Charlton Heston says: ‘Leave my 3Ds Max alone you damn dirty apes!’

Windows 64 Ultimate, Max 9 to current, Quad Q6600, 8gig RAM, 1gig 4870 HD

It’s all a question for me of 3 things.
1) Disruption of old projects. Can I get at, modify, reuse or just plain rerender my old projects.
2) Is there accurate, exhaustive and clear definition of the new tools in a way that will make processes checking of the new workflow NOT a pain.
3) Are there Autodesk provided new learning tools to minimize downtime on reeducation.

It all comes together around the if it’s not broke don’t fix it, but if a new approach offers a better framework gimmedat.

no offense but isn’t the goal to have constructive threads were we help eachother. The title alone is a one-sided pre-decided feeling of dislike where you already hammer down on “I don’t like the way they rearange features so much”

Basicly this has been adressed enough before in other threads. I think they get the message m8.

grts

Intel 7 - 2.8Ghz
NVidia Quadro 4000 2Gb GDDR5
8Gb RAM
3D Studio Max Design 2013 x64
Windows 7 x64

http://ethanjanssens.foliohd.com/

Carl said it best and the reason this keeps coming up is obvious.  The problem is perpetual. I will address it with every release as long as they keep moving some of the basic functions around in the program. No disrespect but hiding/ moving certain functions around and releasing buggy updates just gets annoying after several years.  Betas should NOT be sold before tested IMHO. It slows down workflow.

Windows 64 Ultimate, Max 9 to current, Quad Q6600, 8gig RAM, 1gig 4870 HD

I agree- really annoying, and for God’s sake Autodesk, at least put a big “FAQ: Where the F is My Menu Item” as the fist splash screen in the new release. New features are all well and good, but having to hunt for an 30 minutes or more for a range of menu commands that haven’t changed for years every few days is just stupid.

Doug
http://www.dbowker3d.com

New England independent 3D animator specializing in technical, mechanical and medical animation.
System: Dual Intel Xeons E5645 2.4GHz (24 cores), 24GB RAM, Quadro 4000, Windows 8 Pro 64-bit
3DS Max user since r2,…

If you can’t adjust to a few slight changes in the UI, maybe you people are just growing old and should consider retiring.

The new UI is terrible. I realize I’m taking a huge jump from Max 9, but many of the new UI features are clearly less functional and designed to appeal to casual passers-by. 3d studio is a tool. Some people have been using it for over a decade. Every time some project manager comes in and decides something needs to be spruced up, or isn’t pretty enough, you alienate people who use your product 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Every few releases, someone at Autodesk tries to sneak in some new, whizbang UI element, and it typically bombs--where are those tab panels now? Many great software packages suffer the same fate: Bryce, Z brush, etc. Autodesk: please stick to making tools, and let your customers make the art.

The new UI is a bad mix of what people were accustomed to, and the new style of Microsoft Office controls. The new Microsoft controls look pretty from a distance, but are terrible to use and, more often than not, more complicated than their predecessors.

From Max 9 to 2012:

Menu Items which were two clicks away, such as File->Export Selected, are now three clicks with annoying fade-in delay.

Menu items are now 3-4 times taller than the simple text entries used to be. Additionally, some menus, which only had a few entries now have sub-menus! People: less menus, NOT MORE, is the goal. Instead of the sub-menu items appearing top-down from the current position of the parent menu(where your mouse is), your mouse is left at the bottom of the sub-menu, next to empty space if there are only 2-3 items in the sub-menu. All of this means you’re moving your mouse, and clicking much MORE than you used to to accomplish the same thing. Nuts!

The new modeling dialogs with their non-standard controls are less functional and are a departure from any other Max controls. I expect they’re slower too, trying to look all fancy.

The new program title bar takes up two lines. It’s all un-utilized--wasted--space which takes away from the useful screen area where work gets done.

All new icons? Fantastic. Nothing like having to re-learn hundreds of hieroglyphs.

The Ribbon. WTF? So now we have controls at the top-left and the far right of the screen? More crazy mouse traversal, more hieroglyphs, more wasted screen space.

Why don’t you check out the XBR Webinar on my blog? Sorry I don’t have the link handy. I believe it is on Youtube too. That will show you where the UI is headed. We agree that the incremental way the UI has been done so far is less than desired. It won’t feel incremental if you’re coming from max 9. We acknowledge that it isn’t perfect nor is it the way we wanted to do it. In the defense of our design team, the timing and even the elements of what was done was “required” by a corporate initiative to better align our UIs and minimize the user cost of switching between Adsk apps. I think there is now a common understanding that it was a mistake to force some of these elements and that they should have been allowed to occur in a different way with appropriate amount of user feedback. We also have someone with a very formal GUI background on the design team - which will pay off. He’s sensitive to all the concerns you’ve expressed.

I hope you understand that there are many people on the forums that like the ribbon and we have surveys that demonstrate that. So, we want to be careful that we move in a direction that everyone can welcome.

Director, Visual Communication Solutions
Autodesk

I know autodesk already makes more than one version of max, but they should consider making another. a classic version for users that have been using max for some time. people that dont really need or like all the new interface changes. for people more concerned with functionality instead of the latest trend.

max has a large group of long time users. who are completely different from a new user that was introduced to 3d thru something like zbrush. you really should make a version of max for the long time users. or at the very least give the user the option of choosing which type of interface they want to use classic or the newer version

as a longtime user of max i don’t interact with the UI very often as i use hotkeys and have completely customised my quad menu.

when there have been UI changes i personally haven’t found them a big deal and they have never been that drastic or life changing. the biggest thing in recent versions was the SME which took me a little time to get used but now i really love it. in 2012 it took me a couple of days to get used to the changes to the unwrap modifer and editor but i think its great now.

(guess someone is going to call me a fanboy now)

3Ds Max 2012+PU12+SAP / 2013+PU6, Vray 2.4, Photoshop CS6
OS - Windows 7 Pro x64 Sp1
sys1: i7 2600k (OC to 4.2GHz), 16GB 1600mhz DDR3 Ram, MSI GTX 580 (3GB) (314.22), OCZ agility 3 240GB SSD, Wacom Intuos 3
sys2: i7 2600k (OC to 4.2GHz), 16GB…

Overall I dont’ see where the issue is. You can still download Gmax from Turbosquid and open the equivalent of 3ds Max 4 without rendering. The UI has really not strayed far guys!

You can also save your UI setup with all your hotkeys, menus, etc. So I really don’t understand how this is an issue at all. The ribbon UI is really cool for modeling. But if you don’t need it in your current project, roll it up or simple remove it from the UI.

In my view, all the changes to the Max UI are logical and beneficial.

______________________________
Shawn Olson's Creative Arts
Developer of the Wall Worm Model Tools for Source

Max 4/Gmax, 2008 - 2014
Mudbox 2009-2011
Win 7 x64 (x4)
Geforce 480x2
Intel I7 930
12GB RAM