3ds Max 2011 Announced
If you have not seen the news yet, 3ds Max 2011 has been announced by Autodesk. See Ken P’s blog at: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/3ds_max_2011_announced The software was also demonstrated at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) on March 11th through 13th. There are a lot of new features in Max, but also a lot of new stuff for Maya and Softimage 2011. Those videos will be available soon on www.area.autodesk.com
I can’t discuss anything beyond what has been released so far, and as I understand it 3ds Max Design 2011 will be announced at a later date. Being involved with the alpha, beta and release candidate (RC) versions of the software is an interesting process. It is fun, of course, to hear about the new details being introduced into the software, and it is also interesting to hear some of the reasons things are the way they are. Suffice it to say that I think the developers are fighting the good fight to get you the reliable tools you need to get the job done, and to get the resources to get the development accomplished. It isn’t always what a particular user might like, but the world is full of compromises. There is never infinite resources for the things we want to see accomplished. I think with this release people will see things start to come together, and the Excalibur information Autodesk released helped to explain the path they are taking.
I like to see them bring in tools from other developers, and the new Slate Material Editor (SME) is a welcome addition. Based on the Node Joe editor, it is one tool that saw a lot of internal development from Autodesk; it wasn’t a simple drop-in. Since it was continually changing during the writing of the book, Chapter 2, “Materials and Maps”, was a bit of a moving target and saw a lot of revisions in the many months I worked on the book. The final release of Max has a couple subtle differences, and I’ll see if anyone notices. :)
My opinion of the SME is that it will greatly help people at all levels create and manage materials. It will particularly help new users that are typically confused by the way that you navigate materials and maps in legacy Max; the user adds a bitmap to a material and the UI switches to the bitmap settings, and they don’t know how to get back to the parent level or where they are and why their settings disappeared. Hopefully they will eventually find the Material/Map Navigator button, or the Up To Parent button, but I have dealt with a lot of new users that have a very hard time getting their head around the editor. With the SME everything is visible and you see the connections between maps and materials. Much better, IMHO, and a targeted response by Autodesk in improving workflow. The Excalibur information promises more node-based workflow in Max, so the next few years will be exciting times in the Max world.
Another feature that has been announced is the Quicksilver rendering engine. This is a GPU-based renderer and a pretty cool tool. Do not expect it to run well on old and/or low-end graphics cards. A newer card with 1gb of memory (or more) is likely to give you the features and speed that you are expecting from the renderer. It isn’t mental ray, but for many scenes and on the right hardware it can burn through images pretty quickly.
The new functionality of Containers is another welcome addition. I have been slow to warm up to containers, I’ve had a few issues, however the new ability to make local ‘reference-like’ edits to the objects may sway me into using these more often. The XRef Scene functionality is what I typically use when importing and sharing external geometry.
Ken mentions “Viewport Display of 3ds Max Materials”. Each new release of Max has brought additional functionality to the viewport Hardware Shading functionality, and this is an area of serious development at Autodesk, as is the Quicksilver renderer. The better your video card the better it works, and a nice game-rated card gives an excellent preview of your rendering in the viewwport.
3ds Max Composite, based on the Toxik application, is another welcome addition. In Chapter 10 “mr for Design” I cover a few basics for compositing an image, however Composite is a big application and spending some quality time with the introduction tutorials, and going over the training DVDs from Ken LaRue’s company www.thestreetproductions.com will give you a firm foundation for effectively using this program. I still use Combustion but as I move from PNG and RPF files to OpenEXR using Composite will be essential. The only drawback to Composite is that it shares a license with Max and only runs on the same workstation as Max; you can’t run it on a separate workstation from Max.
Ken P’s 3ds Max 2011 announcement makes mention of “mental ray 2011″, which is mental ray 3.8. I understand that Ken mentioned on CGTalk that iray is not going to be included with Max 2011 or any mr3.8 Autodesk applications, and I believe that it really comes down to keeping only production-ready tools in the program. The iray application was still in development when the 2011 features were set in stone an completing the current toolset was the focus. I hope that it will come out as a subscription benefit down the line, but Autodesk does not tell the beta testers about their future plans and I have no inside information.
One very cool addition to Max 2011 is the ability to control mental ray via string options. For instance, in MAXScript, you can perform a few options to access mental ray and then send a character string such as:
“importons” on
…to enable that feature. I will most assuredly have more on using mental ray strings here on the web site, and I’m working on a few things now to help optimize your mental ray settings.
As far as Importons and Irradiance Particles, Max Tarpini will be coming out with a new plugin that is compatible with Max 2011. Although Max 2011 is plugin compatible with plugins for Max 2010, mental ray has changed and so must Max T’s plugin. The Max 2011 ctrl.ghost plugin shipping with the book worked in earlier betas but broke at some point. You can access my information on the ctrl.ghost plugins at:
I’ll be adding an article on the updated ctrl.ghost and mental ray functionality once 3ds Max/Design is released.
Jenni
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