3dsMax2014: Features and Improvements you might have missed.

Posted by chrismmurray, 3 May 2013 1:31 pm

So one of the myriad of things I get to work on at Autodesk is to take what marketing thinks is important and message that to the masses in ways we can all understand. Face time (at tradeshows etc...) given to anyone product is usually at a premium so not all the new features in any given release are given equal time. Some, unfortunately get no face time. 

In this post I want to discuss a little more in-depth about the 2014 release of 3dsMax and specifically the lesser known features and improvements that really didn't see
the light of day.

Here's a short list of what we will cover here. You can click on each one to jump right to that section.

Ease of use
Reliability
Data Exchange
Character Animation (Not Populate)
Pflow (not the standard New feature stuff)
Materials
Rendering
Viewport Performance (specifics)
File Handling
Already released New Feature Videos
Small Annoying Things

Ease of Use

Reorganized Main Menu: The main 3ds Max menu bar has been reorganized to be easier to use, and to make frequently-used commands easier to access. Icons have also been added. This includes the addition of the new Enhanced Default UI. Found here:

Mouse and Viewport Default Settings: Some mouse and viewport default settings have been changed to make 3ds Max easier to use; and in particular, to make it easier to select sub-objects. In particular:

• Visual Style & Appearance panel (or the Rendering Method panel for legacy viewports)
• Selection Brackets is now off by default.
• Display Selected With Edged Faces is now on by default.

Background panel (In Viewport Configuration)

• Aspect Ratio Match Rendering Output is now the default choice.

Mouse panel

• AutoFocus Viewport is now on by default. 
• Zoom About Mouse Point (Orthographic) and Zoom About Mouse Point (Perspective) are both on by default. 

Cycling the Active Viewport
You can now use (the Windows logo key) + Shift to cycle the active viewport. 

• When all viewports are visible, pressing +Shift changes which viewport is active. 
• When one viewport has been maximized, pressing +Shift displays the available viewports. Repeatedly pressing +Shift changes the viewport focus: When you release the keys, the viewport you chose becomes the maximized view. 

http://screencast.com/t/ceos89XU [FLASH REQUIRED TO VIEW]


Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.
Interruptible Auto Backup
While 3ds Max is saving an auto backup file, it displays a message to that effect in the prompt line. If the scene is large and you don't want to take the time to save it at this point in time, you can stop the save by pressing the Esc key. (If the scene is not large, the prompt appears for only an instant.)




Changes to the Isolate Tool
The Isolate Tool is now on the Scene menu (in the Enhanced Menus), which has an option to Isolate Unselected as well as Isolate Selected objects. Also, Isolate no longer zooms viewports by default. To zoom as well as isolate, choose Scene Isolate Zoom Extents On Isolate before you isolate an object or selection.

[As seen in the Enhanced Default Menu]

Reliability/Stability

Mesh Inspection
The new Mesh Inspector checks Editable Mesh and Editable Poly objects for errors in texture channels and topology. This reduces the number of fatal errors that 3ds Max will encounter. 
You can find options for Mesh Inspector behavior on the Customize menu of the Enhanced Default UI.




mental ray Renderer

If the mental ray renderer encounters a fatal error, 3ds Max continues to run, although to create a mental ray rendering again you need to restart 3ds Max. So what's the point? The point is that it gives you the chance to save your work and bring 3dsMax down gently as opposed to a lock up that causes you to lose work and potentially corrupt a file with a hard reset. File this one under the Lessor of Two Evils.

DATA Exchange

File Link Manager
When you link to a Revit or FBX file that contains a Daylight system, the File Link Manager now prompts you to add an exposure control to the scene. See File Link Settings: Revit and FBX Files Dialog. 


VRML Import
You can now import VRML files with the 64-bit version of 3ds Max as well as the 32-bit version. You no longer have to use the 32-bit version for VRML import.


Send To
The Send To feature no longer links to Autodesk Infrastructure modeler (AIM).

Animation and Characters

Hair and Fur

A new Scruffle parameter has been added to give you more control over clumped hair.



Skin & track view & multi-object selection & hidden object evaluation
Wow, thats a lot. How are these things related? They have all had significant performance improvements.

• Skin & trackview curveditor have had big performance boosts
• Multi Object Selection: Previously there was a huge lag when selecting mutliple objects (by clicking with a mouse). The speed of selection has been improved.
• Hidden object evaluation: Previously, when playing back animation in the VP, any hidden animated objects were also evaluated in the VP slowing it down. Now this has been improved so playing back visible objects in the VP has better performance (frame per sec) than previous releases. 

What about Populate?
There is a lot more to this feature that will be covered in a more in-depth blog post in the near feature. But for now, in addition to whats been shown in the New Feature Videos. What may not be obvious about the feature (which is a testament to good design) is the following.

• Believable human motion that varies markedly in style and is free from typical crowd simulation artifacts, such as foot sliding, jerky collision avoidance and sudden unnatural body turning
• Advanced dynamic obstacle avoidance when characters cross intersections and  when faster walkers pass around slower ones.

Much more to come on this subject...

Particle Flow

Advanced Data Manipulation
Create customized Particle Flow tools with the new Advanced Data Manipulation toolset called Data Operators. Motion graphics artists and visual effects specialists can now create their own event-driven data operators and save results as presets, or as standard actions in the Particle View depot. With the new versatile, easy-to-use Particle Flow advanced visual editor, artists can combine up to 27 different sub-operators to create a huge variety of Particle Flow toolsets purpose-built to meet the specialized requirements of individual productions. (I will be covering this in depth in a future blog post) 

Materials

In the Material/Map Browser, when you right-click a material or map, you can now copy it to a newly created library.






Normal Bump Map
The Normal Bump map has been updated to fix a bug that caused normal bump mapping to appear differently in 3ds Max viewports than it did in other rendering engines. In addition, the Preferences dialog General panel Normal Bump options now let you optimize the display of normal bump maps created by applications other than 3ds Max. 

Rendering

NVIDIA® mental ray® Renderer
The mental ray renderer has a new Unified Sampling mode that is easy to control and renders much more quickly than the multi-pass sampling used in previous versions of 3dsMax. 
IBL - Image Based Lighting
New Skylight options let you accurately generate shadows with IBL images. More than one map can be used as well!


Other Stuff

• The String Options rollout lets you enter options as you would in a mental ray MI file. 
• If the mental ray renderer encounters a fatal error, 3ds Max continues to run, although to create a mental ray rendering again you need to restart 3ds Max. (as previously mentioned) 

NVIDIA® iray® Renderer

• The iray renderer now supports a variety of maps it could not render in previous releases. These include Checker, Color Correction, Dent, Gradient, Gradient Ramp, Marble, Perlin Marble, Speckle, Substance, Tiles, Waves, Wood, and the mental ray Ocean shader. 
• New solver method options let you turn on a sampler that improves the accuracy of indoor scenes, and a sampler that improves the quality of caustic lighting. 
• The Displacement settings have been moved to a rollout of their own. 
• When you use the Unlimited option, the Rendering Progress dialog now displays the number of iterations that have elapsed, and the progress bar shows an animated stripe rather than an absolute percentage. 

Viewports

Nitrous viewports have been updated in a number of ways to improve performance speed:

• Improved particle flow playback performance 
• Improved performance when the scene contains a large number of instanced objects 
• Improved performance with AutoCAD files 
• Improved playback performance for skinned objects 
• Better texture management. You can actually set the size you want for in scene maps! 
• Back-face culling in wireframe display 
• Nitrous viewports now fully support adaptive degradation, including the Never Degrade object property. See Display Performance Panel (Nitrous Drivers). 

Support for Direct3D 11

• For Windows 7 systems, Nitrous viewports can now use Direct3D 11. 
• The Nitrous Direct3D 9 driver is still available for Windows XP users. And for Windows 7 systems that don't have graphics acceleration, a Nitrous software driver is also
• available. The Display Driver Selection dialog has been updated to reflect these changes. 

File Handling

Automatic Gamma Correction for Bitmaps
When gamma correction is enabled, 3ds Max uses the gamma value saved with bitmap files it loads, and saves the gamma value with bitmap files it saves. If the file format does not support a gamma value, uses a gamma value of 2.2 for 8-bit image formats, and 1.0 (no gamma correction) for floating-point and logarithmic image formats. 


Updates to the Log File
The log file now includes column headings, and entries include the process and thread IDs of the 3dsmax.exe process that added them. (All 3dsmax.exe processes running at the same time write to the same max.log file.)

Previously Released New Feature Videos

Here are the new feature videos of the highlighted features. These videos were released in early April, 2013.

Particle Flow/mParticles

 

Populate

 Viewport Pan and Zoom

 Perspective Match

 Nitrous Viewport Improvements

Small Annoying Things

Here's the list of what specfic SAT's were addressed in this release. Some may already be mentioned above. This is just the list...

• Cycle Viewports With Hotkeys 
• Escape Auto-Backup 
• Isolate logic has been improved 
• Unified Shortcuts with Edit Poly 
• Missing Plugins Management 
• Unwrap Performance 
• Copy Material Libraries 
• Caddies: Sliders Direction & Option for Old Dialogs 
• Max Scenes Thumbnails (Windows 7)