Take a peak at Max 2008 - 3DAllusions

d.sign · #1 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 11:14 AM

You may already know that Autodesk begun with promoting new version of MAX, now called Max 2008 (not Max 10 as we may expected)...
I can promisse you some decent review when time comes, but for now I can pass on what I saw in their new features videos and there are couple of really impressive features...
What is most important, all the improvments announced were directly or indirectly tied to architectural vizualisation.
That may be coninuation of the tendency they started with Max 8 (before they did not adressed archviz community so much), but now they introduced some really serious improvments.
I will just turn your attention on couple of them -
1. Poly modeling - they introduced abilitty to interactivly change subobject level by directly selecting the element you want (already present at some other even lot smaller apps...)
2. Review mode, you will be able to review directly in viewport all the light and material properties, like shadows, daylight effects, material highlits and anysothropy, Mr physical sky enviroment map...
All the light properties, like color, shadwo density etc... will be visible in viewport when you call for them and you can have much faster feedback without rendereing the image... though, the GI is off course not visible...
3. Due to a new features in adaptive degradation menu, now you will be able to manipulate lot faster with very complex scenes, panning, zooming and rotating viewports much easier... (that will sure depend on GPU power of your PC, do not expect mirracles...)
4. FInally, what I loved the most was MR improvments, like arch and design material new features - abilitty to emit light based on real light properties (regular or photometric - your choice)
And, best of all, new type of light, skylight portal, actually more of a helper object which should help you with lightning the interior with MR daylight system. Now with less quyalitty Final Gather you can have much better results cause it focus the FG around the openings that you assigne the skylight portal on...
I can say for what I saw in the videos, this feature enable much nicer and better soft shadows than you could have with Vray area light for instance... and that is exactly what was missing before
but see for yourself...
Autodesk - Autodesk 3ds Max - 3ds Max 2008 Features

neil · #2 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 12:04 PM

WOW, Max 2008. Thanks Branko for the info. I am going to see the its features. Later on we will discuss for sure.

anonyma · #3 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 06:52 PM

it's good to have someone to talk about new stuff coming, i will definitely take a look at it d.sign.

d.sign · #4 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 07:42 PM

I would just like to add, forgot that in first post, MR improvments include new exposure control features, based, like in Maxwell and Vray, on photographic camera properties, like shutter speed, white point, f-stop...
But unlike Maxwell and Vray this come only in exposure control panel of enviroment menu (not in actuall camera properties), as alternative to older logaritmic and other exposure control types... good thing is that it comes with a bunch of presets, like exterior daylight, interior daylight, interior night scene and so on...
I wonder if it would be possible to use it with other other render engines (cause it is in a way independent of renderer, since it is layed out in enviroment menu...), like Vray...

TheAllusionist · #5 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 10:12 PM

I kind of feel that if MR had a proxy system or similar there would be little reason to use anything else

Thanks for the summarization, I have gotten the emails and links, but haven't had time to check it out.

d.sign · #6 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 12:13 AM

Well, speaking from a GI standpoint, MR has to offer only two ways and it is still low on antialiasing methods... but even with that you may get some things that with other apps you can not make without lot of pain... for one it is look of soft shadows, shadows from bounced and indirect light (notice on the picture above how nice and long are shadows from the monitors)... in reall life you will have such shadows... in Vray for instance, you will get them with small area lights, but with larger openings you will get a problem... simply lack of precision in soft shadows... there you have the QMC GI and PPT which may help to sharpen up things, get you more detial... but not enough...
As for the proxy sistem... I believe something like that is already there, behind the curtain... just I do not know it... but we may try with xrefs, that would sure help dealing with complex scenes...