3ds Max 8 from Autodesk brings maturity and features to this potent and
popular 3D application. Improvements to the cloth, hair and fur
algorithms, the inclusion of Mental Ray 3.4, satellite rendering and
other new and upgraded tools make this version a must-have upgrade or
an enticing reason to buy into the application for the first time.

Widely used in game development, 3ds Max continues to make inroads in
Hollywood by adding recent films to its roster like Charlie
and The Chocolate Factory, Steamboy and
House of Flying Daggers. Max, however, isn’t limited
to cinematic or game animation – a growing number of industrial and
architectural design firms use it for visualizing projects, as well
(the integration with Autodesk’s other visualization tools is one
reason why). Max’s features, including those listed above and its
internal scripting language (Maxscript), give it the strength and
flexibility that make it the workhorse gorilla we’ve all come to know
and love.

While the minimum hardware requirements make it sound like Max will run
on any mail-order PC (c’mon Autodesk, a 500 MHz Pentium III?), you’ll
really want the most computing horsepower you can get your hands on to
actually use Max. A 3 GHz Pentium 4 with more than a gig of RAM and a
fast graphics card is the real-world minimum- toss in gigabit Ethernet
if you plan on rendering over a network.

Never forget that no matter how fast your system is, Max is a 3D
rendering application, and as such it can easily bring any computer to
its knees. Do the math- when rendering 900 frames for a:30 second
commercial at one minute per frame, it’ll still take 900 minutes (15
hours), and that’s without all the bells and whistles that pump up
render times. With clients now expecting each frame to look ultra-real,
rendered at HD resolution, or like it came from a Hollywood feature, a
one-minute-per-frame render time is a dream whose time has passed.

In an actual studio environment, no one renders on just one machine.
Max has included network rendering since version 4, and each subsequent
release has made it easier to use and more reliable. 3ds Max 8 goes one
step further by including the Mental Ray 3.4 render engine and an
unlimited processor license, allowing a studio with even eight PCs to
cut down render times from 900 minutes to 112 minutes.

Interface Improvements. 3ds Max 8 brings a handful
of small but important changes to the main user interface. The "Open
Recent File" list can now hold up to 50 files, although the default
value is set to nine. There is a new toolbar for mesh painting brush
presets, and the default tangent type for new animation keyframes can
now be selected on the fly from a pop-up menu near the bottom of the
screen.

Mental Ray 3.4. In this latest version Mental Ray,
the 3d render engine known for photorealistic results, the main
improvement is a rewritten final gathering sampler (used when creating
true photorealistic lighting). The new sampler allows for a lower
number of rays (thus decreasing render time) to produce same-quality
photorealistic results.

Autodesk has also lifted the single-seat license for rendering via
Mental Ray. Studios can now render with Mental Ray across an unlimited
number of computers via network rendering at no additional cost.

Pelt Mapping. Mapping 2D textures such as photos of
cloth to 3D objects has always been a challenge, but 3ds Max 8’s new
Pelt Mapping feature takes a giant leap toward simplifying the process.
Pelt Mapping works by breaking the geometry of a model along designated
seams and laying it flat in a window (the actual geometry isn’t
changed). This creates a 2D representation of a 3D model making it
possible to line up the texture file with the geometry of the model so
that the texture properly wraps around model like a decal. While this
technique isn’t new, Max’s implementation takes out much of the manual
labor making it easier and quicker than before.

Hair and Fur. The new hair and fur tools are
remarkable not only in the quality of the rendered output, but in the
way they are applied. While the new tools will primarily be used for
hair and fur, they can also be tweaked to create fields of flowers,
grassy knolls and other surfaces requiring strand-derivative effects.
Comb and brush tools make it easy to shape along contours such as
weaving and braiding.

While hair and fur tools have become easier to use and look better than
ever, there is a price to pay when rendering- realistic hair and fur
can drive render times up exponentially. A hairy dog rendered at HD
resolutions took nearly 20 minutes on our 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 (1.5 GB of
RAM), but the results were remarkable and could be extremely realistic
when combined with 3ds Max’s dynamic forces (i.e. wind and gravity).
It’s possible to drastically reduce development time by rendering
low-resolution tests or by turning off hair rendering when testing a
character’s overall animation, but this is certainly a case where a
multi-machine render farm comes to the rescue when it’s time to crank
out final frames.

Maxscript. One of 3ds Max’s oldest strengths has
been Maxscript, the underlying scripting language through which almost
everything about Max can be controlled. Maxscript is a powerful
programming language, but up until now has had one huge weakness- there
was no debugger. For those who don’t write code, a debugger is an
essential tool that allows the programmer to step through lines of code
and to set markers that’ll pause execution (breakpoints) as well as
watch the values of variables.

3ds Max 8 now includes a very good debugger that uses two separate
windows, the main debugging window and a Watch Manager window for
keeping an eye on variables. The debugger can be configured to open
when a Maxscript error occurs, or manually opened allowing one to step
through the code at will. There are many 3ds Max artists who never
touch a line of Maxscript and will have no use for this, but those who
do will relish the ability to easily troubleshoot their Maxscript code.

Motion Mixer. Animation is Max’s fortà© and the new
Motion Mixer strengthens an already powerful feature set. Motion Mixer,
introduced in 3ds Max 7 but limited to Biped objects, is now available
for all types of animation and objects. For those not familiar, Motion
Mixer is essentially a nonlinear editor for animation, giving the
animator the flexibility to drag and drop movements onto characters as
if they’re scenes being cut together.

Any production can build a library of motion and movement that can be
applied as needed, such as walk, sit, stand, gesture arms, sit, stand
and walk. This saves tremendous amounts of time over the course of a
production, and increases flexibility when building scenes.

Additional improvements to motion capture support, Biped, polygonal
modeling tools, skinning and project management continue to strengthen
Max’s leadership position.

Max still has a few strikes against it, like its devotion to only one
platform. By now, ten years after Max’s introduction, we should at
least have a free-standing render engine for the Linux and Mac
operating systems. Video preview of the render window through a
FireWire port should be rolled in by now, too (Adobe’s After Effects
has had it for years). And Max’s price for new users is still a tough
nut. But to be fair, Autodesk (and Discreet before it) has kept the
price at the same point while adding in some powerful features that
were previously expensive options and add-ons.

Current Max users will find the improvements to the character animation
and texturing tools make the cost of upgrading a bargain, and new users
considering Max are buying into a full-featured and mature application
with a huge customer base (i.e. plenty of places to get help). On the
other hand, with Autodesk’s recent purchase of Alias (Maya, a serious
competitor for Max) the future isn’t so clear. It’s hard to imagine
Autodesk closing shop on either Max or Maya, and yet why would they
spend time and money maintaining both? The next incarnation of Max (or
Maya) is going to be very interesting, but don’t let uncertainty deter
you from making a choice today. 3ds Max 8 has a huge mature feature set
and global support. Whatever features future versions will have,
version 8 will be tough to beat.

Hardware: Pentium III or AMD processor, 500 MHz or higher
512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
500 MB disk space (2 GB recommended)
Graphics card supporting 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color with 64 MB RAM
DVD-ROM drive

Software: Windows XP with Service Pack 2
(recommended) or Home Edition with Service Pack 2 or Windows 2000 with
Service Pack 4
Internet Explorer 6
DirectX 9.oc