Achieve stunning results in less time with Autodesk® 3ds Max® software. Autodesk 3ds Max 2009 introduces time-saving new animation and mapping workflow tools, groundbreaking new rendering technologies and significantly improved 3ds Max interoperability and compatibility with other industry-standard products such as Autodesk® Maya®.
New rendering technologies include Reveal™ rendering—a toolset for both iterative workflows and dramatically faster, finished renderings—and ProMaterials™, a material library for simulating real-world surfaces. Rig your quadrupeds faster and more efficiently with the new Biped workflow. “Hands like feet” is just one of a number of new and improved character animation and mapping features that streamline potentially labour-intensive processes. Plus, the release gives you improved OBJ and Autodesk® FBX® import and export, for vastly enhanced 3ds Max interoperability with Autodesk® Mudbox™, Maya, Autodesk® MotionBuilder™ and other third-party applications.
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Key New Features Include:
- Reveal Rendering
- The Reveal rendering system, new in 3ds Max 2009, gives you the precise control you need to quickly refine your renders. Choose to render your entire scene minus a specific object; or render a single object, or even a specific region of the Framebuffer. The rendered image Framebuffer now contains a simplified set of tools to quickly validate changes in a render by optionally filtering out objects, regions and/or processes in order to balance quality, speed, and completeness.
- Improved Support for OBJ and FBX
- Greater OBJ translation fidelity, along with more export options, make it easier for you to move data between 3ds Max and Mudbox—as well as other digital sculpting applications. Take advantage of new export presets, additional geometry options (including hidden splines/lines), and new optimize options that give you reduced file sizes for improved performance. Game artists will particularly enjoy the improved texture map handling and improved Mudbox import information with regard to face counts per object. 3ds Max also delivers improved FBX memory management and new import options that support interoperability between 3ds Max and other products such as Maya and MotionBuilder.
- .NET Support in the SDK
- Support for .NET in 3ds Max allows you to use Microsoft’s efficient, high-level user interface APIs to extend the software. The 3ds Max SDK ships with sample .NET code and documentation showing developers how they can take advantage of this powerful set of development tools.
- Photometric Lighting Enhancements
- Autodesk 3ds Max delivers support for new types of area lights (circular, cylindrical), photometric web previews in the Browse dialog and Light user interface, and improved near-field photometry quality and spot distribution. Plus, distribution types can now support any emitting shape and you can have your light shapes appear as objects in the rendered image.
See more details on the new features in Autodesk 3ds Max 2009
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Award-winning Autodesk® Maya® software is a powerful, integrated 3D modeling, animation and rendering solution that enables leaders in film and television, game development, design visualisation and education to stay ahead of the game.
Autodesk Maya 2008 software delivers faster, more efficient tools and workflows for creating the stunning, high-resolution characters, environments and performances that will populate the games consoles, theater screens and televisions of the future.
New and Enhanced Modeling Tools and Workflows
Maya 2008 introduces considerable performance improvements and a number of new features that will make modeling workflows significantly more efficient. The Maya Mesh Smooth workflow, for instance, has been dramatically streamlined: You can now preview a smoothed mesh while editing the mesh cage—with superb performance, particularly on multiprocessor workstations. Other much-requested workflow enhancements include the ability to position objects along a curve, replace objects within a scene and convert instances to objects.
Additionally, a new Slide Edge feature—as well as significant enhancements to Booleans, Bevel, Bridge, Reduce and other tools—let you model more efficiently. Maya 2008 also delivers two new selection management features: X-Ray selection highlighting and the ability to “pick walk” edge loops.
Faster, More Accurate Viewport / Hardware Rendering
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Truly WYSIWYG interactive previews are several steps closer now that the Maya hardware rendering engine supports layered textures, multiple UV sets, negative lighting and object space normal maps. Not only does this improve preview fidelity when using the High Quality renderer in the interactive viewport, it allows a greater range of effects to be rendered to final output using the Maya hardware renderer. Moreover, accelerated draw and selection performance, together with more efficient updating of UI elements, facilitates level editing and speeds overall workflows.
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Support for DirectX HLSL Shaders
With Maya you can effectively create and display sophisticated looks for content destined for the next-generation game consoles. In particular, native support for DirectX® HLSL shaders (in addition to the existing CgFX support), can let you work with assets in the viewport and see them as they will be seen on the target console.
Nondestructive Skin Editing
Animators and animation technical directors usually find it necessary to work iteratively on their rigged characters. Maya 2008 can streamline iterative skinning workflows by enabling you to modify the skeleton of a bound character, without having to rebind it after, thus preserving any work done after the skeleton was bound. This process is supported through new tools for inserting, moving, deleting, connecting and disconnecting joints on a bound skeleton, as well as support for multiple bind poses.
API Enhancements
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Game developers can now more easily write high-performance hardware shading plug-ins for Maya using the new API for hardware shaders. This API includes native support for OpenGL® and DirectX® shaders, built-in support for shader parameters and direct access to the Maya rendering cache.
Also, a new constraints API can allow plug-in developers to write their own animation constraint nodes and commands derived from the underlying Maya constraint node and command architecture. This makes it easier to write custom constraints and have them interact with the rest of Maya in a manner similar to built-in constraints.
mental ray 3.6 Core
Maya 2008 uses the latest mental ray® 3.6 core, a release that boasts dramatic performance improvements in the translation of polygon meshes and instances for rendering, as well as for IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Rendering) startup.
Additionally, particle types previously supported only in the Maya Hardware renderer can now be rendered in mental ray, eliminating the need to combine outputs from multiple renderers.
Expanded Platform Support
Support for Windows Vista™ operating system has been added, enabling customers to take advantage of the performance capabilities of this recent technology.
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