Seriously, I’d much prefer a from scratch re-write with support for all the latest bells and whistles in terms of hardware (GPU calculations) with native 64-bit support etc.. But most importantly, to get rid of all the bugs.
Lets face it, software need to be rewritten from time to time.. The Lightwave folks are doing it right now.. Back in the days, sd studio became max, Wavefront became Maya, SoftImage became XSI.. Modo can also be seen as a Lightwave re-write ;-)
So for my wish list, scratch the 5 or so new features that usually turn up in new max versions these days. I’m quite happy with the current tool-set.. Whats killing my efficiency is the bugs and crashes not the lack of features…
Question is.. Is a re-write *ever* going to happen or are we forever doomed and cursed with the one year production cycle where a pair of nice shorts has slowly become an ugly patchwork costume?

/eX

If they re-write it how many years do you think it will take before you are happy with the features? 3dsMax has had many many years of development time poured into it, if you re-write it then that is all thrown away. From what I can see, and I am a Maya user, they appear to be re-writing sections of 3dsMax gradually instead.

Ok, so I just found the topic “please end max” and I see the that pretty much everything has been said about this topic.. But still..  Autodesk need to be reminded about this ;-)
Questions remains though.. Will we ever see a rewrite? ;-)

/eX

I agree with this to a certain degree.
Over Max’s life cycle it has dramatically improved and changed.

Although not perfect the viewport rendering, especially in 3dsmax 2010, is leagues ahead of the competition. We’re now looking at realtime shadows and ambient occlusion whilst you work which is pretty impressive.

My gripe, is the way Max can’t handle large number of objects (this seems to of got worse since Max 9) and the editing of hi-poly meshes that contain fx shaders.
The fx shader problem is the biggest issue in my opinion and something, I feel, needs addressing for the next 3dsmax release. Although I`m impressed with the new viewport features I was pretty disappointed this issue wasn’t resolved.

My worry is this is a deeply rooted problem that can’t be resolved without a major overhaul of Max’s core code architecture.

Max 9.0 through 2010, XP-Pro 64 SP2.
ATI Radeon HD 4800 series
Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Complete rewrite, would IMHO be a horrible idea. You would break all 3rd party support, so one of the biggest selling features of Max would be broken. Do you think that lightwave plugins and scripts will magically work in Core? Nope, they will all have to be rewritten supporting the new SDK and platforms. Max developers are addressing core features a little at a time instead. This allows 3rd parties to adapt the changes as they are made, rather than make them totally rewrite their tools for a new application. Also, what makes you think a rewrite will be bug or crash free? It just means there will be new bugs and crashes. With 3rd parties this could take longer to fix as they are now having to redevelop their tools under a new SDK.

Dropping 32bit would be a bad idea, too. As you said you are stuck in 32bit as you rely on some tools that are 32bit only. Why do you think dropping 32bit will make those tools automatically become 64bit? The are certain features in Max that rely on 3rd party SDKs or libraries that are only available in 32bit. This means that things like Quicktime won’t be 64bit until the original author (Apple in this case) releases their SDK or libraries in a 64bit version.

-Eric

Eric Craft
“The Evil Monkey hiding in your closet.”

i read so often “3d max needs a core rewrite”.

would one of the guys who asks this since 1995 explain why max needs a rewrite?

not some voodood blah blah… give some hard facts!
two or three examples why 3d max needs a complete overhaul.

what kind of thing need to be fixed and can not adressed otherwise.

tia!

A complete rewrite is IMHO a nearly impossible mission for a tool with that large installbase and broad application-scope like Max has. Softimage (SI3D) nearly killed their well established product while they developed XSI/Sumatra. And V1.0 of XSI was not nearly as feature complete like SI3D was.
Newtek’s Core development route is risky one too, as they Core progress does’nt seem to be as fast as the userbase expected it to be. And Luxologies Modo, while getting better and better each release, isn’nt really playing in the Max/Maya for this time being…
So the path Autodesk chose for Max is the best thing to do IMHO, gradually rework and renew specific areas, while not completly jumping onto another train.

Home of The Frogs | Online Portfolio

Did you sometimes try to calculate something using MaxScript. The result is often very rough, inaccurate for the last digits. It is perhaps because of this that there are so many bugs, the basis of Max was created a long time ago before 2000 and is not too good at calculating, but they still use the same system. Perhaps is it this that needs to be rewriten but how to rewrite it is another question.

I’ve stopped using MaxScript since some years but I remember that the calculation were more inaccurate with MaxScript than with C++ for example.
I tried to make a plugin for creating a small object, it worked at the beginning, Max selected the right verts when asked to do so, but when the object became more complicated, when there were for example 30 vertices, Max started moving the wrong verts.
Of course I can’t tell for sure whether it is because of this or not!

I’ve also seen this issue pop up time and time again over the years.  I think I’ve even seen an answer from an Autodesk employee that said forget it, it’s not going to happen, it’s just not cost effective.  There are people that think you should do away with Max, there are those that think Maya and Max should merge and now we can even throw XSI into the ring.  Truth is, they’re not going to get rid of any of them in the forseeable future.  There’s way to many companies relying on things not changing too much.  It could seriously send our whole industry into a recession much worse than what’s going on already.  You can’t just slap a new engine in a classic car and expect it to run just like that.  Most of the time the car needs to be stripped down to the frame and tons of things have to be replaced besides the engine (just watch an episode of Overhaulin’).  Ok, so a program is not a car, but do you even realize what you’re asking?

I do sorta understand poeople’s complaints that Max needs a rewrite, but believe me, you guys are not smarter than them, they know what they’re doing and have gradually been updating some of the older core.  I believe I saw somewhere that something like 90% of the functionality in Max is essentially a plug-in built on the evolution of the original Max.  While it’s true, if you look at the plugins folder, there are a lot of the things you use everyday that seem to be just plugged in but do you really think Autodesk has never even looked at the core.  I’m sure it changes more than you’d think.  Think of the car analogy: old engines are total workhorses and will probably run forever if taken care of.  Someone offered to buy the old Scout II we had on Beaver Island just so he could use the engine in a drill press.  It wasn’t until emmissions controls, fuel injection and all this other modern stuff was slapped on that engines started to become less reliable.  They were more simple back then, and so was Max, it’s surely been tweaked and optimized to no end and is good as you’ll ever get.

In my humble opinion, now that Autodesk has three of the most popular programs under one umbrella, they should be looking at creating a fourth that brings the best of all of them together into one super program.  Start from square one and look 20+ years into the future to build a new base.  One that all three programs could run off for the time being until the 5-10 years it would take for the mutant-3D-cross-breed is ready for beta.  Who knows, maybe they’re already doing this.  I know that if I had Autodesk money, I would at least have a think-tank going, maybe they do already (but hey they are Canadians, so maybe not, ha ha). 

One last thing to point is that while I don’t agree that they should go mucking about too much with the core, every piece of software eventually does reach an expiration date.  The world of technology changes so fast and eventually core technologies have outlived their usefulness.  Even Microsoft has been working on a new core for windows for years.  You think Windows has changed a lot in the past ten years?  I think the kernel might have changed once.  Windows 7 is not their latest and greatest kernel, that’s still a few years away from being ready for primetime.  So while Max may need an overhaul, it still has a lot of life in it.  Whether Autodesk wants to or not, at some point they will have to either rewrite Max’s core or scrap it and move on.  Just don’t expect it soon.  If you feel you need to jump ship, just know, every program has it’s bugs.  Don’t believe me, write a program yourself, you’ll be humbled in less than a month.