Jefferson Grigsby

Those of you who have worked in complicated scenes imported from ADT, Revit, AutoCAD, have likey been giddy about autodesks claims that Max 2008 will manage complicated scenes more efficiently. When I say complicated scene, I am not talking about polygon count, but the number of actual pieces of geometry in a scene. If you have 12000 cubes in a scene, Max 9 would hang up at render time and the real time display would choke. Attach all of those objects into one, still the same number of poly's, and everything runs smooth again. The problem is not actiual polygon count, but number of objects in the scene. If you you use DWG link, then likely you have thousands as well.

In 2008 the display issues seem to be cleared up, although still not stellar performance in "complicated scenes", but at render time there is still a significant lag. This is unaceptable and a huge disspaointment on my end. I have several model files that will lag for 7-10 minutes everytime I hit render. Multiply that time 20, and 3 hours for my day is spent waiting fro max to compile geomtry. i I attach all the objects togetehr, then problem solved. However, I have to do this each and evey time there is a design change.

Why autodesk can't simply give us a fetaure in the DWG import that automates this is beyond me. 10 versions of this program and they still can not solve basic workflow issues. ADT and DWG link have created more problems than answers on our end. Anyone that remembers Vizrender and the architectural materials that Autodesk came up with is likely throwing on their keyboard reading this.

I am once again dissapointed by Autodesks claims,

Justin Hunt

I hear you, and I sympathise. It is the main reason why we rearly use revit to do our models, talk about crazy object count.

This brings about the valve of efficient modeling, both in CAD and Max. Unfortunatly there are alot of lazy modelers out there who dont give a second thought to scene organisation, clean modeling and only putting detail where detail is needed.

Think back to the days of PentiumII's then come back and talk to me about poor display speeds

JHV

Brian Smith

I hear you too. Unfortunately, i dont think autodesk does enough to go out into the 3D community to see what the real workflow issues are. they say they spend a lot of time querying companies for issues to solve, but i would love to know what companies they are talking to that dont bring some of these issues up. case in point, for 6 months here on cga and numerous other websites, i advertised my new Max book with the title '3ds Max 10'...only after 6 months did someone at autodesk inform me that my using that title was a really really really bad thing that put autodesk at serious risk for some sort of SEC action lawsuit, and that i needed to remove the '10' in the title immediately. if autodesk had just one person monitoring some of these sites regularly, they would see bigger issues than those pointed out in their current research methods

__________________
Brian Smith
www.3dats.com
3D Architectural Training Solutions

Justin Hunt

What I find funny is how much focus was brought onto the FLM and how well it brings in Revit and ADT models, back when Max9 was launched. With in hours of its release forums around the world were floored with bug reports. You would think that they would have made it rock solid. I myself spent weeks talking with Adesk support, proving to them one of the major floors (loosing material assignments).

Thankfully in Max2008 these have been fixed, well done. But really once again they bring focus on the new improved features of the FLM, It remembers the material name, woohoo. Just a pity I still have 10000000000000000's of block header names that I don't need or want.

It seems crazy that since dos days we have been told to keep an eye on object count, yet the Revit import flies in the face of this wisdom

One of the guys in the office went to the Max2008 launch here in Brisbane, and he tells me that Adesk finally admitted that the Revit import isn't working and a fix may be available early next year. PLEASE DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS AS I CANT VERIFY THE FACTS,

JHV

Billabong

I am in total agreement.AutoDesk, bascially owns the 3D industry, it seems that Max has more issues than any other 3D app out there. Right now with 2008, no matter what I try, importing fbx's has become only a dream. I have yet to succesfully import an fbx into max,as where in max 9 I never had that problem. It would just seem to me a Corporation as big as Autodesk would be on the ball with fixes, but its quite the opposite

__________________
www.billa1.com

Brian Smith

well i highly doubt any problems with any max release is from a lack of effort...just a lack of priority...as seen through the eyes of the average user in production

__________________
Brian Smith
www.3dats.com
3D Architectural Training Solutions

Billabong

Thats just it though, even though it is a lack of priority. Max has been around probably longer than any app besides cad. It seems they keep most of thier focus on Maya, since it is the film' industry choice of programs. This is just speculation though

__________________
www.billa1.com

Brian Smith

i would have to disagree about their focus. they've only owned maya for a little over a year, so they havent had anything to do with it before. and the number of maya users is just a tiny fraction of the number of max users, so if they did, it would be foolish. and we really have no idea what there future plans are. i personally think within 3 years we will have 3ds Maya or something like it

__________________
Brian Smith
www.3dats.com
3D Architectural Training Solutions

Billabong

If that is the case, then what would be thier reasoning for such poor updates. I know you don't know, I'm just thinking out loud. I also really hope your wrong about the max/maya combo thing. I personally hate Maya. I have had the PLE of that program for awhile just to see what it was like. I don't like nodes. Once again, just thinking out loud

__________________
www.billa1.com

Brian Smith

i was a beta tester for max 2008 and saw a lot of feedback between testers and autodesk about the logic of the new features...autodesk would claim that they did a tremendous amount of research and determined that the most important improvements, based on the feedback from the people they queried, was to improve system performance...not to add a bunch of new features, but rather improve the ones already out. this got a lot of mixed reviews by testers, some saying it's the best release in years and others saying it's pathetic. the bottom line is that you can never please everyone all of the time, but it would be nice if some of their autodesk developers actually paid a visit to sites like cga to see what we think

__________________
Brian Smith
www.3dats.com
3D Architectural Training Solutions