Product: 3D Studio MAX R3.1
From: Discreet (now headquartered in Montreal)
Availability: now
Price: US$3495 SRP ($ 5200 Canadian); an educational version is available for about $900
Be Discreet
Kinetix recently changed its name to Discreet, following the purchase of Montreal-based Discreet Logic by Autodesk, Kinetix' parent company. Autodesk, the company probably best known as the developer of AutoCAD, has leveraged its position as the leader in PC-based content creation tools for professionals and has managed to get away with charging US$3495 for its 3D program and has still managed to make it a best-seller -- in fact, the world’s best-selling 3D animation and modeling software for PCs. This is clearly a testament to the impressive power -- both on an Intel-based computer and on a resumé -- of 3D Studio MAX.
3D Studio MAX 2.5
MAX R2.5 was a powerful and successful release, with numerous new features targeted specifically at entertainment content creators for film, broadcast television, and interactive games. 3D Studio MAX R2.5, via its built-in functions and via the many third-party plug-ins that extend its features in a myriad of ways, answered most the needs of demanding production environments. However, MAX R2.5 was weak in a few areas, such as texture mapping and character animation. It also lacked some features found in competing products, such as NURBS spline support. However, these limitations didn't stop broadcast professionals and game developers alike from embracing MAX, and legions of users produced content for video, thanks to its field rendering, support for the Adobe Premiere and Photoshop file formats and a number of ultra-cool video post effects.
But time marches on and 3D Studio MAX R2.5, available in the U.S. since May 1998, has now expected been supplanted by MAX R3 -- an impressive release that addresses virtually all our complaints with the older version.
3D Studio MAX 3.0 > 3.1
MAX R3 adds a number of key features, including nestable external references, application-wide scripting and macro-recording, a customizable work environment, a completely redesigned renderer, powerful organic modeling capabilities and a host of new features the company says are designed to accelerate creation of next-generation 3D game titles. Indeed, it's no coincidence that Discreet staged the worldwide debut of 3D Studio MAX R3 at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Jose, California -- MAX is the de facto standard at most game development houses, thanks to its motion capture capabilities and polygon reduction functions (the US$69 plug-in "Polygon Cruncher" was a favorite of many R2 users.)
Several months after the 3.0 release, the company updated the software to version 3.1. The update significantly improved the software's reliability (especially in the area of plug-in memory management) under Windows 9x. Without the update, third-party MAX plug-ins are almost unusable under Windows 9x. Speaking of which....
Plug-ins for MAX 2? Sorry....
Unfortunately, plug-ins designed for MAX 2.x do not work on R3 (and vice-versa). Long-time MAX users may recall the same situation happened in early 1998, when a whole round of plug-in upgrades were required as R2 didn't support version 1.0 plugins.
Thus, MAX requires an updated version of the Character Studio plug-in (best known as the tool that created the "Dancing Baby"), dubbed Character Studio 2.2. Several other companies have already announced or shipped R3 versions of their products and many are -- or will soon be -- offering free upgrades for a limited time to allay concerns of skittish buyers of 2.x-compatible versions.
At any rate, it's a safe bet that most if not all of the hundreds of plugins available for MAX R2.x will be updated for MAX R3 compatibility.
For many, the key feature of R3 will be its newly redesigned renderer. Discreet says the new MAX R3 Renderer further streamlines the creation of compelling images with a new method of immediate post effects called Render Effects. With Render Effects, post processes are applied immediately after a frame is rendered, and are interactively adjustable thereafter. Render Effects operate in an editable queue, so artists can adjust or rearrange effects and see results in real time. Current Render Effects include: Flare, Glow, Ring, Ray, Secondaries, Star, Streak, Highlight, Depth of Field, Brightness/Contrast, Color Balance, Blur, and Film Grain. Render Effects and Atmospherics are conveniently assignable from lights and cameras, that are now single objects with many enhanced abilities of their own.
As well, MAX software’s already extensive Polygon, Patch, Spline and NURBS modeling tools have been updated with a new NURMS method that approximates a NURBS result, giving, the company says, MeshSmooth a true, clay-like modeling feel. R3 also adds new Surface Tools, a new Editable Patch object, and numerous spline and patch modeling enhancements designed to ease character modeling with Bezier patches.
Animators will be pleased at MAX R3's new core character animation tools for skin deformation, secondary dynamic motion, and morphing. Characters can be deformed with either splines or bones, and controlled with volumetric envelopes and "paintable" falloff weights (similar, we presume, to the features provided by PGL's LightWave Bone Deformation Plugins) with a new "Skin" feature.
Cartoon-like, and even cloth-like, soft-body dynamic effects are provided by Flex – a spring-based, secondary deformation feature with paintable weights and support for dynamic system forces (there's a few more plug-ins you won't be needing anymore). Flex, says Discreet, makes it easy to create characters with spring-like movement and even cloth effects such as wind blowing through drapes. The Morpher, a new procedural tool for efficiently managing elaborate animations containing scores of targets with weighted influence, is designed for creating convincing facial animation -- an area MAX was not particularly strong in, in previous releases.
The company says MAX R3's OpenGL, Direct3D and Heidi drivers are now optimized for the Streaming SIMD instructions in Intel's latest Pentium III family of processors.
Max Plug-ins
For more info on plug-ins for MAX, see www.digimation.com
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