Hi,
I am a 3d’s Max Technical Head, working with max for nearly 9yrs.
I was enjoying teaching 3ds max alot earlier but the current versions and scenarios is not at all encouraging.

1.3d’s Max is loosing its credentials Internationally.
2.3d’s Max Software has become unpredictable. This is despite the various hotfixes,& service packs that were made available which is also difficult to keep track of.
3.It is only growing in size,and definitely not with Quality.
So, what could the reason be. Lets make a comparison with Blender.

1.Blender has no parentage as it is an open source. So, its an orphan.Yet it is growing more & more powerful by the day.
2.3ds max has all its parents and very smart ones. But, why are they not taking care of the child?
3.Many artists who have worked with Blender have over a period of time, brought out various features which are very useful and productive to the artist community thereby increasing the power of Blender.
4.But for Autodesk I really dont know if there is any one to fix the issues, because till date
all the bugs are alive & actively playing its role.
5.Even a small Pin manufacturing company has a quality checking team,but unfortuntely 3ds max quality checkers are fast a sleep. Since the successful realese of Max6, no one has done anything appropriate and right for 3DS Max so far.
6.Also,3ds max developers I believe are part time workers & whose work only to develop new features but not to check if they working predictabaly.
7.While the wishlist is added on for every version release before and after,there is no genuine interest to resolve the software, which I rate was THE BEST at one point of time.
8.Scanning through the internet postings in various forums can give even an uninitiated person the feel of what is wrong with Max as on date.
9.Not even the sister product like Maya growing with least bugs has given the team at Max any incentive to make the product BUG FREE!!!
10. I would be surprised if anyone in Autodesk can even list out the number of bugs ‘bugging’ all of us today>?????
11. The solution would not be in restricting the circulation of this note but would be to get the user community to voice the frustrations openly so that this software becomes better and more predictable.

It only looks like that Open Source is winning over an application which has dedicated and skilled team members. This is itself a shame!!!

A genuine advise to 3DS Max team from me would be

“ PLEASE SHUT DOWN AND LET US MOVE TO DIFFERENT GROUNDS”

I personally do not expect anybody from Autodesk to come out and respond to this mail but I deeply hope that I atleast awaken a voice in the artist community who have over a period of time starting believing and living by 3DS Max.

If ever there is a change in the approach of Max Team to fix the issues, I would be only too happy to go shouting around the town about how great this application has now become.

This note is purely out of frustration I find when I sit down to teach my students of the application and not in anyway to advertise for Blender!!!

Cheers

TheRock

Wow!!! that sure is a strong note on Max. I am a newbie for Max and hence might not be able to comment on this. But my only question is, if there are so many bugs, why is Autodesk not working on them ‘before’ the release of the next version?

I worked on Maya earlier, but never heard of such serious issues there.

Rgds,
GP

GP
MAX 2009, Maya 2009,
Vista 32bit Core 2Quad, 4GB RAM
Nvidia GTX 9800+

Disregard his post, this is just Blender propaganda.  While MAX admittedly does have problems, all software does, Blender is not the answer.  See how many employers out there require you to have Blender experience and how many require MAX experience.  Yes there is better software out there, i.e., SoftImage, XSI, even MAYA also now by Autodesk, although originally by Alias Wavefront.

If you’re going to change to something else, trade up, not down.

Marcus Eiland

I’m working with 3Dmax since max 2.5 and i agree with a lot of thing from your post. From Max 5 to Max2010 nothing moved ... Max 2010 gave finally a few new tools for modeling (Thanks to polyboost). But there is a lot of bug that are dramatics ... This is not possible for a such company with a QA departement (Do autodesk own a QA i’m doubting about that).

We are using a true license of 3DMAX at work and when we’re trying to weld two points perfectly snapped over each one you open the merge button you put a treshold like 0.02 and then click apply and baam the treshold return to 0 and nothing is welded. You must do the same thing twice to go ... not profesionnal at all.

This bug can be found by all 3d modler of the planet using max 10 minutes.

Same thing for the poly selection lost when you’re passing from Editable poly to UnwrapUVW. (The selection was kept on max 8 why do 3Dmax2010 loose it now).

i’m on holiday for 2 months and i’m studying other 3D package like “Modo”.

Every day I prey for a Zbrush and Modo merging. If it will arrive lot of things in the CG industrie will change. New features are coming from those soft every years such Bevel with profile, millions polys modeling, 3dpainting, easy UV editing.

And max grow every year with more bugs ...

I like 3DMax and i wish it to be more stable and bugless.

Animations are now done in Motion Builder.
Shaders are done into 3d engine.
Baking is done into Zbrush or Xnormal.
HighRez organic modeling are done in MudBox or zbrush.

We are just using Max for backgrounds modeling into the VideoGame industry.

Why are we still paying lot of money just for modeling ???

Tech Artist R&D - Ubisoft Nadeo Studio
ManiaPlanet : [ Trackmania 2 - Shootmania - Questmania ]
http://www.maniaplanet.com

I too have been teaching 3DS Max for many years (since version 3).  I’ve come to realize that Max development under Autodesk is about one thing: acquisition. They are good at acquiring software from other companies and integrating it into Max.  The problem with this is that the integrated software is later abandoned (reactor??).

I used to believe that a company as large as Autodesk would have a very robust development team constantly looking for ways to improve existing tools (including the interface) and stay one step ahead of the competition.  I would imagine this team to be made up of artists and programmers collaborating to develop the next big thing. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case.  Instead, I now believe there are only people looking to maintain the status quo - acquire enough new “features” to call it a new version and keep the subscribers paying their annual fees.

I bought into the hype of 2010 and was excited about the possibilities. Having tried it, I realize that it’s just more of the same. Reading that 2010 was phase 1 of Excalibur doesn’t give me much hope for the future either.

It’s not that the integrated tools are bad (though the integration is usually buggy), it’s more about the creative environment - about having a seamless workflow - a unified tool rather than a patchwork of random tools.

So, obviously, I’m a frustrated user (annual subscription payer) too - who’s currently looking for a way out.

I’m looking for a way out too…

Modo looks cool, but i need animation, large scene handling etc.

MLB

3D Studio DOS to 3ds Max 2010
Windows XP 64
NVidia Quadro FX 3700
Dual Quad Xeon, 6Gb Ram

I will agree with some of the comments about acquisition and abandoning features.
I wish this was not so.

Never the less… i have recent example on how a game studio that started up recently abandoned Blender (that they were hoping to use) and how much more creative and productive their art team is now with 3dsmax. 

I had used blender in the past, and although it is quite powerful, it’s interface and features simply don’t cut it.

so yeah we all know that max is a dinosaur and we are waiting for the next great tool from autodesk.
XSI is such a great tool. but i still feel that it needs a different approach as far as interface is concerned.

Lets just wait and see. 2010 for me is a good upgrade. maybe not a significant one but it still is better than the previous one.

i have gotten used to max’s often idiosyncratic nature and i know every workaround i could learn. is this bad? maybe, but 3dsmax still *is* the fastest all rounder out there.and this is proven in production,

I never got so seriously troubled all these years to think that i would like to use something else (except XSI the last years which imo has still a little way to go in order to become my favorite) although i admit there are times that max gave us quite a headache but mostly in the department of biped flexibility or large scene handling. which is still at times a problem regardless the solutions that have come in but still we are able to do our work in a different way than we had originally thought.

.:bugs bug me

I agree with some of the points that have been raised in this post. Yes, Max is buggy to some extent, although I think people are overemphasising its problems, and as someone else has said, any complex piece of software has bugs, it’s pretty much par for the course and the bigger the app, the greater the risk of bugs and oversights. So yes, obviously Autodesk should do something to fix outstanding bug issues and engage proper QA.
Mor fundamentally, I agree wholeheartedly with the person who said:

It’s not that the integrated tools are bad (though the integration is usually buggy), it’s more about the creative environment - about having a seamless workflow - a unified tool rather than a patchwork of random tools.

This is an important point and something that’s struck me repeatedly. A central point with regards to this is that Max is a very long-running and well-established piece of software, it’s been around since Dos, practically as long as Lightwave’s origins on the Amiga. With any long-established application, you can keep slapping on new feature after new feature, but at some point someone’s got to go back to the start and rebuild the application from the ground up, fixing any bigs of course, but also ridding the system of redundancies and integrating all those features into a streamlined UI. Dropping features doesn’t strike me as a problem providing there’s an available way of doing the same thing - that’s exactly what I mean by ‘redundancy’; for example, why is it necessary to have a now expanded select by name dialog, and a layers manager, and a lights lister, AND a scene explorer? Surely the features they represent could be covered by one or two dialogs? So, new features need to be compacted into a streamlined UI, not just bolted on with a new menu item here and a new button there.
(I also feel similarly about mental ray, as anyone whos seen my Wighlist post will see, another long-established piece of software, practically the longest-running standalone renderer out there; my complaint would be not so much the renderer itself, but the shader provision and structure, and for exactly the same reason as Max - ie. the slapping on of new features with no real coherency or streamlining, ending up with redundant old features and a mish-mash approach rather than a coherent unified one - you only need x shaders to cover every base, and they should use a unified user-friendly approach to their design - preferably checked over by native English users :) Although of course Autodesk canìt actually do anything about mi software.)

Anyway, hopefully Autodesk will take heed of these issues and fix the problem in the not-too-distant future.

Well.. this kind of proves us all right to some extent then.. ;-)

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/excalibur_xbr_notes

/eX

(P.S. Thanx to “KJO” for the heads-up on this interesting news)

They have been saying max needs a rewrite for ages if not decades.
Instead of setting up a team years ago that would actually build a new core paralel to regular development they just went on milking it for another decade only to realize it has gone too far and there is no way back now.

Max has been a cash-cow for adsk and they used that cash to consume the rest of the industry tools that had some real development, which has now also grinded to a halt.

Now that it is becoming obvious that free apps are becoming better and people are finally dropping their subscriptions (AND THEY SHOULD) or their software as a whole, they start to get a bit worried… so now, instead of just saying they should do something about it, they also made.. yes.. some slides… that got leaked ... yeah..

And if you have not checked Blender yet i suggest you give it a go (doesnt even need an install) and try a tutorial. It already includes, fluids, particles, animation curves, decent UI and lay-out and version 2.6 that will be released in a few months will even have a scalable interface that has max/maya/xsi/c4d interface adaptation.

ad$k deserves a lesson, i really hope they get one..

Kind regards
Kurt

This is really an ignorant thread.

Firstly in comparing Max to Blender- I would guess that Blender would be more stable. Here’s why. Every serious Max user adds plug-ins and scripts to their program(Ex:  Polyboost, AfterBurn,Di-O-Matic, etc. etc.) Every problem I’ve ever had in my ten-plus years with Max had to do with a plugin or script I added. These sometimes borrow resources from other parts of the software and that causes “bugs”.  Not too much is out there to enhance Blender so I guess there’s nothing to corrupt its core.

The guy who had the same problems year in and year out, probably never figured what other things he is adding to Max that is causing the problems. He probably just continued to add his same comfortable plugins and scripts to each new edition of Max and got the same bugs over and over again. His solution to problems are probably as childish as the tone of his letter.

In my use of Max, I’m constantly testing new plugins as they come out. Obviously, most are not written by autodesk. (If you’re a Max user and you have not tried BonyFace plugin- you should.) Some of these turn out to be completely not compatible and certainly no one anticipate how your program will handle your unique combination of plugins and scripts.

From its inception, Max was written as an “add-on” frendly software and today there are tons of addons available written by some big companies and some written by a guy working in his basement. Know what you are adding to your program and what effect it has on the overall performance of your software.

P.S. Why would anyone need to weld verticies at 0.02. If your verticies are closer than 0.1 that must be a really, really, really, heavy mesh. Too heavy even for Zbrush.

Yea, you guessed it. I love Max. It’s the best software on the market and I do work with Maya. Like Blender, Maya has more built in and less need for plugins. However I hated using MAya with Softimage’s FaceRobot (like Avatar did).  When a Russian invented BonyFace as a Max Plugin, I knew I’d be with Max for life. Max just needs to incorporate HumanIK into Character Studio. Maya recently incorporated HumanIK, Max needs to do the same.

Like any software in any industry that allows plugins- AfterEffects is an example- you have to be wary of how that plugin can destablize your software. I’ve added plugins that completely destablized other plugins. DOn’t blame Autodesk for your problems unless you are using only Max and “Autodesk Certified” plugins but let’s face it, that would be boring.