3ds Max 20th Anniversary celebration

Yesterday Autodesk kicked off the 3ds Max 20th Anniversary celebration with the launch of a microsite on the AREA community.
This site includes a historical timeline of technological developments and customer achievements, artist interviews, and a photo and video gallery.

The Area

On the microsite, we’re also promoting the 20th Anniversary t-shirt giveaway that’s happening next week at SIGGRAPH. We will be giving 20th Anniversary t-shirts to anyone who comes to the Autodesk booth wearing an old 3ds Max clothing item.

For those 3ds Max enthusiasts who won’t be able to make it to the show, we’ve made it possible for them to pick up their piece of 3ds Max history at our 20th Anniversary e-store.

Be sure to keep checking back as we add new content throughout the remainder of the year.

The Area

Autodesk Anniversary Store

 

3ds Max Tech

Free Realistic Camera Tools

Craft Animations™ and Autodesk, Inc. announced the integration of certain Craft Director Studio™ plug-ins within the 2011 versions of Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design and Autodesk® Softimage® software.

Based on cutting-edge research in autonomous control systems, Craft Director Studio provides interactive control and simulation of cameras and vehicles, which helps greatly reduce animation production times.
"Craft Director Studio provides artists with advanced, in-the-box, rigging and physics simulation capabilities, which helps them to animate cameras and vehicles more quickly and realistically," said Stig Gruman, Autodesk vice president of digital entertainment. "It also allows artists to use a variety of input devices to create on-the-fly animation, helping make 3D animation as easy as playing a game."


Craft Director Studio is designed to help simplify the production challenges of 3D artists, industrial designers and architects working in the following areas:

• Video Game Development - Artists can enhance in-game cinematics through a modular, configurable system that replicates a specific rig's animation within the game itself. Artists can then "drive" a vehicle within the creative environment, helping achieve a more realistic effect in less time.
• Film and Broadcast Production - Animators can leverage more realistic and accurate vehicle behavior and traffic animation to more quickly complete visual effects shots.
• Architectural Visualization - Architects can more easily create walkthroughs of architectural designs using unique camera angles and views.

"We are proud to provide animators with a new era of interactive animation tools," said Craft Animations CEO Deborah Lygonis. "By eliminating multiple step animation and design processes, artists utilizing Craft Director Studio will be able to create a more efficient production pipeline.

Industry leaders Namco Bandai, Electronic Arts and Lockheed Martin have all experienced faster results using our tools. The integration of certain tools into 3ds Max and Softimage can provide a great boost to productivity, offering Autodesk customers a greater return on investment."


The Craft Director Studio plug-in bundle will be included, free of charge, on the Samples DVDs that will be shipped with 3ds Max 2011, 3ds Max Design 2011 and Softimage 2011 software. The bundle includes:

• Craft SoftMotionCam
• Craft ObserverCam
• Craft MultiStateCam
• Craft HumanizerCam
• Four Craft Pre-rigged Models

About Craft Animations

Founded in 2006 and based in Gothenburg, Sweden, Craft Animations AB is a leading developer of a new era of professional real-time 3D animation technology, Craft Director Studio.

Based on cutting-edge research in autonomous control systems, Craft Director Studio and its add-ons simulate the complex physical behavior of cameras and 3D vehicles such as helicopters, cars, airplanes, boats and motorcycles.

Utilized by high-profile companies world-wide such as Disney, Pixar, Namco Bandai, Lockheed Martin, Ford and Toyota; Craft Director Studio streamline production, enhance realism and increase creativity for users in the visual effects, game development, forensic reconstruction and architectural design industries.

For more information, please visit www.craftanimations.com.

 

3ds Max Tech

Quicksilver Feature Limitations

Below is a list of known limitations for the ‘Quicksilver’ production renderer in 3ds Max / Design 2011

This list will provide a comprehensive basis when constructing demo scenes or providing workflow recommendations to customers.

• Video memory resources are consumed quickly if you have many lights with shadows in your scene. The system might render slowly or reset video cards.
• High antialiasing settings could lead to a black render.
• Waves map does not render correctly in Quicksilver or in the viewport renderer.
• Very large shadow maps (i.e. 4096 x 4096) can cause render errors. Using smaller sizes (i.e. 512 x 512) will correct this error.
• GTS 8800 cards can cause some objects to flicker.
• Rendering of scenes that contain large number of textures could potentially cause image artifacts when rendering a sequence of frames.
• Under certain conditions, usually compiling very complex material trees, the video card can be forced to reset on the Vista operating system and the Windows 7 operating system. The Windows XP 32-bit operating system may become unstable.
• Quicksilver can render black frames under certain sampling settings depending on how much memory the video card has. Typically this is when memory is close to 512MB.
• Object properties are not supported – in particular Rendering Control visibility.
• Exclude/Include for lights is not supported.
• Groups cannot have reflection – they need to be exploded.
• Vertex colors are not supported in Quicksilver.
• Only one layer of transparency is supported. When several transparent objects overlap, only the first will be drawn.
• The thumbnail background of the material editor is not supported.
• Gamma is not applied under command line rendering.
• Quicksilver does not support Refraction.
• Quicksilver does not support certain output parameters. This issue impacts all map types.

The following are unsupported maps in Quicksilver:

• Combustion
• Cellular
• Flat Mirror
• Particle Age
• Particle MBlur
• Thin Wall Refraction
• Vertex Color

The following are not fully supported maps in Quicksilver:

• Falloff: Only perpendicular / parallel with viewing direction supported.
• Gradient Ramp: Normal Gradient Type not supported.
• Noise: Only Regular Noise Type supported.
• Normal Bump: Additional Bump not supported.
• Raytrace: Certain adjustable parameters under Raytrace map are not supported.
• Thin Wall Refraction
• Reflect/Refract: Certain adjustable parameters under Reflect/Refract map are not supported.

 

New ‘Labs’ project for 3ds Max/Design 2010 + 2011

Point Clouds

This toolset opens up many new possibilities for you, particularly around architectural retrofits, and games environment reconstructions.

The video on the labs link (below) will provide more details, should you not be familiar with this way of working.

• This toolset allows:
• Import .PTS format point cloud data into 3ds Max or 3ds Max Design scenes (release 2010 & 2011)
• Display the point cloud data in the 3ds Max viewport with a variety of rendering options and levels of detail.
• Render point clouds using the mental ray rendering option.
• Slice point clouds into pieces using geometric display volumes.
• Export multiple clouds or parts of clouds to a new .PTS files.

3ds Max 2011 download(Registration required for download)

 

3ds Max Classic / Design 2011

3ds Max 2011 download   |   3ds Max Design 2011 download


Features and resolved issues

• Autodesk Materials
• A program error occurred if the Autodesk Materials were uninstalled and Autosave or Save was used. The error no longer occurs and the files are saved correctly.
• Autodesk Materials presets failed to load correctly on operating systems that used commas to define decimals; these presets now load correctly in this environment.
• Autodesk® FBX®
• An empty scene was created when loading RPC assets from Autodesk® Revit® through FBX. An empty scene is no longer loaded.
• When using Autodesk Revit 2011, FBX texture maps were using GUID labels for naming texture maps; texture maps now use their appropriate file names.
• Help
• The "Download Vegetation" link in the Help menu now loads the proper page.
• Lights
• When importing IES lights their orientation would rotate, this rotation no longer occurs.
• mental ray®
• When using mental ray proxies and setting mental ray to use BSP2 when rendering to a sequence, some of the memory was not released . This has been fixed.
• When setting mental ray to use BSP2 in 64-bit versions of 3ds Max, speckled artifacts could appear when rendering; these artifacts no longer occur.
• Performance
• The program error on start-up when using sixteen or more CPU cores has been fixed; also, all cores are now used.
• Slate Material Editor
• When minimizing the Slate Material Editor, the keyboard kept selection focus with the result that the Delete key wouldn’t work; this has been corrected.

3ds Max Classic / Design 2010

3ds Max 2010 download   |   3ds Max Design 2010 download


Features and resolved issues

• Autodesk® Backburner
• 3ds Max 2010 and 3ds Max Design 2010 is now render compatible with Backburner 2011.
• In various cases when changing frames while using to render strips from the Backburner Monitor, the incorrect frames were rendered. The correct frames are now be rendered.
• Changing render width in a job when rendering strips from the Backburner Monitor rendered a blank error frame. The blank frame is no longer rendered.
• When rendering with bitmaps, a program error could occur due to memory not being released; the memory is now released properly.
• Render To Texture (RTT) would not render to an IPv6 network. This is now possible.
• Biped
• When loading a Biped BIP, Xtra bones would not scale properly; they now scale correctly.
• Performance
• The program error on start-up, when using sixteen or more CPU cores has been fixed; also, all cores are now used.

3ds Max Classic / Design 2009

3ds Max 2009 download   |   3ds Max Design 2009 download


Features and resolved issues

• Autodesk® Backburner
• 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009 is now render compatible with Backburner 2011.
• In various cases when changing frames while using to render strips from the Backburner Monitor, the incorrect frames were rendered. The correct frames are now be rendered.
• Changing render width in a job when rendering strips from the Backburner Monitor rendered a blank error frame. The blank frame is no longer rendered.
• When rendering with bitmaps, a program error could occur due to memory not being released; the memory is now released properly.
• Render To Texture (RTT) would not render to an IPv6 network. This is now possible.
• Biped
• When loading a Biped BIP, Xtra bones would not scale properly; they now scale correctly.
• Performance
• The program error on start-up, when using sixteen or more CPU cores has been fixed; also, all cores are now used.

 

Autodesk Education Suite for Entertainment Creation 2011

Autodesk® Education Suite for Entertainment Creation inkluderer komplette versioner af følgende software løsninger:

Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2011 software
Autodesk® Maya® 2011 software
Autodesk® Softimage® 2011 software
Autodesk® MotionBuilder® 2011 software
Autodesk® Mudbox™ 2011 software

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