massFX in 3ds max

[MathTheRender]

anybody else finding massFX funny to work with?
...and somehow rayfire seems to be much more capable of doing things with "sleeping"
geometry, which gets active on colision. well i just spent half a day, but im a bit disapointed. i mean if everything just would be done with letting hundrets of objects just drop, it would be quite nice so far

my best of screen shot:


what are you guys thinking, any experiences so far?

[super gnu]

i didnt install max 2012 yet, i have it waiting.. however im really pi**ed off that apparently they have totally removed reactor?! so.. theyve got rid of a slightly flaky, but fully featured dynamics system that can do soft bodies, cloth/water and rope, that i actually use quite a lot... and replaced it with a non gpu accelerated (is that really true?) version of physx that can only do rigid bodies...?

that really really sucks. at least keep reactor until you have a proper replacement.

[MathTheRender]

yes, i read that too on the area... was that your threat? im also wondering about why they can do the same viewport for max, maya and xsi, and when it comes up to a fully integrated dynamics system they just leave things nearly half way done and risk to really mess up their comunity. so i think if i can get this together, and they dont, it must be some kind of wierd product politics from autodesk. i mean im also happy if they just take the maya dynamics and sell it to us as something new in a hotfix

[super gnu]

naa thaqt wasnt my thread on the area.. hopefully its not just me who is questioning that decision...!

[MathTheRender]

what i read there are a howl lot out there. and it feels good to know that.

[MathTheRender]

so now im wondering about what they mean by "future releases" in specific...

"Previously, Autodesk has mentioned that future releases of MassFX will support cloth, softbody and ropes simulation, deformable meshes, fluids and forcefields."

source: http://physxinfo.com/news/tag/massfx/

[super gnu]

hehe..Wooo! i just checked "teh area" there some pissed off folks there! looks like i wont be hurrying to install 2012 after all.

to be honest i -really- dont know what the max dev team are up to. i never heard -anyone- -ever- complain that the max UI needed changing?! every complaint i ever heard (and ive been using max since, well.. before max (3ds r4 DOS) has been about fixing annoying bugs. to date most of the bugs are still there, and now there are more.

they seem obsessed with fixing things that never needed fixing.. look how clean and functional the UI was in max 2008 ish. now look at a default install of 2012... a couple more releases we will need a second monitor for our viewports.

not only are they spending all that effort on the ui "experience" but they are actually managing to make many things -less- efficient even in that metric. most things they have changed take more clicks to achieve a result than before. for me that is the number 1 metric of interface quality, and what the "improvements" should be judged against.

[instinct]

Hm. There has been a lot of flaming and hate towards the UI since ages from my experience. On a second note there are a lot of surveys done in regards to what people want to be "fixed" or changed.
There was an XBR poll, there is the uservoice page now etc. etc. (Check the uservoice. UI wishes are #2 Category wise).

Regardung the last sentence i only partially agree. There should be red routes for the most common tasks and longer routes for less common tasks. Sadly your personal most common tasks might differ
a lot from everybody else's most common tasks. It simply is not possible to have every function available at a single click. Well at least it isn't practical nor speeding anything up.

While i do agree with some regressions in 2012 beeing present, in general i am also seeing some very nice developments.

Most people turn off CIP and than complain about AD not listening :P

Regards,
Thorsten

[super gnu]

i agree that everyone has different requirements from the software, and of course the perfect interface isnt possible.. however some of the changes make no sense to me. in 2011 they moved "make preview" into another menu, and put it in a sub menu. it was fine before surely? now its 1 extra click i didnt need to make.

the start menu? everything now in sub menus so i need 3 clicks to merge rather than 2.. etc. all little changes, but i cant for the life of me see the benefit?

[instinct]

While i agree on both of these changes nagging myself too i would guess the decisions are based on CIP data. And while it pisses me off to having to retrain it might make more sense for a new user...dunno. As said i wholeheartly agree that there are odd and confusing changes. Rest assure that none of these are just shoved in. There's a lot of discussion going on behind the scenes and usually there is good reason for changes.

Regards,
Thorsten

[stevesideas]

Autodesk sent me a survery to fill out about how I felt about max and future developments etc...it seems to me they only really do what they want to do anyway without addressing the issues max still has after so many years. I can't imagine that people filling out the survey would say, "we don't want reactor anymore, please get rid of it and give us less options for dyanmic simulation"..strange !

[instinct]

Have you followed the discussion regarding reactor and massfx ? That seems to be mostly a licensing issue rather then a "hey lets piss off our customers for nothing" descision

Before beeing dropped there was actually quite some complaining about reactor. And from all i read Havok didnt really excel at support or further developing things... Viewport and performance is something that everyone seems to be screaming for since ages tho. So was Slate (yes it ain't perfect). So was doing core rewrites and many many other things. As said i do share quite a lot of pain that is out there myself. But i do think there are quite some developments that seem to be based on listening to the users and i do think they are trying. With a userbase as diverse as the Max userbase that is a tough thing (e.g. Max is not really THE vfx package out there...yet there's a lot of screaming for built in fluid sim, porting ICE and alike. I mean..come on )

Again, i do share the pain. I just think that it's not a black and white thing.

Regards,
Thorsten