3DS MAX

 

New 3ds Max 2017 features

3ds Max® 2017 offers the most capable and varied toolset to date. Customise tools; collaborate more efficiently across teams; and work with more speed and confidence.

Introducing 3ds Max 2017

It's been a year since we announced and shipped 3ds Max 2016. In that year, the 3ds Max development team has been working overtime to bring you another great release of 3ds Max. Again, you have been given early access to some of the tools with 2 Extensions. For those who are not aware, extensions are available as an added benefit to our Subscription customers to give you access to the new features early. For 2017, the branding department gave us a new badge, but don’t let the “Smiley 3” fool you, this release of 3ds Max has some serious new features and upgrades with over 1,950 3ds Max Uservoice votes being returned.  Our focus was to give you tools and features to help you work more creatively and efficiently. So, we are proud to introduce some of the top features for 3ds Max 2017.

New Look & High DPI Display Support

The first thing you’ll notice when you open 3ds Max 2017 for the first time is the fresh new look and feel. This update is not just using a new visual style guide, it will also scale properly to the latest High DPI displays. This gives 3ds Max 2017 the ability to successfully run on HDPI monitors and laptops while correctly applying Windows display scaling, making the UI more legible. 3ds Max 2017 is the first in a long term commitment to modernizing the user experience.

Viewport performance

Along with the new look, there has been considerable effort done to improve viewport performance. With work done under the hood as well as a new Viewport Setting and Preference dialog, you can dial in the exact amount of performance you’re looking for. You’ll be able to assign these settings globally or per viewport. Here are some of the benchmarks some of our beta tester were reporting.

For 3256 Objects - 9,000,000 polys:

• 3ds Max 2014     3ds Max 2016     3ds Max 2017
• 6-10fps              20-30fps             80-130fps

Others report:

• 300% improvement in Deforming Mesh performance improvement with new GPU mesh builder.
• 300-500% performance improvement for navigating tens of thousands objects.
• Selecting and manipulating sub-objects is 200%-300% faster.
• Unwrap UVW can handle 10 times dense objects easily.

Inspired by many of the great ideas on the 3ds Max UserVoice page, we improved performance or added functionality in dozens of areas like Viewport Material Override, Shadow caching and support a new DX11 preset. See below for a more complete list.

UV Mapping Updates

Speaking of Unwrap UVW, it has been overhauled to streamline the workflow and significantly increase performance with dense geometry and high-res maps. It’s now easier than ever to unwrap models by defining seams point to point while previewing the edge selection, cutting and unfolding the clusters in one simple mode. Peel is immediate, with vastly improved accuracy and symmetry. Distortion can be visualized in a shaded cluster view or with new checkered maps that provide more feedback on the model. This is useful for interactive adjustments made with the new Relax paintbrush. Additionally, support has been added for multi-tile layout, as well as many workflow improvements such as access to material IDs, improved selection methods and so much more.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Dramatic Performance improvements
• New Packing Algorithm
• New Peeling based on ABF(Angle Based Flattening)
• Point-to-Point Selection Preview
• Symmetrical Geometry Selection 
• Loop Selection and Ring Selection
• Display Only Selected Polygon in viewport

UDIM support (U-Dimension)

• MultiTile Map
• Show Multitile in UV Dialog
• View in VIewport
• FBX Import/Export

Not to steal to much thunder from the Rendering Alliance's page with it's complete look at "What's New for Rendering in 3ds Max 2017", here are some of the highlights.

Autodesk Raytracer Renderer (ART)

You can now create near photo-real images and videos with the new Autodesk Raytracer Renderer(ART). ART is a fast, physically-based renderer, ideal for design visualization workflows used in Revit®, Inventor®, Fusion 360™, and other Autodesk applications. ART rendering in 3ds Max 2017 provides a familiar workflow and similar results for artists moving data from these applications, featuring minimalistic settings, CPU-only operation, and excellent use of image-based lighting. ART provides quick, photorealistic results for most industrial, product, and architectural exterior rendering. Thanks to support for IES and photometric lights from Revit, artists will be able to create highly accurate images of architectural scenes.

Provides a fast, interactive workflow when combined with the ActiveShade window, allowing artists to quickly manipulate lights, materials, and objects, all the while seeing the results refine progressively.

ART also includes an image Noise Filter that can drastically reduce render times, and improve the quality of the rendering.

 

Physical Material

The purpose of the new Physical Material is to create a base material in 3ds Max that can be supported in many modern renderers. In the past, materials built directly in 3ds Max were created to replicate unique material types; Ceramic, Car Paint, etc. and were based on 3rd party algorithms.

In 3ds Max 2017 we introduce the new “Physical Material” that tries to remedy that. The material is out of the box compatible with the new ART renderer, mental ray and will be available for other renderers to use in the future.

Sun Positioner 

The new Sun Positioner is a replacement for the legacy Daylight System and the Physical Sun & Sky Environment is a replacement for the “mr Physical Sky”. Together, these new features provide an improved, streamlined workflow for many renderers. 

You will find the Sun Positioner in the Lights Command Panel where it belongs. We hope this makes it more discoverable.

Once you’ve placed your Sun, you’ll notice it is an “All-in-one” system which will eliminate the need to switch between Modify and Motion tabs to configure settings. 

If your project is in an area that observes Daylight Savings Time, you can now define the date that DST starts and ends.

We were also focused on making sure the settings were ideal for physical renderers, as there are no unnecessary settings and no duplication of settings between Physical Sun & Sky and Sun Positioner - each has their own logical settings.

Scene Converter

With more rendering technologies becoming available almost every day, the Scene Converter will make moving from one renderer to another as well as to real-time engines close to seamless and consistent. Easily migrate scenes by switching out lights, materials and other features with the Scene Converter. Artists can easily customize and fine-tune the existing conversion scripts via a simple UI to create Source to Target batch conversion rules. As more rendering technologies become available, Scene Converter capabilities can be easily extended at any time via new presets from Autodesk and the user community, and the script-based converters can be fine-tuned to meet any individual needs.

Animation Productivity

With improvements to 3ds Max’s Animation Productivity, we have focused on facilitating the experience for animators. Day to day tasks such as key framing, selection and key manipulation have been enhanced to help animators focus on the character’s performance rather than the tool. We have re-designed the default layout and no matter which layout you use, it will persist between Max sessions. Again, looking for inspiration on the 3ds Max User Voice page, we’ve added a new zoom extents mode for selected  keys, the ability to zoom extents horizontally and vertically at the same time, and my favorite, the ability to double click a curve to select all of the keys. The Motion panel, which represents the control center of the animation rig, has been enhanced to allow direct activation of controllers in a list, controller reset, and copy/pasting between tracks. Custom Attributes have also been enhanced to allow the saving and loading of preset values, allowing the animator to quickly jump between poses. That, plus we’ve added a dozen new key editing tools like Mirror Tangents, Nudge, Loop and Split.

Autodesk 3ds Max asset Library

The Autodesk 3ds Max Asset Library is designed and developed to help access and manage numerous file libraries on both your local and network drives. At no additional cost to users of 3ds Max 2016 and higher, the Autodesk 3ds Max Asset Library is downloaded from the Autodesk Exchange App Store and with it, you can search, see and quickly access files and then drag and drop them directly into a scene. 

Miscellaneous

Of course, throughout the year, we work on a number of Small User Requested Features and little enhancements. Besides the features and benefits listed above, here are some of the things our Charter and Beta customers have been talking about. Special thanks to Changsoo Eun for compiling the list.

Viewports

• 200% Faster deforming mesh prformance (New GPU Based Mesh Builder for DX11 mode) 
• Increased playback and interactive performance using node transform caching
• GPU backface cull for deforming object
• Shadow cache for better/faster shadow 
• Darker Edge mode for backfacing wireframe
• New viewport navigation mode : Orbit Point of Interest
• Customizable viewport tooltips by preViewport Tooltip callback
• Per Pixel Camera Map support for nitrous
• Reorganized viewport label
• Viewport configuration presets
• Viewport material override
• Performance shader for viewport
• New DX mode
• Hidden/Frozen/Display as box object will not evaluate/load map
• Gamma corrected background playback slowdown fixed
• Viewport switching when maximized fixed
• More readable viewport label
• Thinner and shaper selection outline 
• Viewport Statistics have been realigned for larger numbers.

Modeling

• Place Pivot Surface: Direct access working pivot from quadmenu
• Mesher Particle Flow 5 million face limit removed

Modifier Stack

• Copy/Paste modifiers to multiple objects at once.

Motion Panel

• Empty Tracks and Assigned Controllers can be reset to their default controller type
• Controllers can by copied and pasted via the right click menu in the controller tree view

IO

• .Obj poly export UV fix

Time Configuration

• “Rescale keys to whole frames” checkbox to force quantization.

Skinning

• Holding SHIFT for paint/blend weights mode change

New Map Types

• Color map
• Shape map (Ext 2)
• Text map (Ext 2)
• TextureObjMask map (Ext 1)

State Sets

• Track modifier ON/OFF in viewport and render
• Expansion of Composite view to create a new node based render pass system
• -Nodes can be dragged out to more easily view your State changes
• -Nodes can be created from scratch for a more direct render pass management workflow without tracking/recording
• -Support for basic Render Parameters, ART, Vray, Object collections, Object Properties, Material Assignment
• Persistent Composite View (you no longer loose your work on close)
• Track Vray VFB checkbox for better render element support with Vray
• Camera Sequencer Lock Animation Parameter to allow for scaling camera animation when tracks are scaled
• Return of Record button by default (can be switched back in preferences)
• All docked dialogs now open in their own new tab by default

Alembic Updates

• Performance mode support for any object
• Proper deformation export when spacewrap applied
• Any point3, float, integer support for arbitrary channel import
• UV1 animation support
• UV2+ vertex order fix
• UV channel ID preserved
• Material/Face ID preserved
• Topology changing mesh does not break material ID
• Object name preserved
• Full MXS exposure - range, nth frame exposed
• Alembic container object icon
• Alembic Performance mode Force Caching option

Scene Explorer

• Remember visible/frozen state of nested layers when overridden by parent layer
• Child layer cannot be turned on when parent layer is turned off
• Nested layer sort order : layer will be at the top
• Hide/Unhide all layers button
• Freeze/Unfreeze All layers button

Throughout the coarse of the year and through a number of different blogs here on the area, we will do more in-depth looks at many of the features listed above. That plus we have already started working on our next release. You may have already heard something. 

Thank you again to all of the 3ds Max team for making 3ds Max 2017 another amazing release! Also to the charter and beta users for their valuable input and feedback, and thanks to all of the 3ds Max community for your continued support.

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