let us know how it goes.
Sent from my iPad using Forum Runner
I used to have 2016 installed at the same time 2014 as I (foolishly) decided it *must* be safe to make the jump (after all, why else pay the maintenance fee…)… each time I tried using 2016 for production work it let me down (badly) and I’d end up reverting back to using trusty ole 2014.
I then had to do a reformat of my OS hard-disk and reinstall all my software - 2016 didn’t make the cut 
Surely it’ll be safe to jump to 2017, I mean, 3 years later (or am I paying maintenance for nothing here…) ?
I was skeptical at first but 2016 works fine for us. Still on SP1 out of fear of breaking things that work, after hearing to much bad things about SP2 and 3.
Had high hopes for 2015, but went back to 2014 for production work. The layer manager/scene explorer was a nice idea, but turned out to be a nightmare. At least it works in 2016, even though it isn’t exactly smooth and comfortable to rename or move things - it renames the things you want to. Also had loads of trouble with snapping and viewport graphics in 2015.
The pattern is pretty obvious: 2011, 2013, 2015 are versions that we skipped or reverted from. AFAIK they change/break the SDK every other year, and sadly it seems that it comes at a cost. So hopes are very low for 2017. Maybe that is ok though. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t come out with a new version every year. I’d rather have a production safe release every other year. Which is sort of what they are doing, if one chooses to see it that way, it’s just not marketed as that way?
The subscription is going to make things awful expensive. Let’s say a company has 10 stations of 3DS MAX, it’ll cost them $18,000 a year, just to use. If you skip every release because you find no benefit in upgrading, it’ll basically cost $36,000 to upgrade. Crazy!
hii!
well that pattern with “uneven suxxs” is like windows versions.
the 2016 works “”““ok””“” for me but its still “mehh”.
So 2017 cant do anything worse ;)..
large scenes are of course a total joke with 3dsmax.. 4000+ objects and its dead.
since i will reinstall my workstation with a fresh windows 10 i will try 3smax2017 before wiping it.
If it doesn’t fix things, there really isn’t a point to upgrade. I remember paying the subscription on an AD product for 3 years, without any patches, SP, or upgrades. AD eventually pulled the plug on it, so I paid 3 years for absolutely nothing.
Your operating costs in staff, rent and taxes will be hitting $750k a year with that setup. Not to mention the accounts people you’d need to have on staff at that size.
It would also cost significantly more in a city like NYC, where you’d be spending at least 10k a month on rent (and thats a good deal). 18k isnt a lot for the tools.
Interesting all this about Max and to know how everyone else feels about it. We are using 3DS Max 2013 STILL!!! We used to be on a subscription and always paying that late, etc., so I decided to pull the plug at 2013 and use that money on VRay and brand new workstations as well as servers and GPUs. IMO this has worked to benefit us. Unfortunately, if AD decides to make 2017 and up not be able to save below 2014 versions (knock on wood), then I’ll be out of sink with any other units that use 2017 (that would be the only inconvenience). But there you have my 2cents. Soon we’ll have to make a decision to stay with 3DS Max and their unrelenting push to make you pay yearly for a subscription or change to another program that will not give me that problem.
The beauty is, it was your decision. AD is taking our ability to chose what’s best for us away, this is what is insane.
Thanks Bobby! Spot on… Maybe the Blender Foundation will make files from 3DS Max openable in their future versions of Blender and thus interchangable at which point AD will better be looking for new customers. As a matter of fact, I’ll talk to the Blender guys at this year’s Sigraph, I touched upon this last year and they seemed to be into the idea of doing it, they just needed more resources to go ahead. Anyhow, we will see.
Sometimes people really get too scared for too long. Realise that nothing is 100% or perfect. But sitting at 2014 thinking 2016 is worse, well if you are happy sure, but you are really fooling yourself into thinking you aren’t getting anything out of upgrading. Like always with max (because we never get anything new) the changes looks subtle, but can have HUGE impact on daily work, for better or worse. There is literally nothing 2014 does better than 2016 today, I don’t care what the foil hat panic people say, but I see no reason to still be using 2014.
As for 2017… I will be using it for production as soon as I can. The new additions are so welcome, maybe even state sets work now? ah who am I fooling… but the rest looks super solid! yes it may crash… but so does every other version of max. There actually some interesting statistics that shows that some huuuuge amount of crashes in max are actually rarely because of max. It’s often because of memory or 3rd party tools that are installed.
Anyway, don’t be afraid.. try it.. if it really is as bad as you fear… go back!
My tinfoil hat still believes that only odd number versions are prone to crash But as you say that might be third party things causing it. Which does makes sense after an SDK break. I did have a lot of viewport troubles in 2015 though.
2012, 2014 and 2016 behave wonderfully. I basically only get crashes when importing weird or heavy files, or when you get a little to excited with a couple of quick undo’s in situations when you shouldn’t. And that was not the case with max ten years ago. Or even longer, as I remember Max 3 and 4, incremental save was obligatory!
Well, as usual, 3dsMax is different for everybody, it is all related to workflow and that is it. Here we use extensively Alembic to exchange with Houdini etc and to as well work with lightweight scenes, so we were forced to jump in 2016. Never really buggy with us, quite stable, and we really push it. No ArchViz, OK, but still, ArchViz is ArchViz but not the only meaning of 3dsMax. at the end, everybody found whatever he wants wherever he wants. We will probably move to 2017 just becasue of the revamp of the viewport core. Looks like it will be faster which is a big + for us too.
See you in 2017 !
Tang
Maybe an AD approved plug-in list would vet out all the problematic plugins.
There were “Autodesk Certified Plugins” a few years ago; died pretty quickly 
Best regards,
Vlado
hm yes. i imagine considering they dont appear able to bug test their own software thoroughly before launching a new version, its hardly likely they would be able to test all the combinations of plugins in use too.
If MAX’s issues are mostly caused by plugins, it would be in their best interest to have someone testing.
Hi Vlado,
it´s possible vray for max 2017 ? in http://nightlies.chaosgroup.com/ i not see nothing .
Wonder if now, with subscription based system they could drop this every year release and add new things through extension packs only, hopefully not breaking existing plugins. But that would probably mean locking down a lot of core functionality.
Please email our support team at support@chaosgroup.com and they will get you a preliminary 2017 build.
Best regards,
Vlado