http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-3…x-20182-update
Fix list.
http://up.autodesk.com/2018/3DSMAX/3dsMax2018.2\_Update\_Readme\_enu.html#WhatsFixed
They haven`t fixed the one issue that stops me from upgrading, having to click twice on drop down menus and input boxes when you aren`t focused on that part of the interface already. It`s absolutely painful. I`m using windows 7, maybe it doesn`t happen on Win10 ? I haven`t heard anyone else mention it.
Same bug here, also Windows 7.
Thanks, at least I`m not going crazy !
I was an early adopter, but since fighting so long to get 2017 to work I haven’t even thought about moving to 2018. It pains me to pay for something I can’t use, but it is business and I can’t afford to fight with my software anymore. Anybody using 2018 successfully? Any reason to move from 2017 to 2018?
2017 was unusable for me after awhile due to the viewport crashing bug. 2018 has been much better in that sense, but I still get crashes daily. I think it’s just due to all the plugins I use these days (vray, corona, octane, maxwell, itoo, growfx, internal, etc.). I can’t imagine trying to develop software with such a large community of plugins that can go wrong. Not sure how this will ever get better.
I crash many times a week, which has gotten much better. Pretty sad that I am happy with only a dozen crashes a week. I run many plugins, too, but just the main ones.
Stability-wise, 3dsMax 2018.2 has been added almost 450+ fix from 3dsMax 2017.2
The new spline tools are really nice and new docking is addictive if you use it.
Ahhhh, it looks like they’ve bought up & incorporated Boomer Labs SplineTools BoomerLabs SplineTools 01
Can anyone tell me what this means in Autodesk’s description of “Enhancements and Changes for Viewports”;
“Complex scenes, such as a commercial airliner interior with hundreds of seats, can now be used and manipulated in the viewports.”
What does that mean ?? (no examples, no links, just that text…)
Hello JezEmin,
We had a case internally that had loads of nested groups with thousands of objects that weren’t instanced. I think the group nests went something like 7 deep. This scene would barely rotate in the viewport and had something like 32,000 objects in it. I was getting something like point two fps in that scene. After the fix it was way faster and responded like a normal huge scene instead of crawling and making it impossible to work.
All in all though, big scenes that are poorly optimized should be more responsive now.
Best,
Alfred
EDIT: Typo, 32k not 132k.
Thanks Alfred for the explanation - Autodesk could have worded that a lot better to make some sense to those not aware of that particular example…
But I will say, whilst I’m not ready to use 2018 (nor prepared to risk doing so at this stage) - I had a tiny play this evening and the first thing I did notice was how amazingly fast the viewport seemed to be.
Admittedly, not a big scene by any imagination, but it was immediately noticeable.
Thanks once again for the explanation.
2018 really addresses a lot of issues that needed to be addressed. There is still work to do as with any app but I’m pretty happy with what I’m seeing so far in 2018. 
Best,
Alfred
132,000 objects!?
That’s the new record for me. I have dealt with like 20,000-30,000 objects. But. 132,000?
It is good to hear that 3dsMax can handle that.
Whoops, typo. I’m sorry it was 32k. My fault, trying to do too many things at once. I don’t recommend anything over 8k personally. Although most of the objects did have an edit mesh or edit poly which is essentially copying the object again.
I can`t(won`t) use it until the `click twice` issue is fixed, it`s basic interface stuff. Until then I`m skipping 2018, I won`t have the luxury when 2019 comes out as you can only use 3 versions back ?
Might be a little off-topic, but is there a guide that shows what an optimized big scene should look like in 3dsMax? That tells what to look for when using scenes with thousands of objects?
Most 3D DCC prefer a few high poly than a lot of objects
It is because each object carries certain overhead regardless of poly count.
But, generally, 3dsMax 2017+ should not have any problem with 100mil/10+thousands of static objects.
Under the hoof, Nitrous consolidate them all as one mesh.
Ont thing, if you have too much of hierarchy going, 3dsMax has to calculate one by one from the top since lower hierarchy depends on higher hierarchy.
Hello Olli. Some other members of the Max support team started a doc recently, but I haven’t had a chance to add my info to it yet. It probably needs to be broken into two parts, 1 for rendering and 1 for scene/viewport management. Maybe what we need is a whole thread about scene optimization. Whether it’s on the area or here, this is a good topic that needs a deeper analysis and discussion. https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-optimize-performance-in-very-large-3ds-Max-scenes.html
The following is my observations and opinions and should not be construed as an official Autodesk stance on anything. At the end of the day I’m simply a tech support person, I am not ‘the architect’, so to speak. Also, I have to type this hastily because I have a job to do. I can chime in more after hours.
Scene management is the big issue for any 3D software. Trying to build scenes as big as Max can handle in some other packages will simply not work. But just because you can stuff Max full of objects doesn’t mean it’s a good practice. Somewhere along the road in the past 10 years as artists in the industry we sort of lost the art of scene optimization and management. I think it’s because of the pressure put on western studios by outsourcing. The scene TD was the first to go in many small and medium studios and I have seen countless times studios expecting recent grads to know how to manage huge projects. In some studios artists are simply a commodity, hired on short term contracts to fulfill big demands. As such they don’t get the training they likely need, especially right out of school. But I digress…
Xforms/transform history, modifier stacks, etc. can make each scene very unique to optimize. You can certainly use 32,000 objects if you want, but is it necessary? I would say that it is not for most cases. It takes more time to attach things or optimize things and that’s not really ‘fun’ work either. Those shelves you have that are broken into 500 parts could easily be 5 parts. That is 495 fewer transforms to deal with and keep track of. Each Edit Poly or Edit Mesh keeps another copy of your mesh inside of it, doubling up the resource needs.
I spent the bulk of my career doing commercials, games, and retail viz. Nothing is quite like retail viz. When you have to fill an entire store with product and merchandise, you simply *must* learn how to optimize scenes. I’ve done flythroughs that required me to attach all my objects together to render at all simply because I was loading 10,000 unique textures as well. (even with proxies, rendered frame window off, etc it’s simply a pita to work with scenes that big…) It’s always a dance between performance and time. Again, we should start a thread about specifically optimization. It will have a lot of info in it.
Best,
AJ
I used 2018 for my last two projects , and it is quite stable (i had terrible problems with 2017) , I got a few crashes here and there but i got the projects out of the way without serious issues, Still i am not 100% convinced, I haven’t downloaded the 18.2 though yet. It is definitely a very good release in comparison with 2017. But 2016 with all SPs was one of the best.