Product Review: Page (1) of 2 - 12/12/06

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3ds Max 9 New release includes 64-bit processing By Todd Sheridan Perry

Point Cache tool, upgraded for Max 9

3ds Max 9 is the first release since Autodesk acquired Alias and its flagship, Maya. I?ve been wondering how the two programs will start to meld into one.  I?ve already seen it in Maya -- baby steps toward uniformity.

Most of the time, I take a cursory glance at a new release and if something doesn?t scream ?change,? I?ll have to pull up the hood and start poking around to find the new stuff.  In the case of Max 9, even after some deep poking, I found that it doesn?t have enormous changes in the tool set.  It almost feels like a point upgrade. EXCEPT ? Max 9 is available in a 64-bit form as well as 32-bit. So, if you happen to be using Windows 64 on a 64-bit processor, you will see pretty substantial speed increases simply based on the fact that the software and processor can handle larger chunks of data at one time, not to mention raising the RAM limit to 8GB. To really benefit from this upgrade, it's going to require updating your hardware as well. But, let?s take a look at the nice new tools that are common to both 64- and 32-bit programs.

In my mind, the most evident tool advance is the ProBoolean and ProCutter tools, which, like many recent tools, are an absorption of a tool written by a third party. In this case, PowerBooleans. A Boolean is the act of taking two objects and combining them in any number of math operations. You can add them together, subtract one from the other, take the intersection of the two, or remove where they intersect. It?s a very fast method for modeling complex objects. However, traditionally, Booleans are very messy. They create ragged edges, or misshapen polys. Generally, the result is an ugly mesh. And you can forget about any mesh-smoothing to create a denser mesh. The poor geo simply gets worse.

The new ProBoolean function has much smarter math involved in the operations. When the objects are combined, coplanar triangles are determined and incident edges removed, which leaves n-sided polygons ? a modeler?s friend. The result is a much more efficient mesh. The ProCutter tool is a specialized Boolean that breaks apart an object on fissures determined by other ?cutting? objects. Again, the operation is quite efficient, and therefore fast. Even though there are many benefits in these tools, the best part, in my mind, is that they are exposed to MaxScript, which means that more tools can be customized around the new Booleans.

On the animation side, ?layers? have been added. These are similar to the functionality that Character Studio has where you can add layers of animation to make minor (or major) tweaks to a base animation. The function has been extended to all animatable parameters. Animators can make fine adjustments, and go back into the curves to adjust how much influence each layer has on the overall animation. The layers also allow for animators to experiment with different versions of an animation without destroying the original animation. You really could do this in previous versions, to a degree, using list animation controllers. But the layer way is much more straightforward and easier to manage ? much like the animation mixer in XSI or the Trax Editor in Maya.

Enabling Animation Layers

 

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