Posted: Feb 18, 2011
Category: Autodesk 3ds Max, Rendering, Research
Social Media:
Here's a quick look at some of the many things we've been working on behind scenes.
The top priority of the Excalibur (XBR) initiative is to re-architect the viewport system and provide dramatic improvements in performance and visual quality. Some of the possible capabilities include support for unlimited lights, soft shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion, tone-mapping, and higher-quality transparency. You also might notice the progressive refinement of image quality without blocking changes to the scene. To achieve this we've been researching advanced scene management techniques, together with multithreaded viewport scene traversal and material evaluation, the anticipated result is a smoother, more responsive workflow.
Enjoy!
San Francisco Scene File Stats
6.6m polys (15.1m faces)
4587 nodes
2 lights
The screen capture and compression causes the video to stutter a little, but actual interactivity was much smoother than this. An Nvidia FX3800 was used to generate this result (in case you were wondering). However, the viewport technology is not limited to spcific hardware manufacture or make. The main requirements are a DX 10 capable card with a min of 1GB texture memory.
Shane Griffith Product Manager - 3ds Max & 3ds Max Design
Media and Entertainment Division
Autodesk, Inc
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Posted by Kristoffer Helander on Oct 03, 2011 at 04:35 AM
Excellent, I can't wait! :)
By the way, Zap Andersson is an awesome tutor, you should have him make video tutorials for mental ray and iray, because it can be very tricky to get your head around those things! :P
Posted by Shane Griffith on Oct 03, 2011 at 04:01 AM
thanks for the reminder Kristoffer, we usually try to do an XBR update around the November/December time-frame. I hope to have some pretty exciting news to share.
Posted by Kristoffer Helander on Oct 03, 2011 at 12:33 AM
Hey Shane, when will there be new news about the next stage in XBR? :) I would love to a new online video seminar like the one you had about MassFX and Nitrous. Or at least a blog post on what is in the works right now, what you are focusing on for the next couple of releases of Max, etc. :) Especially what is going on in the MassFX department, will we see more PhysX-stuff, like fluid and cloth simulation (interacting with each other), I'd like to see something like Maya's nCloth, and nParticles inside of Max powered by PhysX. I just bought a new computer with two GTX 590 in Quad SLI and I would love to see what potential use I can have of this investment in the near future :) Max is a giant in VFX, but probably mostly because of plug-ins, such as ThinkinParticles, FumeFX and Krakatoa. But if the standard tools of Max became more powerful then Max could probably be the industry standard for VFX. Wouldn't that be cool? Industry standard in booth Architectural and VFX! :D I work in booth, that's why Max is my tool :) But well, XBR; where are you, have far have you come up until now, and how much further are you going? :) Just a short blog post with some teasers would be better then silence, give us something to tickle our imagination! :)
Posted by DonzoG on Jun 25, 2011 at 03:19 AM
I saw the videos on the proposed changes to the Max UI. It appears that the aim is to change the Max viewport to look and function like Maya. Tabbed Menues, a channel box where the attributes change, a scene explorer that handles more than just selecting information even down to the different views tabs on the left hand side.
Further Hints of a node based system similar to the slate material editor for a lot more than just materials. Maya has a node based system, doesn't it?
I don't want to point out the obvious here but for a long time there has been speculation about a single products to replace Max and Maya, it seems the overall idea is to converge all the programs together so that you can't tell them apart and then get rid of one.
Any ideas when we can expect this?
Posted by tadland on Mar 05, 2011 at 04:17 AM
the Marcoux's presentation was satisfying, (buggy, but good) but Maya guys are proposing motion blur on viewport.
so.. i guess we'll have to wait 2013 to have it on nitrous ?
