Editable Poly
There have not been too many changes to the already-powerful Poly Modeling toolset, except for the inclusion of an Isoline display mode. Isoline viewing is a favorite of edgeloop modelers, as it keeps the important edge structure visible while hiding all of the new edges created by NURMS subdivision. While in 3ds max 6, this cleans up the viewport significantly, there is no speed benefits to on-screen drawing. A big mesh still renders to screen in the same speed whether you are in Isoline mode or not.

Schematic View
When you are dealing with confusing files such as full body animation rigs, a good selection tool really helps. I always tried to make the best of the Schematic view in 3ds max 5, but it was really too clunky to work perfectly. Now, thanks to some big improvements and a cleaner interface, the 3ds max 6 Schematic View has become extremely useful. The most interesting improvements come when working with rigged setups of any style hierarchy. 3ds max 6 now lets you import and save background images as well as projecting the rig into the Schematic View. This means that an artist can render their character to a bitmap, select their rig in 3D, project it into the Schematic (which produces a schematic layout that is basically organized just like the 3D rig) and then import the render as a backdrop for the Schematic. If you have seen any “making of” footage of the movie The Hulk, for instance, you have seen this functionality (though they were using Maya).

C.A.T. Skeleton image © 2004 Character Animation Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.

On top of these improvements, Discreet has added the ability to use, save out and reload different Schematic Views, which can be great for either multiple rigs or, say, a view for full body rigs and then a side view for the hands (where there is typically too much detail for a far view of a rig). This is huge for production workflow. There is also the ability to space out the nodes in the Schematic View similarly to the way the new UV Relax spreads UVs. One problem here is that both the Project to Schematic and Space Node tools are scripts that need to be loaded in separate processes. These should have been included in the standard toolset for sure. A small but welcome addition is the ability to save View Bookmarks. Like Adobe Illustrator, an artist can zoom and pan to exactly where they like in the Schematic View, save it off as a Bookmark and then quickly reload it (and others) while working. This allows a user to have just one Schematic View open at a time, but use the Bookmarks to quickly navigate to other rigs or parts of the rig. A nitpick here is that the bookmark, once chosen, should automatically load instead of needing to hit the Go To Bookmark button.

Particle Flow
The new Particle Flow and its Particle View are possibly the largest changes made to 3ds max6. The entire system seems to have been rewritten and the interface is awesome with its easy to follow visual listers of particle events. The workflow is amazing now with the ability to use event tests to send different, almost scriptable events to particles within the system. For example, an artist can take a particle system and add a collision spawn test event to the end of the list, which will always test to see if any particle is colliding with objects. Then, by creating a new speed event and linking the collision spawn test to the speed event you can watch the particles adjust their speed upon collision. Just a click on the icon next to each event in the particle lister causes the specific event to “turn off”. This is a great and immediate way to troubleshoot a misbehaving particle system.

Last Words
With other improvements to systems such as Spline/Patch modeling, the Layer window, Normals editing, Multires, Reactor, Skin Weighting/Mirroring and more, Discreet has made their already solid 3ds max into an even better tool, not only for video game developers, but for all 3D artists.

3ds max 6 is available for $3,495.

Ryan Lesser teaches animation at his alma mater the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). His animation company (Mammoth Studios) has worked on projects for Phish, Sony, MTV, De La Soul, Madison Square Garden and others. Since 1999, Ryan has served as art director and game designer at Harmonix, a PlayStation2 game developer. Here he has helped produce award-winning games like Frequency, Amplitude and the Karaoke Revolution series. Ryan also maintains a Providence, RI-only underground music site.