Autodesk introduced 3ds Max 2010 software at GDC, offering nearly 350 additional features. The 2010 release provides innovative creative tools: a render-quality viewport display and at least 100 new Graphite modeling tools. It also offers new capabilities that help artists manage complex scenes with greater ease and an unprecedented level of support for software interoperability and pipeline integration.
Artists have used 3ds Max to create numerous award-winning videogames, such as FALLOUT 3, PRINCE OF PERSIA and GEARS OF WAR 2.
"3ds Max 2010 is a feature-packed release that has generated a lot of excitement in the 3D community," said Marc Petit, Autodesk SVP Media & Entertainment. "This version will help artists work faster than ever before, so they can explore more ideas, push boundaries and create stunning work in less time."
Jeff Hanna, senior technical artist at Volition, is a 3ds Max 2010 beta tester. His favorite new feature in the 2010 release is the xView mesh analyzer. "3ds Max 2010 software's powerful xView mesh analyzer will make it easier for us to ensure that every asset our artists create is correct and game ready," said Hanna. "The xView technology can quickly identify missing UVW coordinates, overlapping vertices, or open edges, among other things. With this tool, we won't have to worry about bad game data due to invalid geometry."
Highlights include:
Innovative Creative Tools* A new Graphite modeling and texturing system introduces at least 100 additional creative tools and helps artists explore and more rapidly iterate their ideas.* The addition of render-like effects in the viewport display, such as soft shadowing, exposure control and ambient occlusion , offers near photoreal quality for faster decision making.
Powerful New Referencing and Scene Management Capabilities* Artists can create robust referencing workflows to help organize complex scenes more easily by treating multiple objects and scenes as a single Container object.* A new Material Explorer helps to simplify the way artists interact with objects and materials, making iterations much easier even in highly complex scenes.* The new multithreaded xView mesh analyzer technology helps to significantly reduce errors by providing in-viewport reporting on several types of mesh.
Enhanced Software Interoperability and Pipeline Integration* 3ds Max 2010 is the first animation package to integrate mental images' mental mill technology. This allows users to develop, test and maintain hardware-agnostic shaders and complex shader graphs for hardware and software rendering with realtime visual feedback.* Enhanced OBJ support and ProOptimizer technology provide improved interoperability with Autodesk Mudbox software.* Additional support for C# and .NET gives developers the access they need to customize, extend and integrate 3ds Max into their existing pipelines.
3ds Max 2010 also includes all the features offered in the Creativity Extension for 3ds Max 2009, released in August 2008. A list of features in 3ds Max 2010 is available at www.autodesk.com/3dsmax.
Videos of the new features in 3ds Max 2010 are available on the Autodesk YouTube Channel. To learn more about the software, also visit Autodesk's 3ds Max blogs by Ken Pimentel, director of visual communications; Shane Griffith, 3ds Max product manager; and Louis Marcoux, 3ds Max application specialist.
Autodesk anticipates that 3ds Max 2010 will be available in English this spring. The Autodesk suggested retail price for Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 license is US$3,495. The suggested retail price to upgrade from either 3ds Max 2009 or 3ds Max Design 2009 to 3ds Max 2010 is $895. Autodesk Subscription is available for purchase simultaneously with the product or upgrade purchase. The Autodesk suggested retail price for Autodesk Subscription for 3ds Max 2010 is $495 per year. International pricing may vary.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
