Seems like mudbox is doing great and Maya / motionbuilder as well… after the seminar I must say
it sounds promising but 3dsmax seems to be doing alittle less with dev. Focus seems not to be
on max these days ... probably do a switch over to maya or something since vray is visiting that
tool… anyone moved to maya?

We may not need what maya does ... interior visualisation at the moment but it seems to be more
supported and trimmed. 3dsmax seems messy and old ... lol

Studio Max 2009 x64
X5000 Chipset | Dual Core Intel 5140 | 4G RAM | Nvidia FX3450 | WindowsXP 64

Mudbox and Maya are not on the same release schedule as 3ds Max. We last released in April, so if you were expecting another major release at SIGGRAPH, you wouldn’t find one.

We’re not allowed to comment on what we have in store for you. I can just say that we got a strong endorsement at SIGGRAPH when we showed our plans under NDA. Equal mix of VFX, Games and Design/Vis customers reviewed our roadmap.

Director, Visual Communication Solutions
Autodesk

Sadly - most of the visitors in Siggraph are NOT the small users of MAX (or any other program for that matter) so I allow myself to conclude that our needs got very little mention.

Cirrect me if I m wrong.

NIR

Several of the people you see on the forum all the time were in the room with us. If you relate to those people (most of them freelancers) then they covered your interests.

Director, Visual Communication Solutions
Autodesk

Well I guess since there was such a short time frame to turn around 3dsmax 2009 and a longer one for 3dsmax 2010
this is going to have to have some great new features.

One thing I’d like to see is exposure settings, render settings (aspect ratio, etc,), physical daylight time all save into each camera.
So I can have multiply setting in each scene and all i have to do is change camera and all the settings change base on the settings on that camera.
I realize we have manage scene states but I had trouble with it saving exposure settings.
Also a pass system like XSI and better layer manager.
I find the layer manager is way to basic, I find it hard to move objects from layer to layer.
Also wheres the best place to send a wish list too ?

cheers

AKA Bullseye, Spacelord

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1109794

If you click on this link and select “3ds Max”, the feedback you give will go to the 3ds Max PM and the Design team. Do not use this for bugs, they will be ignored and go in a black hole. If you have a clearly thought out idea, don’t be surprised if you see it show up someday!

There is also a “wishlist” on the AREA, which the PMs/Designers will also browse for ideas. So, different ways to get your ideas to us. We have many, many other mechanisms too - like direct customer meetings, tradeshow discussions, confidential forums, etc. We take all of this input and try to sort through it and prioritize what we hear the most often or what seems like a compelling feature.

Director, Visual Communication Solutions
Autodesk

For me the next release of Max has to be a lot more than new features added on top of what is there. I need to be able to work on scenes with much improved feedback and reliability. I think for commercial and VFX work we all know what needs to happen. I don’t even want to hear 3ds Max and “design Vis” or “architectural” in the same sentence anymore unless it is about the branched off 3d Max Design. If there are two versions of Max now, one must catch up to speed with the growing needs of VFX/Movie/Commercial users.

Now with that said I have high hopes that Autodesk will pull something huge out of the bag. They just sort of have to at this point and they do have the means to do it.

We just need a reliable software with enough backbone to stand up for itself and not get
picked up all the time, breaking a little here and there. With 1 million small and creative tools
won’t make it better ... if it just break from time to time. Not to mention shutting the thing down
is quite demoralising ... it crashes to shut down for years now.

I really respect ideas and wishlist but it seems all so pointless if the bases aren’t stable and
solid. The way I looks at it we have so many versions and in between version we didn’t even
install them cos it’s a major effort and we don’t have spare machine to install software
all the time ... so to us it’s a waste of time and money seeing the dev. pushing out product
so quickly… well really hope the next one would really make better sense.

Autocad’s ribbon interface didn’t go well for many users as well. Once again a tool that work
is better than one that looks good only ... like in design school “form follow fuction” it has to
fuction, fuction. A good looking employee that doesn’t work or a common looking dude that does
his job well, if you are the boss you know how to choose.

Studio Max 2009 x64
X5000 Chipset | Dual Core Intel 5140 | 4G RAM | Nvidia FX3450 | WindowsXP 64

mahi 08 September 2008 02:43 AM

… I think for commercial and VFX work we all know what needs to happen. I don’t even want to hear 3ds Max and “design Vis” or “architectural” in the same sentence anymore unless it is about the branched off 3d Max Design. If there are two versions of Max now, one must catch up to speed with the growing needs of VFX/Movie/Commercial users.....

The issue of integrated vs separate versions is a thorny one....I often mutter to myself, when struggling to do something that should be simple, “yes this is a major pain but I guess the character animators need it to work this way...” Way back in 1998, Kinetix (remember?) spun off “3d Studio Viz” for folks like me (architectural visualization); just a few months ago it was discontinued...so now we are stuck with a “version” of Max.  But at least they gave us Layer support!!  (Now if we only had a proper equivalent of a Block!...)

--3ds Max Design 2009 64bit, Direct3D 9, Win Vista Premium 64, 3ghz quadcore Xeon, Quadro FX1700--