Max 2011 worth updating yet?

[philip kelly]

I am downloading the new version of Max 2011.
I am currectly using the latest vray also+vray RT.

Is it worth upgrading to Max 2011 and will vray work with it.
I am on a very large project on a ongoing basis and was wondering will the upgrade hinder any thing, or cause problems.

The new version of vray , ie the recompiled version Due out at the end of the month- is that the vray release 2.0 or just a vray version of Max 2011?
All very confusing............

Thank you in advance for the advice.

phil

[jstrob]

Yes vray will work SP5 for max 2011 is just out from yesterday.

And absolutely yes it worth upgrading. Only for the material slate editor! I hope they will extend this nodebased interface to all of max. I'm already using max 2011 and vray sp5 for a small personal production and I did not regret to upgrade as I'm saving a lot of time with the slate editor.

Also I'm on windows 7 x64 and max 2011 seems to run faster (in regard to interface) so maybe it's because of the windows 7 compatibility issue (max 2010 was not made for win 7).

[BLADE]

Better wait for the first service pack. 2011 is one of the worst releases I have seen for a long time. Save your system before updating.
I have kicked this 2011 crap from my harddrive. BTW I hate that slate thing. Its to slow and absolute useless to me.

Regards
BLADE

[pixela]

I think slate material editor is a good feature BUT Autodesk turned many one-click tasks into 2clicks.
Moreover so much mouse-oriented, so much right-click-mouse oriented.
This slows down your workflow.
Moreover, I still can't make some of the things I was able to make with the old mat editor.

[instinct]

Agreed about the one-click vs. two-click issue...as well as i hate the new material browser with a passion. But i'd be curious as to what you cant t with slateMEdit that you can with the old one ?

[glyph]

working on a big on-going project you say ?
never upgrade mid stream unless you have a spare machine(s) to double check everything works 100%

its just not worth the stress if something is not what you expect

[alvius]

It's not worth yet. Wait for the updates. It's unstable, becomes slow after 1 hour, and too many bugs which weren't present in 2010 (in a way it's similar to 2009 release imho ). However Slate is awesome when it comes to complex materials. Anyway we're rolling back to 2010 after current project.

[jstrob]

I found a few bugs while doing my project, but nothing serious (for example, the "reset material editor slots" does not work). But for me it's as stable as max 2010 was. and the material slate editor is lightning fast! For those who say max 2011 is unstable and the slate is slow, I'm curious to know on which system you are? I'm on win 7 x64.

I also like a lot the viewport canvas (and the "render to occlusion " surface map). Don't need to go to zbrush for those textures adjustment. It does not work with vray material though. You just need to create a temporary standard material as a workaround.

And just to illustrate the power of the slate editor: I have 6 similar materials for different parts of a character, and I wanted to link the common parameters I wanted to adjust and needed to be always in sync in every material. In the slate editor you can just instance the parameter and link it to every material at the right place. You could have use the parameter wire dialog, but it was way faster and easyier to do visually in the slate editor.

Also it allows to see where are all you maps and where they are assigned in all your material in a way just impossible with the "compact" material editor. Also the compact editor is not gone and I still use it too as color palette if you want.

here the yellow nodes at the left represent the common parameters (the controllers), the green ones are the maps and the blue one are the materials:

[AJ Jefferies]

For those who say max 2011 is unstable and the slate is slow, I'm curious to know on which system you are? I'm on win 7 x64.

Same here. While I've only had the last two days to use Max 2011 I'm thoroughly impressed. The Slate editor takes some adjusting to but it's fantastic... Yes, there are lots of things I'd improve, but it's a real breath of fresh air.

[alvius]

For those who say max 2011 is unstable and the slate is slow, I'm curious to know on which system you are? I'm on win 7 x64.

Win2008 x64.

There is a bug with Optimize modifier showing controls on the modifiers which you put on top.

[gandhics]

We are testing 2011. I think it is pretty stable, at least compare to 2010. It you feel that 2011 is slower or unstable than 2010. You should check your video driver. We tried more than 4 version of drivers until we found a good one.

And... the slate editor is not meant to be a faster workflow. It is a diffrent way of viewing the same things. For me, it is a great addition.

[pixela]

Agreed about the one-click vs. two-click issue...as well as i hate the new material browser with a passion. But i'd be curious as to what you cant t with slateMEdit that you can with the old one ?

For example:
- I want preview window to be open when I double click on a material or a map.
- When one preview window for a material is open, I want the toggle for updating the preview as you navigate through maps of same material. In other words, I want to control the preview window so it shows the navigated map or the end result.
- I want the panning property of the old material map browser. I dont like the scroll bar.
- I want to be able to get the material from the selected object as in the old way.
- I want "show map in the viewport" as a button on map itself or a hotkey. I don't like to use right-click and choose that option or from the menu on the top.

Many of these things can be made in new mat editor too. But they are all like 2steps instead of the ONE in the old way.

There are many more things in 2 steps:
- save selected
-import/merge
-3 buttons on viewport. in old style there was only one and I can find everything under it. Now they grouped things and made 3 buttons. I still couldn't memorize, what is where so each time I have to click all 3 and find what I am looking for.

[muoto]

And, is it just me, i have the impression that display is slower than in 3dsmax2009, on the same scene... (i got the latest nvidia drivers)

Slate is nice to organise materials, but there are indeed a few small things that bug me.
For instance, the mouse scroll mouse increment is so small i have to scroll for ages to zoom
And, i miss the "back" button to go up in the material hierarchy (in the right window)

For the rest, i don't know yet.

One question i also have is, how to manage big scenes with lot of objetcs. I do a lot of cosmetics products renderings where i have hundreds of different products. Now i just copy/paste to a new scene, but would it be better to use xrefs ?

Bye!

[pixela]

And, i miss the "back" button to go up in the material hierarchy (in the right window)

Yes I miss that too. It really slows me when working.

[jstrob]

To get a back button would be great for sure. But I must say when you get used to a node based interface and navigate with it, you definitely don't want to go back.