Hopefully, most people are over the initial shock/surprise/delight/angst of us shipping 3ds Max in two packages/flavors. I've seen a lot of misinformation on the split, everyone speculating that it is very different or "just like VIZ", of course, the reality is quite different and not so hard to digest once you actually see it. Small differences in UI, install defaults, tutorials and then the new Exposure feature only in 3ds Max Design - and lack of SDK. It should not be that hard to figure out which camp you fall in. As to the future, our current policy is quite simple:
1) Don't create a feature in one that everyone wants in the other one
2) Keep data/binary compatibility for 100% interop
3) Provide distinct value for each market
These policies will minimize the disruption or separation that several fear. While the future can't be guaranteed, I hope it is fairly obvious that violating these policies would be a fairly stupid move on our part. As for 3ds Max Design turning into VIZ, why would we do that? Didn't we just go through the pain of getting rid of VIZ? In case you didn't know, VIZ was derived from 3ds Max - so to say that our plan is to evolve 3ds Max Design into VIZ would say that we think it is a good idea to take VIZ out of the market, start stripping out major features with every release, and finally wind up with VIZ - but have it called 3ds Max Design. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier just to change the name of VIZ to 3ds Max Design? Maybe I'm missing something, but I've seen this tossed around in several places.
3ds Max 2009 Update
Yes, we've thrown a lot of releases at you recently. The good news is that if you look at the big picture, the state of 3ds Max has advanced tremendously from where it was at 3ds Max 9. Major improvements in performance, rendering, usability, viewport experience, interop, stability and fine-tuning of many aspects of the 3ds Max experience. Some of you benefit from all of this, while others have benefited less due to their different focus. Fundamentally, it is a better 3ds Max and we've delivered value to the market faster because of what we did. I completely agree that it is difficult to digest releases at this pace, just as it is difficult to produce them. But if you realized that every release requires a major effort around stability and bug fixing, having two major "stabilizations" in 18 months is good for the product. It's also good value to bring new users - of which there are a lot because of the things we're doing. We've had great new seat growth this year which is a huge accomplishment for a product with 11 releases under its belt.
It's been fun to see the posts on the forum "discovering" new features that we didn't explicitly call out in our marketing material There is more to the release than we've published. This happens for many reasons, but it is hard to call everything out without creating a huge document. I see that some have discovered the new hair updates (multi-threaded for one), but there is more to be discovered - some small things that will hopefully make things a little easier to work with.
We really didn't want to break compatibility with plug-ins from 3ds Max 2008, but we were forced to due to some changes in the Microsoft compiler (needed SP1). Unfortunately, key components of 3ds Max that are created by a different group in Autodesk went this direction which forced us to do it too. Luckily, a recompile is very easy to do for partners, though it is a PIA for them and any other customer building plug-ins. We did maintain compatibility between 3ds Max 9 and 2008, but couldn't this time. Other products break their compatibility with every release, we're actually fairly unique to try to keep things more stable. Unfortunately, if you want shiny new features, sometimes we have to break the SDK to achieve it, so we're going to break it when we have something worth breaking it for.
Anyway, people seem to have digested all the news reasonably well based on how the quarter is stacking up. Certainly a lot of changes thrown at everyone in a short period. We wish we could warn everyone of what's coming well in advance, but the rules do not permit that. It would be sooo much easier for all concerned.
Finally, look for Shane Griffith (the real 3ds Max PM) to have his own blog soon. I decided that he should get more direct experience in feeling the love from the community like I have. I think you'll enjoy his deep product knowledge and explanations for what is what.
Finally, look for Shane Griffith (the real 3ds Max PM) to have his own blog soon. I decided that he should get more direct experience in feeling the love from the community like I have. I think you'll enjoy his deep product knowledge and explanations for what is what.
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Posted by Ken Pimentel on 13 Apr, 2008 at 12:22 PMSigh… I wrote about it in the Marketing material and I saw the feature video so I thought it was thoroughly documented. I’m hoping we’re both wrong and that it is documented - just not as obviously as it should be. Thanks for helping me shake the tree!
Posted by Meshbase on 13 Apr, 2008 at 11:26 AMQuote:”...The point is that there is a lot going on with every release and we don’t always explain this as well as we probably should........Our marketing efforts haven’t quite caught up with the rapid pace of development. “
Ken, here you are wrong. Your marketing team did keep up… but your documentation team didn’t…
I waited with complaining till my final copy arrived yesterday for being sure that the help files are up to date.
When using Max2009 and entering “reveal” in the “help"-search function, i only get a reference to the render scene dialog.
When entering “iterative"… nothing. When going to “render scene dialog” in the help file and looking for reveal… No “help” there.
A good feature is a “non existing” feature if you are not telling us how to use it.
Well , there are the tutorials.. aha… i find “lighting and rendering” ... this looks good...nope .. just photographic lights and exposure. At least at this point there had to be a small part about the new iterative renderer… agreed?
At last we have the “What’s new in 2009!” help file..... Nada ... zipp...zero about reveal!
I agree that “reveal” has a high potential in optimising ans speeding up the production process in 3dsmax. But it doesn’t help, if only your presenters and your dev team knows how it finally works. Since this is a crucial part in lighting in rendering, your team
should release a pdf or help file for this quite complex issue, that shows the users how to get an optimum benefit in speed ups.
The only information about the features i did find in the “learning movies”.. .but you can’t be serious that is the only documentation about “reveal”.
Again ... Ken ... here you must do better! 
… we are waiting for an “Reveal tutorial”
Posted by Ken Pimentel on 13 Apr, 2008 at 08:54 AM"But calling the “region render rectangle” in the viewport “Reveal” and make it a complete new feature
is a bit arguable.”
Forgot to comment on this one. Reveal is much more than a “region render rectangle”. If you actually check out the workflow I think you’d see this. For a start, we totally rewrote the mental ray interface so that all rendered objects are now cached. Before, max would retranslate the enitre scene if there were any changes. Now, if nothing has changed on the object, then there is zero translation time. Since a lot of ‘tweaking” doesn’t affect every object, this can dramatically speed up rendering where translation times are a large factor. Also, you can rerender just a selected object because of this. So, if you want to tweak a single object, the workflow is now much, much faster. This is behind our whole push for iterative workflow. The viewport preview is aspect of that, while the focus on dramatically improved mental ray integration is another. We also redesigned the UI for the frame buffer so that more controls are immediately accessible (and the control itself is MaxScript so you can do your own thing with it).
We’re also patenting our new photometric light preview system that shows area lights in the viewport. This is totally unique to 3ds Max. It allows you to see the distribution of an area light in the viewport. It is cutting edge and reflects the growing expertise of our new Ph.D’s in graphics that we picked up last year.
The point is that there is a lot going on with every release and we don’t always explain this as well as we probably should. Also, we have to lock down our marketing features and benefits long before even beta - meaning that we have to be conservative with what we say will show up. Risky features don’t get included but show up as “surprises”.
Posted by siy01 on 13 Apr, 2008 at 08:40 AMMeshbase I agree.
Nice to see that Orbit Sub-Object selection now works when in UV Unwrap. But unwrapping should be automatic at this point (like Modo) after pelt seams have been defined.
Posted by Meshbase on 09 Apr, 2008 at 12:16 PMThat sounds promising!
Posted by Ken Pimentel on 09 Apr, 2008 at 12:05 PMWe have fried the toenails of the person who managed the videos. We are working on redoing them with a professional voice. Sorry, this slipped through our review. We can certainly do better than that and we have in the past.
Posted by Meshbase on 09 Apr, 2008 at 12:01 PMThe Videos...... sigh !
What i forget to mention.... why on earth is it too hard for Autodesk (marketleader in 3D and Compositing) ,with a gazillion sales,
....why is it on the one hand so hard to find someone without a very very strange foreign accent to the english language and on the other hand why can’t you provide a female demonstrator (with an acceptable accent) with proper audio equipement.
Guys, guys, guys.... (shaking head) your are selling you new baby to over 300.000 potential users.
I don’t want to bully this poor guy, but over scrolling back the video for being able to understand him, i lost the joy over some very impressive new features. (i.e. the new Mental ray shaders, or the new lights) great stuff, but “sold” very poorly. Imagine an arabian,chinese or japanese guy who barely understand english, has to listen to someone with an italian or french accent.
And the noise in the Design videos is so heavy.... these “new features videos” are so amateurish. Remember… even the Maya and Flame users are watching them now. When dealing with pro’s from the movie industry one has to act also like a pro.
;)
Ken.... you and your guys can do better!
Right now you should start making a big big list for Max2010.
Posted by Ken Pimentel on 09 Apr, 2008 at 05:07 AMSorry about the “no future” policy - it is true of any publicly traded software company - it isn’t just Autodesk being difficult. You can read about some visits we did in a prior post.
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/blogs_ken/blog_detail/back_from_the_future/
Posted by malmer on 09 Apr, 2008 at 05:04 AMTo clarify, I don’t dislike max. it is still the best software on the market simply due to the genius of the modifier stack. Beats everything out there, even though other software is supperior in other areas.
Posted by Ken Pimentel on 09 Apr, 2008 at 05:02 AMLink for 3ds Max Design feature videos:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=11007421
Link for 3ds Max feature videos:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11007364
