3D Studio Max 2008

3D Studio Max 2008

Eventually all upgrades start running out of numbers. Wisely eschewing ‘Pro’ and ‘Platinum’ tags, and avoiding the obvious ‘Version 10’, this release has been dubbed 3D Studio Max 2008. Does the change of name signal a change of direction? Apparently not – Autodesk isn’t trying to redevelop 3ds Max. It’s still pitched primarily at designers, architects and games houses, and doesn’t seem to be trying to claim the territory owned by Maya, the now parallel product brought into the Autodesk stable last year. If anything, it’s heading in the opposite direction, with closer links to Autodesk’s Revit Architecture, suggesting that the architecture market is increasingly significant.

There isn’t room here to detail all of the changes in this release – that would take four or five pages, instead of one – but the executive summary is that the most obvious upgrade is faster rendering. This is thanks to a combination of rewritten code and new optimisations for some of the lighting features – for example, a SkyPortal feature can light a scene through a window and doesn’t waste time calculating lighting outside of it.

The speed-ups aren’t marketing hype. They’re very obvious and don’t just save time – they increase productivity. Edit/render times are shorter and more complex scenes and animations are now possible, helped further by a new tool called Review, which offers fast preview with customisable lighting and shadows. This creates more realistic previews while editing and lighting scenes, without the cost of a final render.

Another new tool is Scene Explorer, which provides a hierarchical view of scene data and includes searching and sorting. This is a step up from the previous Scene Management system and comes into its own when working with complex scenes with thousands of different elements.

Modelling and scripting have also been enhanced. Modelling has been given a subtle makeover with better model previews and improved hotkey support. This part of the package is still slightly creaky – Maya has more flexible modelling overall – but it’s an improvement on the previous version. There are no new scripting features – the links to Python 2.5 remain – but a new MAXScript ProEditor tool offers a better scripting environment, with line numbers and coloured highlights. This may not be the most exciting option, but it’s standard issue for software coders and does aid productivity.

Finally biped rigging is improved, with the ability to add extra bones, limbs or other features and save their motion to a separate file – a feature that will please game designers.

3D Studio Max 2008 Download Here

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3D Studio Max 2008 Download Here