumbnails display option for the Materials instead names [UI Light Explorer] Merge Light Lister into it and improve upon ideas - Autodesk Community [UI & Modeling - Command Pannel] Unify ribbon\graphite modeling tools with Editable\Edit poly tools ... - Autodesk Community [UI Command Panel] Double-width layout better space detection and usage + bug fixes - Autodesk Community [UI Command Panel] Content should adapt to resize and expand as well + bug fixes [UI Command Panel] Modifier Sets Buttons Expandable + faster Commands for sets and buttons - Autodesk Community OTHERS   [Lights] Editing and Renderer feature support improvement ideas Motion Graphics toolset like MASH for Maya Show More

It would be amazing to have a Boolean option in the extrusion, for negative operations... Negative extrusions in max are really anti-intuitive and we need a lot of work to use them in hard situation. With an optional "boolean" option negative extrusion could be really smart and sketchup like   Here is an example of an obvious situation where it would be greatly usefull... Just create a 3x3 Cube and do a negative extrusion on a side quad.     Show More

Chamfer mod is very useful but I want better topology like this. http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/inset-by-smoothing-group   In addition, sometime it makes strange UV like this kind of unnecessary connection. Please fix it.   Show More

I would like to see shift extrude for splines. Like the shift exturde in polyobjects. So i could drag the end vertex of a spline with pressed shift key and add new sepments to the spline. Show More

The design of Max’s time slider is a big waste of real estate in its current form. The over-sized width prevents accurate clicking on another frame that is current inside that area, forcing the artist to first scrub/click outside of that range to move it “out of the way” in order to then click on the desired frame you want to jump to.   Why does it always display one frame LESS than the actual end frame? If y active area is 100 frames (1-100) and my last frame is actually 100.. Max shows the final frame count as 99. This is not only confusing to the user but also takes up valuable UI space for info that is at first glance incorrect. Check out the attached image for a comparison of Max’s time bar to some other popular 3d apps. This will give you a good feel for how dated and clunky it really is. I've also included a couple of quick concepts for an updated time scrubber that don't involve a complete redesign of how it and the Track Bar work (thus less dev impact). One keeps Max’s traditional prev/next key arrows and colorized to match the trackbar indicator. The other does away with the arrows since there are hotkeys AND additional buttons in the UI for this. It also uses a black background for current frame indicator which I think looks nicer. The width of the icon could change width depending on how many digits are needed to display current frame.     Show More

We have extra space on Command panel finally! But now lets use it! Some parts are more important than others, but everything should be updated, here the Motion panel, where we have to scroll unnecessary to see important information, make this adaptive so we can see all information! Show More

I always do some keyboard, GUI and preferences customization when I install 3ds Max, and they're usually the same ones each time I upgrade. It would be very nice if 3ds Max could see and optionally import preferences and GUI-settings from existing installations. Show More

Come on Autodesk - the "Snap to Intersection" has to be included in this expensive, mature piece of software !!! Show More

I want to be able to drag objects from one Max instance to another Max instance, it should be possible to grab an object from the scene explorer and drag it, drop it into another instance running of 3DS Max and automatically merge that object into the scene... like when we drag a file into Max window from the windows explorer, but instead from windows explorer it should be an object inside another Max...   Show More

First off, i know this does count as multiple ideas but they're all tied together!   Rigging, skinning and animation are a huge part of this software, but the character creation process using max's stock capabilities is plainly speaking just bad. The character animation toolkit and the max modifier stack are two of the best features max has in terms of character creation but they are held back by two of the worst features max has to offer, the skin modifier and the morpher modifier. Custom rigs and FBX imported characters: Waste my time! Creating and setting up rigs outside of cat can often be a pain in the polygon, allow us to convert maxbones or helper bones into cat rigs without rebuilding the whole rig from scratch and fiddling around with skin utilities or envelope exports wasting hours and hours of time. Skin: Has nothing to do with realistic skin! The current skin modifier is full of bugs and completely outdated the only remotely up-to date features are dual quaternion skinning and the voxel solver, people have complained about it 10 years ago, comparing it to solutions present in other 3d applications like maya or even plugins like BonesPro, DeltaMush the skin modifier lacks in alot of aspects. -Give us the option to skin using a falloff value and vertex influence -Add a option that allows the definition of areas for soft body effects like jiggles or fat and  muscles similar to SkinFX. -Implement solutions similar to bonespro's meta & parabones and skin collisions for accurate deformations that prevent clipping around thighs, knees and elbows (Implicit Skinning). And last but not least... Morpher: I can't read the target names because they're too long? Improvements for the morpher modifier have been requested a couple of times in it's current state the targets are hard to manage and sort. A rework to the overwall modifier in terms of UI and visibility would do wonders, every morph target with a name longer than 12 characters gets part of it's name cut off, this can make it really time consuming and annoying during animation process when searching for the right targets.   -Expand the textfield when the Command Panel expanded -Allow us to color Code Morph Channels -Allow more than 100 morph channels even when loading them individually, currently the only way to load more than 100 is by using "Load Multiple Targets" -Swap Morph Target Channels by Drag & Drop -Better Vertex Selection Morphing and Mirror Morph Target -Backup Morph Targets external -> Improves Autosave time with Scenes that have alot of Targets -Add a Base Morph Target that stores the mesh in it's raw shape so that we'll be able to rollback after using "Capture current State"   Sadly the features max gets usually end up being fancy and new instead of actual improvements that the consumers wants implemented, viewport tearoff is a good example, it's been suggested years ago and still is not implemented even though it's the highest voted suggestion in the forums.   Thanks for reading this. Show More

There is a lot of amazing talent out in the world creating tech and tools that enables artists and animators to be more productive or have amazing new options at their fingertips. We see this every year with new research papers coming from Siggraph, amazing work at our local universities in CompSci, fantastic talent in our studios who are passionately creating tools to enable people to work better or work around a problem, and of course new features that we see in updates that we see in other tools on the market.    What is interesting though is that a lot of this work is being driven by some amazing individual talent and small teams, and often these developers are coming from a background where they lack solid financial backing to pursue a steady development process that can move these tools from a personal or research based environment into a more regular commercial phase that can benefit the greater community of users. As such my idea proposal is about Autodesk setting up a grant program that developers can pitch and apply for to craft new tools, add-ons, features/functions, etc. for 3DS Max.   Grants like this exist in a similar form from organizations like Mozilla, game engine developers like Epic (via their MegaGrants), or through government agencies (such as the Canada Media Fund, or other similar programs in other countries), but none of them are specifically driven towards seeing research, tech, and tools being driven from the 3rd party community towards a specific content creation tool like 3DS Max.  In these program there are often 3 types of phases: Prototype, Production, and Marketing. Prototype is about creating a MVP, risky, with smaller grant amount, but the general idea is that something is being tried out. Production is about taking that MVP into a finish product, this is obviously more costly and still risky. Marketing is focused around the promotion of the tools, low risk, low funding. As such there is a wide range of potential to see research, techniques, and processes turned into functional tools and features that we can have at our fingertips. Now there are catches with these types of programs, and I would expect no less from Autodesk (they are in the business of making money, not giving it away freely): 1) each application/pitch is often reviewed for the capabilities of the team and the validity of the idea, not everything gets funded unfortunately; 2) a recoupment method/model always exists to ensure that the money is recovered (often at a 50/50 rate until the grant has been recouped and then it shifts to an 80/20 split), with the potential that the work can be bought out at any time by either party; 3) there is sometimes an exclusivity, or support, period that is required for you play in a sandbox, and 4) you need to share data and information with your funder. That is the jist of the idea. However I do feel that it is one that could be of extreme benefit not only to Autodesk but to all of use end users as well as it could mean that we get unique emerging tech faster, but see existing developers being able to focus more of their time and efforts onto developing and supporting what they create. I hope that some of you will see these same benefits that I do and join me at encouraging Autodesk to consider this idea. Show More