complaints about 3DS Max

[gafl]

WE need a TRUE STABLE VERSION of Max...
Any new version has new features and old bugs are still here or they
appear on old functions that worked correctly before.

Some real and strong parmametric textures to be able to do anything like
dark tree texture, and really easy to use.

Not an american system with american textures or parameters, but with
european or any other countysides standard models...

Thank you
Gael

[posterus]

Ok well meeting with the application engineer was today. I was more or less pleased with how it went. I tried to have him address as much as I could but it was a large group and he was trying to address everyones concerns at once. Here is some of the things I found interesting.

Backburner:
Autodesk knows that backburner is buggy. They feel that it does enough of what it needs to do but, agrees they should do more fix it. He said that there are only 3 programmers who work on backburner. I tried to point out that backburner is such a huge part of production. What good is the ability to produce nice animations if you cant render the frames? His response was that if your workflow relies heavily on backburner it would be a good idea to implement 3rd party network rendering software...and he even recommended deadline. Since backburner isn't a revenue generator for autodesk, they are reluctant to throw money at it. Booo

Also he suggested to use the web version of backburner monitor. Apparently the web version has more functionality and is more stable (i haven't tried this yet)

Material Editor:
I asked about the long load times/slowness in the material editor and if we could have cached mat sample previews in the editor. He said he's been asked this before and that theres no reason why they cant do this

One thing he suggested (haven't tried this yet) is to use the Asset Tracker and bitmap proxies. You can tell max to work with proxies of all material bitmaps instead of full resolution bitmaps. This is supposed to help out alot.
To access the asset tracker type shift+T. Click the proxies drop down and click global settings. Or search the help for proxy resolution.
This seems interesting.
Also he suggested if you aren't using bitmap proxies to at least make sure that your download texture size and background texture size are set to "match bitmap size as closely as possible" This is under customize>preferences>viewports tab> configure driver. It may default to something lower than the actual bitmap size (256,512) and it takes resources to scale it down in the VP.

Lets see what else...
They did mention that there are definitely no plans to "phase out" MAX or combine MAX with Maya...thats good.
There was a bit more...I'll post if I can recall it...
-joe

[charleyc]

Not an american system with american textures or parameters, but with
european or any other countysides standard models...

What are european textures and parameters compared to american ones?

[mcvltd]

They did mention that there are definitely no plans to "phase out" MAX or combine MAX with Maya...thats good.

I just can't quite believe that...

[charleyc]

...Any new version has new features and old bugs are still here or they
appear on old functions that worked correctly before.

Ironically, this is what will happen when they re-write old code to make if faster. From what I gather, 10 is more performance improvements, so I imagine we could see more of this. But in my opinion, it is well worth it as R9 is substantially better and more productive than R8.

I just can't quite believe that...

I had heard through the 'someone shouldn't be talking about this' grapevine that this was not to be the case as well. I think Autodesk's new publicity policy is disinformation.

[posterus]

I had heard through the 'someone shouldn't be talking about this' grapevine that this was not to be the case as well. I think Autodesk's new publicity policy is disinformation.

well that would be a shame it that is the case. they did say that they will be pushing this new file format... fbx http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...&siteID=123112
it was news to me.
-joe