Autodesk 3D Studio Max 2008

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AUTODESK 3DS MAX 2008 REVIEW Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 is the latest release of the popular 3d program used in all areas of the entertainment industry. 3ds Max, technically now version 10, adds a lot of speed improvements and useful features, providing more flexibility and performance. With today’s productions demanding shorter schedules but still quality work, this version addresses workflow issues and slow interaction with complex scenes to help meet these goals. It’s out of the box feature set makes it a very versatile application for any production needs. 3ds Max 2008 is available for 32bit and 64bit systems, now also supporting Windows Vista and DirectX 10. New Features: Data Management & Performance The vast improvements in these two areas alone make it worth to upgrade to 3ds Max 2008. It offers the best performance yet for complex projects which demand huge scenes with ten thousands of objects and materials.

Data Management One of the main features for data management is the new Scene Explorer replacing the old selection dialog. It gives you an essential tool to manage your scene by providing a hierarchical view of any object, similar to Maya’s Outliner. From hiding or freezing selections of objects, turning shadow casting on/off, renaming, linking or simply searching the scene using the extended search options, it keeps you on top of your scene. The Scene Explorer can also be customized using the SDK or Max Script to add additional functionality. It lets you filter and sort objects by their type, for example lights, cameras, space warps or bones. While you work in the dialog your current scene selection stays the same, but you can convert the explorer selection to affect or delete objects. You can have the Scene Explorer always as a free floating window or open it by using the old selection dialog icon. ( Which still locks you out from doing any changes to your scene while it’s open ). I personally prefer the floating window and just move it over to the other screen.

Performance Over all there have been a lot of speed improvements in all areas like selection, material assignment, transform, grouping, cloning and more. Moving large selections of objects is now possible without much delay. Very complex meshes can be manipulated faster, which makes working with detailed scenes less frustrating. Another very useful performance feature is the new viewport Adaptive Degradation which makes it possible to move at a user set frame rate though scenes that would normally stall you machine for minutes. The viewport rendering keeps the target frame rate by switching to different display options for objects, based on their size and distance to camera. The Adaptive Degradation can switch to a simple shaded version, wireframe, bounding box or hide small and distant objects entirely.

Lighting & Rendering This category in 3ds Max 2008 offers a few very good feature additions and improvements, which help with the daily production demands to work faster and more efficient. Lighting Naming one of my favorite feature first, the new Review toolset, which allows to interactive preview shadows, lights (up to 64 simultaneously) and the mental ray Architectural & Design material right in the viewport. This on its own saves hours of test rendering to see if the shadows fall as desired or the specular response is at the right size and intensity. After playing with this for a while and testing it on different scene complexities, it shows good performance. Combined with all the speed improvements added to this version of Max, it’s a must have tool to provide fast turnarounds and flexibility in feature film or game production. Lights can selectively be turned on. There are two different rendering modes using either ‘Good’ (PS 2.0) or ‘Best’ (PS 3.0) to calculate shading and shadows. Where ‘Best’ provides per pixel shading, ‘Good’ is vertex based and less accurate. The real-time shadows also take in account transparency of objects and opacity maps, which makes it also possible to preview scenes that use a lot of windows or plants. Key lighting your characters and environments becomes a less time consuming task, letting you iterate faster with instant feedback.

mental ray There have also been improvements to the mental ray workflow and rendering. More accurate rendering of ambient occlusion shadow details in corners and around objects, taking in account the nearby surface color has been added. The new Sky Portal allows for more efficient interior sky lighting, increasing quality and reducing the render times significantly. Placed at openings, windows or doors it concentrates the photons to these areas so less are needed to create a clean result. Besides other improvements to the Architectural & Design Material and the Lume shaders, there is a new feature which lets you control the scenes camera exposure like a real one. You can define film/shutter speed, f-stop, white/black point calibration, saturation and even adding a vignette effect to create a more realistic look. Combined with photometric lights and the A&D Material it’s easier to create true to life renders. You can cut down on the time spend to carefully calibrating materials, lights, color and faking a photographic look in postproduction. It’s actually like shooting a plate on set, that later can be treated the same way by applying color timing and additional composing tricks. In addition, splitting everything into layers gives even more flexibility for tweaking individual components later. When recording camera and light information on set you can apply those settings to your scene and get a good result that blends well with the original plate. Not only for making CG integration easier, but also to push full CG shots to look more realistic, by simply applying traditional techniques used in film or photography.

Other render related improvements Render to Texture has also been improved, now supporting DDS Half Float file format, dialog additions to exclude objects from being used in the ambient occlusion pass and the option to save presets. The Virtual Frame Buffer window now offers the option to copy the rendered image onto the clipboard, giving you the possibility to past it into any other application. The render output dialog Setup-button is now enabled by default, changing settings for different file formats no longer requires closing the dialog box.

Modeling & Mapping 3ds Max 2008 offers a couple of modeling and mapping workflow improvements. Making it more artist-friendly to work on a model and lets you concentrate more on creativity. Modeling Now sub-object selections can be previewed by moving your cursor over a poly, edge or vertex, which will be highlighted in the viewport. Selecting multiple sub-object types simultaneously without the need to switch modes is now possible. A pull and push feature has been added to the edit poly dialog. This allows the same functionality as the modifier version, translating a selection along its normal. The dialogs chamfer tool has now the option to set how many subdivisions will be used to create a rounder edge. Eliminating the work of having to chamfer the resulting edges multiple times to get a round result. To give more freedom during the modeling operation, you can now use temporary hotkey overrides to switch quickly between modes or placing pivot points while keeping the original pivot unmodified. This simplifies the modeling process so you can concentrate on the actual creative aspect of modeling, a long wanted and needed addition.

UV Mapping Some UV Mapping features have also been added. UV Unwarp can now be used on multiple objects simultaneously which makes it easier to have a single texture for a group of objects. For example a helicopter, you can place the rotors or any other separate object into the same map and organize their UVs together. This is especially saving time when modeling assets for games. Another feature is the ability to project the UVs from one object to another with different topologies, allowing the transfer from a low-res to a high-res model or vise versa. The projection modifier can now export the cage as a mesh or load a different mesh to create the cage, as well as auto resets the cage to prevent unwanted shrink-warp behavior. UI There is a small improvement to the modifier list. It now accepts sequences of characters to search for a specific modifier inside the list. Animation 3ds Max 2008’s animation section got a few good additions and improvements as well, for example in the areas of Biped, Track View, Bones/IK and other tools. Biped Biped now enables users to save animation layers as individual .bip files which makes this feature especially interesting for game development. Simplifying the step to feeding animation layers separately to the games engine, giving flexibility to mix motions in real-time. Another feature to Biped called Xtra, adds the ability to attach a FK chain anywhere to the Biped, for example to create wings or facial bones. Xtra is supported to be saved out with .bip files, making it possible to use it with the Motion Mixer, Motion Flow and layers. More enhancements include the ability to relocate the head away from the neck, giving more flexibility to modify the Biped to align it with your model. A new pivot dialog allows you to select pivots directly without selecting them through the viewport. The dialogs options change based on the pivot configuration of the selected Biped part. The new quad menu gives faster access to Biped operations by right-clicking any of its limbs. The coloration of IK Keys in the Trackbar brings it in line with the curve editor and dope sheet, giving more consistent feedback and also the ability to key multiple Biped parts at the same time. The last new feature for Biped is color-coded trajectories based on the type of key and interpolation that is occurring, showing animators what type of keys are set on the bipeds limp and how the IK influences the trajectory.

Trackview Trackview also got a few new features that help you with tweaking your animation. The Show Animation filter now displays only the leaf track and leaves out the branches, providing a better overview of your track data. Other UI enhancements let you add Show Only filters to a quad menu or load and save animation for a selected track. Zooming now focuses on the current mouse position, making it more precise and saving you from panning the view. Trackview now defaults to only show the selected objects and also offers a new flag to hide global tacks. An Euler angle filter has been added to Trackview dialogs, which removes Euler angle flipping. Controllers can be double-clicked to bring up their properties directly. The controller dialog now allows assigning controllers to multiple selected objects at once. General Animation There have been some additions to general animation tools as well. You can now simultaneously rotate a bone chain, like Biped bones, for example to curl the chain of a spine. More improvements include the Skin Weights dialog, new defaults for Bones/IK Goals, now defaulting to 2 inches and subsequent objects default to the value that was last set. A new filtering option for the Parameter Wiring dialog allows showing only the tracks that you need. The dialog is now modeless allowing for easier navigation of the controller trees. New hotkeys help to traverse up to the closest branch of any hierarchy or down to the corresponding siblings. Better layer support in Motion Mixer now creates a new mapping file for animation clips that need to get remapped when animation layers are created. The improved Point Cache file I/O enables to move cache files between 3ds Max and Maya with out problems.

Additional Features MAXScript ProEditor, added to this release is a brand new script editor offering multilevel undo functionality, code colorization, fast opening of large documents, line number display, regular expressions in search and replace, folding of script sections, user-customization and other features, making it finally a useful code editor from within 3ds Max. With the integration of the popular AVG_DLX MAXScript extension, 3ds Max now exposes more then 100 new methods, properties and classes to the user. Improved import of DWG data into 3ds Max 2008 including features like Select Similar, Memory Management Optimization, Normals Management, Material Assignment and Naming, Support for Solid Objects, Sun/Sky Import and UV Coordinate Enhancements. Enhanced FBX Support, improved animation, mesh, material and lighting data support. Enhanced DWF Support, adding support for all 3ds Max cameras to be used in Autodesk Design Review. Improved Object XRef Resolving, adding a more intelligent way to resolve XRef objects to their source, allowing for more flexibility to change source objects. The Drag Space Warp UI got new default values that reflect user preferences. All 3ds Max color swatches now have a color picker that allows to sample a color from any pixel on the screen. Windows Vista and DirectX 10 Support

Summary 3ds Max 2008 is a solid updated from version 9, adding a lot of important speed enhancements and new features, some of which where long over due, but better getting them now then never. The new Review toolset allows you to preview your shadows, lights and materials in real-time, providing much faster feedback. Speed and quality improvements to the 3ds Max mental ray workflow help you to get much better results. The Scene Explorer keeps you in charge of your scenes data by giving you better control over all objects. The new MAXScript editor helps you to manage your scripts by offering code colorization, line numbering and other features. The overall speed and workflow improvements give you more time to create and not wait, saving time and money in daily production. These highlights on their own make it worth upgrading to 3ds Max 2008. But even if you never used 3ds Max, its rounded feature set, small learning curve, and large community, which offers free scripts and plug-ins, makes it a equally good solution for the game, visualization and film industry.	A special thanks to Will Hammes for taking the time to write this review. Related Links Willi Hammes Trial Version of 3ds max 2008 Autodesk

 3ds Max 2008 Review: Boosting Performance
Ryan Lesser tests 3ds Max 2008 and finds great productivity improvements, particularly for those specializing in architectural design, previs and lighting/composition.
By Ryan Lesser

	3ds Max 2008 boasts a number of productivity enhancements. Except where noted, all images courtesy of Ryan Lesser.

2008. This is now my 11th version of 3ds Max that I have used and one of many that I have reviewed. It is sort of crazy for me to think that these powerful tools have been around for this long and just how much they have changed and improved. As my 3D tool of choice since back when it was called 3d Studio, this software package has seen me through a lot, including my recent projects Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2, as well as some fondly remembered projects such as Frequency and Amplitude. Things that my teams and I have struggled with early on are now history and the tools become more and more powerful by the year. Along with tool enhancements, Autodesk has focused these past years on making use of the drastic leaps and bounds that hardware has made in the past three years. This year's version of 3ds Max has taken on the new moniker of 3ds Max 2008 instead of using the typical "rev" number. This sent warning pings down one of my lead artist's spine when he found out. He is afraid that "Max," as we all lovingly call it, will just get marginally revved each year with no major accomplishments. If you have read my past reviews, you know that I too am leery of this. While I understand that making major leaps and bounds each year is difficult, there are only so many years you can please the crowd with "speed enhancements." Things are looking good on the horizon, though. The elusive in viewport texture painting and brush-based modeling holes in 3ds Max will soon be resolved, as Autodesk has acquired Skymatter and its Mudbox 3D modeling software.

3ds Max 2008 started shipping this month at $3,495 for the standalone version and $4,195 for the network license, while upgrades are at the $795 price point. One interesting thing to note is that while the system requirements on the software clearly state that running 3ds Max 2008 on an Apple with Intel processors are not supported, I have it installed on my Macbook Pro and it runs incredibly well... even better than on my PC workstation. Yeah: no kidding. So now you can get rid of that ugly, 20-pound PC laptop and its eight-pound AC adapter and get yourself a nice Mac and still run 3ds Max like a champ.

	Using two lights with corresponding shadows, in-viewport with "Review" mode.

We should start with the spot that Autodesk has placed much of its effort: Performance. I will group two types of performance here: the software's and the user's. Autodesk has made improvements to both. Many of the performance boosts in the software focus on the use of many objects, nodes, poly's etc. If you are modeler that likes to focus on a single object such as a head or another body part, these do not affect you much, but if you are a level artist for games, an architect or CAD-type modeler, these may mean quite a bit. 3ds Max 2008 boasts a 10 times speed increase in the selection of thousands of objects as well as material assignments to those objects. This means that you can quickly select tons of objects quickly and just drag a material to them all and be done with it in record time. I was able to easily translate a scene with millions of polys in many thousand objects and alter their materials with ease. Autodesk claims a 60 times increase here when transforming 5,000+ objects. Hiding and un-hiding these thousands of objects has also been sped up, and it was noticeable. This takes me to how the user's performance has been improved. The new Scene Explorer is a nice step up from the old style lister that Max has been using for years. The svelte but full featured explorer that handles thousands of objects comfortably, and all with an easy to use Graphic User Interface. The improvements to the Adaptive Degradation system also aids in scene exploration. Using sliders representing "distance from camera" and "screen size," as well as a "force" degradation system, the user can choose what they wish to degrade and when.

3ds Max 2008 Review: Boosting Performance (continued from page 1)

This image uses a Sky system and the default mental ray/Final Gather settings. Courtesy of Autodesk.

This image uses all of the same settings, but has a single Sky Portal attached to the window. You see that high-end results are achieved without slowing down the render time with higher samples/rays. Courtesy of Autodesk.
 

On the lighting front, there have been some interesting improvements too. Using Direct X 3ds Max introduces "Review," a new in-viewport rendering system that allows realtime shadows, the effects of Sun/Sky and many material settings. Review allows shadow intensity and color to be seen in the viewport for quick and easy visualization.

In addition, pretty interesting function called Sky Portal has been added. Sky Portal enables artists to light interior scenes with exterior Sun or Sky object with much faster rendering times and more accurate Final Gather results by constraining where the renderer believes the light is coming from. So, if you have an interior room modeled and that room has a small window (see image) then the artist can place a Sky Portal on that window. Now the renderer will only look to that portal for lighting information.

Once all of your lighting is set up, you can use the new "camera based" exposure controls to alter the Tone Mapping of your render. Tone Mapping is a technique used by some photographers to get total control of their shadows and highlights by adjusting parameters such as Shutter Speed, Aperture, Film Speed and so on. This is a very intuitive interface, especially if one is familiar with simple photographic concepts. In addition to these enhancements, 3ds Max 2008 has added a fast, self-illuminated Arch&Design material setting for objects. This quick roll out creates a glow and illumination around an object with ease. Simply setting light parameters like temperature and intensity allows the artist to quickly create neon, fluorescents, etc.

3ds Max 2008 Review: Boosting Performance (continued from page 2)

	In just seconds, sophisticated, self-illuminated objects create convincing light in a scene.

If you are the type of user that focuses on architectural design, previs, lighting/composition... then these changes and additions to the lighting/rendering systems will be great. However, if you focus more on modeling or animation (especially for games) then these have little bearing on you. For those of you that are focused elsewhere, there are improvements there too. One simple but effective tweak is that now there is the concept of a "Working Pivot," which the artist may turn on or off at will (use a hotkey). With a working pivot, you can set up a pivot that any object in the scene, including sub-objects, can utilize. A new modeling constraint has been added so that, in addition to translating sub objects along their edges or verticies, they can now be moved along their Normals, creating a powerful localized Push. There are also a handful of other minor advancements for those that work in the modeling/animation realm. Sub Object previewing is now functional as well as the ability to assign UV Unwrap to multiple objects... a request made by many game developers. While on the game development front... there are also some changes to Biped (for the better). Most notable is the ability to export and import Biped Layer information. This is not only useful for the obvious reasons, but it also allows artists to create a production pipeline where they can animate in a comfortable setting while being able to export these layers to a game engine as separate files...basically allowing arm movements and head movements to be exported individually and used as blend layers in a game engine.

As a major milestone, I believe 3ds Max 2008 falls short. However, as a productivity booster and overall enjoyable experience, this rev of Max delivers. After a few years of "performance" releases and smatterings of improvements, I am seriously ready for a major release. Having Mudbox in next year's release would be a hell of a start.

Ryan Lesser has served as art director at Harmonix since 1999. Here he has helped produce award-winning games such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Frequency and Amplitude. Ryan also teaches animation at his alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). His animation company (Mammoth Studios) worked on projects for Phish, Sony, MTV, De La Soul, Madison Square Garden and others. Ryan also maintains a Providence, Rhode Island-only,underground music site.