The one thing that’s irritated me with 3ds max is that what they release to their customers is a public beta rather than a finished product.  The pattern I have seen is that they tend to go back and clean up the crash bugs, but leave a lot of the non crash bugs in.  From an outside looking in point of view, 3ds max development seems very sloppy and rushed.

I don’t know about anyone else, but 3ds max 2009 crashes on me at least twice a day. How would you feel about your car if it broke down at least twice a day? How would you feel about Mc Donalds if the food they sold you made you sick? If you don’t put up with poor workmanship in those things, why would you with 3ds max?

I keep a log of what I do each day. I have been for years now. I started it so I could more clearly see where the time goes and remember why I make decisions at different points. My log shows that months of my time have been eaten up dealing with bugs.  Do you realize what that translates into in terms of money wasted? I’m just one guy. If you add up all the time wasted on dealing with bugs from everyone that uses 3ds max, you would realize it would be far cheaper to have Autodesk make less buggy software. Even if it means they have to charge a little more.  Though right now I see their bugs not as a money issue but an issue of making poor choices development wise. Again, outsider perspective. But a doctor doesn’t have to be inside someone’s body to see the symptoms of a dis-ease.

With 3ds max, working around some bugs has become so habitual, you almost forget why you have to do this extra little dance.

I love the new features when they are truly new, and they work without a hitch. In 3ds max 2009, so far the most useful actual new bug free feature is the Mental Ray Proxy.  I have a medieval city I’m working on, and using MR proxy allows me to give it a lot of detail in 1 pass, and still have a realtime environment in max to easily and quickly move through and animate in.

The new composite texture tool is also very useful.  I had to give up the blur studios composite texture tool when I switched to Mental Ray, so it’s great to have that functionality back.

I use the new Color corrector, but it gets a B- in my book. I wish it had been more like cuneyt ozdas version where you can apply maps to the various settings. Seems like an odd thing to leave out.

The cube widget sadly gets an F in my book. I really like it, but it crashed my machine like crazy.

I haven’t had time to mess with the new quadro-biped. But my project requires 4 legged animals, so I will get to it eventually.

One of the biggest problems I have with the new versions of max is the slowness.  I would want the speed of max to improve. Not devolve.  I also hate the fact that it crashes so often, without easily being able to link it to use of a particular feature.  Though I have notice that it is more prone to crashing when I’m using the lame a** material editor. I have no idea why that would be since the material editor hasn’t been significantly improved since the stone age. Perhaps it’s the .Net stuff.

So, a lot of you may have gotten used to the idea that the new version of Max is always going to be really buggy.  My concern is that some of the things we are currently seeing as new release bugs are actually fundamental changes that are here to stay.  Like the .Net stuff

I think we all agree MAX has bugs, but the point being all (most) applications have bugs. Autodesk is a publically traded company so release dates I am sure are very important.

ThomasMitchell - 12 May 2008 03:25 PM

All I see here are complaints about Max 2009, does anyone here actually like Max 2009? I have to say I have pretty much not enjoyed the changes from 2008 to 2009.
Seems harder to use somehow, just used to the old way of doing things I guess.... but I’m sure someone here will think I am stupid for saying so.... 8-)
Kind regards, Tom

Hi,

Public forums are a BAD place to make software judgements from. The problem with them
is human nature seems to dictate we only speak up when we have a problem or a complaint.
I have been using Max since V2 and have enjoyed every release. Have they been perfect? No.
Have they always included features I wanted? No. But the software has continued to grow, and
on that score the future looks pretty bright.
We use Design 2009 and it is pretty cool. few irritating bugs that need fixing, but heck, I don’t own
a SINGLE piece of software that doesn’t.

regards
Bri

Public forums are a BAD place to make software judgements from.

that depends on the professional level of the board. And if you had your time to learn to filter it’s one of the
BEST ways to communicate about a specific software’s bugs, pro’s and cons.

That isn’t totally true for The Area - but it has a good level of professionalism.

back to topic:

Max 2009 is a release (at least the version jump) that was not necessary - it was pure marketing politics ( release shedule, splitting nonsene etc.. ) It seems there will be no time left any longer to let a release mature with servicepacks etc..
Max 2008 needs a services pack, but it looks like we will not get one - and that’s the problem.
I hate this fact 100% (and Max 2009 a little) for this, and for the Viewcube/steeringwheel junk, besides of the plugin incompatibility.

But the most thing i’m frustrated about is the silence from Ken or any other responsible person.
Communication was buzzing before the release because they felt guilty cause of the split and of the release rescheduling.
Now it’s back to same silence like ever - no new announcements or communication efforts on ADESK’s behalf
and that sucks....

P.S. : I’m a Max Fan from Rel. 1 on and using it professionally since Rel.4

I haven’t been using Max since the beginning, only since version 9 and got thrown in 2008 after 6 months of V9, but pple do tend to say that mental ray is really powering up to compete with VRay and Maxwell, Sunflow, etc… and more people are starting to crack mental ray open. So concerning the new window that the renderer provides, i’m really not dissaproving it, neither the cube, or the spinning wheel, when learning a new tool it might come out better in the end, rather then trying it once or twice and if nothing comes out, tugging it away isn’t the awnser I think.

Some effort from the users side to “testrun” the new features is required I think, just like starting to work with a wacom instead of a mouse, it’s hell to begin with, but in the end it’s worth all the frustration. I pinned multiple mouses and keyboards on a wall in frustration, but in the end… it’s all good.

and these new things like the cube, the spinning wheel, the render window, the lighting analasys, I truly believe they can help where needed. No need to tug away new features just cause they don’t comply with your current workflow?..

One thing I don’t understand though why mental ray took the effort to take a step back to make those new “pro material” shaders for beginners or specified workers, rather then improving the already existing shaders?.. (although I do like the new photoshop-style composite mapping style, though it’ very “copied” like.)

the new feature films do look wicked don’t they :p

Really I downloaded the trial of Max 2009, I don’t see what sucks about it.
It has barely changed since Max 2008, it is always annoying when ever a new software release comes out people like to bag on it.
Just give it a couple months for autodesk to release some hotfixes.

And rather than dislike it, I like it. It has some better features, and is all around more stable.

But I do think that Max 2009 is a very minor upgrade from 2008 to 2009, or even 9 to 2009. But that doesn’t cause me to not like it.
Cheers

I’m not dizzing the Viewcube/stearing wheel stuff because i do not see the use of it for NEW users.
But it really worries me that this kind of “improvements” took over the place of real progress and development
Viewcube and Steering Wheel are coming from other ADESK areas ... and okay let them implement them in Max ..

But sold as a major new feature ? no way !
On top of this: Viewcube and Steering wheel are responsible for some Bugs and crashes, not even mentioning the performance impact they have...so in this aspect they are evil !
And besides the demo’ing purposes when things should impress some non-specialist Money jugglers, i do not see any benefit for pro-users.

re: Bugs
IF you are using CER to ensure we are tracking your bugs, then they are going into our server and we’re picking the highest priorities to examine. So far, we found a big one related to the viewcube AND 64b. If you’re using the 64b version of 3ds Max, then you are likely crashing due to this one single problem. It’s related to viewport drawing cold. A hot fix will be available soon on this. We’re about to post a hot fix for a problem related to people using old Intel/AMD hw. Both of these have been mentioned on forums and we’ve responded to them.
There are not any other “big” bugs in our CER pool. 3ds Max 2009 is again looking to be more stable than 3ds Max 2008 (based on support calls). Certainly, there are bugs (as any sw as complex as 3ds max will likely have), but all indications are that we’ve continuously made 3ds Max more stable with every relese. We’re not resting either. We’re raising the bar - so make SURE you submit CERs as that is far more effective than just complaining about bugs on a forum. How many of you that complain actually pressed the “submit” button? Probably very few because you don’t think it does anything. Well, it drives a core part of our bug-fixing process - so please, please do it. You’ll have less reason to complain in the future if you do.

Secondly, if you’ve been using 3ds Max for any period of time, you know that third-party plug-ins, tools and drivers all can have their own impact on stability. Luckily, CER reports if it is a plug-in crash, so we can chase those too.

Thirdly, if you don’t have enough RAM, but you are on a 32b system and pushing boundaries, you will get burned more often. Adding more RAM or moving to 64b will defintely increase your stability - as reported by many customers.

re: 2009 Features
Your experience will vary. If you don’t use MR, then it will defintely be of less impact. However, some customers view this as the biggest release ever, and some view it as the smallest. That speaks more to the fact that we have over 300,000 installed seats. You’re likely to get a few extremes of opinion. It’s not like you are all working on the same exact problems.

re: Results
For us, we monitor forums for feedback and also monitor our sales results. Generally, if the release falls flat, the unit growth isn’t there. I can say that the last few months have seen the highest growth in seats ever. Why do you care that 3ds Max grows and succeeds? Because that is how we decide to resource 3ds Max. We’ve doubled the dev team over the last 12 months. That means more features and more bugs fixed.

Summary
So, every release has a mix of features that has to appeal to certain markets and certain users. That mix may not please everyone, but hopefully, we do deliver a release that pleases you at some point. Otherwise, I’d assume you’d look elsewhere. We are committed to pleasing all of you. We value every single user and all shops big and small. We’re doing our best to stay in touch and learn what you care about. While we might not post on the forum as often as you’d like, we do what we can. Managing max is a full-time job - let alone blogging and doing the forums. I think anyone tracking 3ds Max for a few years knows that we’ve been a lot more active in these communications than probably in a longgg time. So, we are trying, we know that this contact is vital for many of our customers. You have been patient and I hope you’ll see clear rewards for that (though I’m not permitted to say more than that).

I ‘m of the opinion that Max gets more stable with each release, I believe the numbr of fatal crashes that I have experienced have declined over the years (I’ve been a user since ver 3).  Hair fur is getting much more useable - needs a little more refinement but is getting close to solid.  MR has been vastly improved.  Its still funny in that it is a light simulator in which we must use pseudo-physics parameters to adjust, but it is intended to be a tool for artists and is getting much closer to that goal than it has ever been.
I’m using 2009 all the time now, got rid of view cube.  The most robust feature of Max is that there are almost always several approaches to doing one thing.
That’ll be 2 cents, por favor.

I like the View Cube, why does everyone seem to hate it? I actually get some use out of it like the Maya cube. I wish it can be manually positioned though. I would like it more in the corner.

I enjoy the new features in v2009. Did you people read the extensive new feature list in the Help document? I think the Steering Wheel is great for walking around. The only problem I have so far in v11.0 is that vertexes are disappearing. When I create a box from scratch it appears again, but when I load one of my models on a fresh start of 3ds Max, they do not appear. I reset 3ds Max and load a box and then open up my model and the vertexes appear again. I used to have this problem on v2008 but an NVIDIA driver update seemed to fix it. I have an NVIDIA 7800 GTX with the latest v175.16 WHQL driver on the DirectX driver for 3ds Max 2009 v11.0.

I also experienced older bugs in v10.0 and I have yet to see if they happen in v11.0. The video that shows the bugs is located here.