Service Pack 2 for Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2014

[glorybound]

Service Pack 2 for Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2014 includes fixes for issues with stability and performance based on customer feedback.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/index?siteID=123112&id=2334435&linkID=9241178#sect ion1

[theedge]

Reading the release note I see only two issues addressed by this service pack. Is it a joke?

[glorybound]

I am not sure what this means.

Running 3ds Max 2014 with Service Pack 1 under Windows XP x64 would cause a program error. This has been fixed.Note: 3ds Max 2014 does not support Windows XP x64. This specific issue was addressed for Windows XP x64 render nodes

[theedge]

Yes that looks more like a downgrade than an update. I guess adsk upset many customers when they dropped windows xp support with the first service pack. There must be lots of render farms still running xp. So we have an SP2 to undo SP1. Why not ? Unless they don't break any other features in the process...

[glorybound]

It looks like 3DS MAX supports xp, but only on nodes.

Yes that looks more like a downgrade than an update. I guess adsk upset many customers when they dropped windows xp support with the first service pack. There must be lots of render farms still running xp. So we have an SP2 to undo SP1. Why not ? Unless they don't break any other features in the process...

[Morne]

yes only 2 features??? I wouldnt call that a service pack

[instinct]

A Service Pack does not necessarily contain new features. Usually the smallest increment is a Patch, delivered as a Hotfix. A Service Pack usually ships multiple patches.

New Features are usually available in Extensions.

People have been complaining forever that ADSK release cycles are too monolithic. Now they release more hotfixes and SPs and people are pissed because there are not enough fixes and/or features. They could as well have hold these back until a bigger number of fixes was due, but that would mean you'd get the fix later.

Don't get me wrong, i have a LOT of issues with AD, but this is something that has gotten at least a bit better in my eyes.

Regards,
Thorsten

[theedge]

Frankly, I do not really need any NEW feature. If you look at max's toolset on paper it is fantastic. For the moment I'd just like my annual subscription to go into making these existing tools work as they should, be reliable, refine them, and have a snappy interface. Once we get that we can look into adding new features.

[Morne]

Anybody tried the new "service pack 2" yet without glitches?

[jacksc02]

working fine here.
Still no backburner fixes.....

[Donald2B]

SP2 works great here. Other than taking a century to install, all is good. I've even pushed my luck by running 4 sessions of max last night trying to coordinate a couple of large files. No problems! whew!

[sakana7]

We've had instability issues on 4 machines here since installing SP2. All machines Win 7 64. Spawner continually crashes after a relatively short period. Everything worked fine with SP1 and can't believe we'd be taking step back!

[glorybound]

Well, it took forever, but I have updated all my machine. So far, I can now render using nodes, which is good. I haven't tested enough to see any instability.

[Donald2B]

Strange. I update our farm on Friday night and it was rendering the entire weekend and just finished a few moment ago. No problems and it ran through about 15 jobs with average frame times around 30-45min per frame. What machine is running BB Manager? Dedicated machine?

[sakana7]

None of our issues have been with BB but with DR. On our Spawner machines after about 20 min - 1/2 hour Max has crashed. I'm suspecting whatever fix was made for XP nodes is having the opposite effect on our Win 7 machines. It is not just our nodes but workstation instances Max seems to crash more often since SP2.

I'm guessing there's no way to revert back a SP without uninstalling/reinstalling Max? We have a pretty conservative setup so would think others might be having the same issues?