We've been a week here and have spent long sessions with 8 customers. We met with 4 game companies (Ntreev, Softmax, Nexon, KRGsoft), 2 VFX (SamG, Digi-Art) and 2 Design/Vis (Nod Design, LG Electronics). Kind of crazy schedule but we've been researching why Korea is growing like 50% a year for 3ds Max. 3ds Max is used in about 95% of the game companies here as we really "own" Korea. Korea has seen an explosion in online games, casual and mobile. Console and PCs haven't been as strong due to piracy issues. We have most of the VFX business too, though Maya is here and there.
We've been researching our technology roadmap with Korean customers to make sure we're aligned to their needs and to support where they want to grow. The good news is that seem to want the same things as the North American Game companies we talked to at GDC. That keeps it a lot easier for us. There are enough differences in workflows to tangle us up as it is.
Spending a few hours each with these customers helps us to really get into their issues and to test our assumptions about what they need. One of the ideas we came up with was to research the possibility of allowing you to write out files from a new version that would load into a prior version. This would work for most things, but not for third-party data. The question is whether this is useful for anyone? We think we can load most data from a newer version if we design the new version to support that. However, nothing we can do about all that third-party data from plug-ins. It might work - it might not. It would be better than anything else we can do right now, but is it worth the effort? Any thoughts?
Anyway, need to climb into the airplane for the trip to Brisbane and more visits.
Kimchi in Korea
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Posted by Ken Pimentel on 03/21 at 09:05 AMThanks for all the feedback. Yes, we know you want better methods of moving data between releases. No, it isn’t easy or we would have done it years and years ago. Yes, it would take a large amount of effort to do it right and therefore other things wouldn’t get done. We’re not ignoring the requests for this, we’re just very aware of the challenges of doing this in a manner that you all would consider worthy of the investment.
Just to be clear, my question was not “do you want this” but “do you want this if third-party data is totally unsupported”. We do not have a solution to this problem and as Zap points out, there are immense difficulties in getting to work just with our own tools, let alone 3rd party tools. We do get that most of you would value this if we could do it.
Posted by mike_kennedy on 03/08 at 05:35 PMThe plugin developers would have to suppoert it but with enough demad a lot would. many of us on long dev cycles can’t upgrade for several reason but having something that can retaini data that fbx can’t convey would be a great help. I think you would find a lot of support for this in the Max community.
Posted by David Hecker on 03/08 at 06:13 AMHi Ken
I work for a PSP and an ATC and field a fair number of requests from clients and students on how to get data into a previous version of 3ds Max. Many of my customers work with other companies or freelancers that may not be using the same version. This creates a world of hurt for all of them. Some of them use Bobo’s fantastic BFF script and some are using FBX or even 3ds as their methods. None of these are ideal in all situations.
In direct response to your question: Yes. The effort would definitely be worth it.
Many thanks & keep up the great work you and your team are doing!
David Hecker
Posted by joshpurple on 03/05 at 11:54 AMin homage to Gary Gygax, roll 1d20 and see if it makes it’s saving throw :grin:
Penn (and others) make the point well (It would certainly help the 3D laser animation field, where the Pangolin board is always behind the current version of Max).
Posted by Johan Boekhoven on 03/04 at 09:49 AMWell I would be a good move for everybody to rethink some max issues, as the ever growing need for flexibility is definitely something for autodesk and thus 3rd party dev’s to think about. I would be very very happy to have an ascii interface to max, it would not need to open max too build scenes… how would that change some workflows in big/medium studio’s? A lot I reckon. This adds a lot of value to max! Look at eyeon’s fusion format.. I could make comp’s with notepad… I would definitely vote YES on this one, even when it’s rocket science or politically incorrect (at first!). I think it will add value for everyone in the long run!
-Johan
