Category: News

Maya Creative offers modelling, animation, and rendering tools for artists and teams looking to scale up their workflows or access professional tools.

Unlike Maya, Maya Creative comes without API access and the extensibility needed for larger production workflows and will only be supported on Windows and Mac.

The Bifrost plug-in will be available on Maya Creative as read-only.

Customers can only access Maya Creative with Flex, a pay-as-you-go option for daily product use. 

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Compare the features of Maya v Maya Creative.

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V-Ray 6 for Maya packs in a number of powerful, new tools that enable users to create without limits. They can now generate complex surfaces for stunning close-up shots at no extra memory cost. Craft just the right sky for their environment in just a few clicks.

Take their product design and HDRI renders to the next level, and more. With V-Ray 6, users can also make use of Chaos Cloud Collaboration to fast-forward their projects’ reviews and approvals, as well as easily monitor and manage rendering performance with V-Ray Profiler. Plus, they can experience a number of other workflow enhancements including identical results from IPR and the production renderer, enhanced USD support, faster and more efficient rendering, background Chaos Cloud Rendering submissions and much more.

Key features in V-Ray 6 for Maya

Create without limits.  Powerful, new tools allow you to build anything imaginable.

V-Ray Enmesh. Create complex surfaces with lots of detail for stunning close-up shots. With Enmesh, you can repeat geometry across the surface of an object at no extra memory cost. Start treating geometry like a texture, creating intricate chain mails, car grilles, metal grids, panels, fences, fabrics, and so much more.

Finite Dome light mode. Elevate your product design and HDRI environment renders with the new, more flexible ground projection capabilities of the V-Ray Dome Light. Set the scale of your light, and have full control over blend settings with the new Finite Dome mode.

Procedural clouds. Craft just the right cloudy sky for your environment in just a few clicks with V-Ray Sun and Sky’s new procedural clouds system. No need to settle for a static HDR or a cloudless sky. Now you can easily simulate a variety of cloud types and weather conditions, from partly cloudy to overcast. Render realistic stills or dynamic time-lapses.

V-Ray Decal with Displacement. You can now use V-Ray Decal to add displacement to any surface for even more realistic cracked walls, rocks, scratched and rusty surfaces, embossed lettering, and more.

Streamline your workflow. Fast-forward your project’s reviews and approvals.

Chaos Cloud Collaboration. Get rapid, consolidated feedback on your work’s progress. Upload your renders to Chaos Cloud Collaboration right from V-Ray’s Frame Buffer, and share your work with colleagues and clients to add comments and annotations, see panorama views and more — from anywhere in the world.

Easily monitor and manage rendering performance, and so much more.

V-Ray Profiler.  Get reports on the time spent calculating shaders and volumes in your scenes. Locate all hot spots in your scene and optimize pipelines for even faster rendering. Pair V-Ray Profiler with the Memory Tracker, and you now have everything you need to monitor and optimize your projects.

Light Cache in IPR. Make better decisions while iterating on your designs with V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) output now being identical to the production renderer.

Background Cloud Cloud submissions.  You now have uninterrupted access to Maya when submitting to Chaos Cloud Rendering, so you can continue working.

Enhanced USD support. Experience a USD workflow that’s smoother than ever. We’ve added support for the latest MayaUSD version as well as included new enhancements for OpenVDB volumes and V-Ray material exports, promoting an easy exchange with Solaris and USD-powered pipelines.

Faster rendering.  V-Ray Environment Fog now renders up to 30% faster. Translucent material rendering is also up to 2x faster thanks to V-Ray Material’s brand-new Illumination mode. Plus, scenes featuring thousands of instances now render more efficiently.

Shade faster and better. Speed up shading and create even more physically accurate materials.

Thin Film layer.  Create realistic soap bubbles, oil spills and more with the new Thin Film option available in the V-Ray Material.

Enhanced V-Ray Material energy preservation. Render even more physically accurate rough metals and other reflective surfaces with enhanced V-Ray Material energy preservation.

Composition Guides Layer in VFB. Fine-tune your scenes’ compositions without going to a separate application. With customizable overlays, the new composition guides layer in the VFB allows you to easily experiment and enhance your image compositions.

VFB Panorama Viewer.  Now you can preview your spherical panorama renders while rendering, right from your V-Ray Frame Buffer.

What’s new

 V-Ray is the renderer that does it all, allowing users to create without limits. No need to switch applications and interrupt your creative process. Users can easily create complex surfaces with lots of detail for realistic close-up shots at no extra memory cost.

V-Ray 6 speeds up shading and allows users to create even more physically accurate reflective materials.

V-Ray 6 for Maya also enables users to easily monitor your scene’s shaders and volumes rendering performance and locate hot spots for optimization.

You now have a fast and efficient way to share your renders, collect feedback and collaborate with your team or customers. You can also create custom skies for their environments in just a few clicks and render powerful timelapse videos.

V-Ray 6 introduces a number of enhancements that streamline users’ workflows, including consistent results between IPR and the production renderer, enhanced USD support, faster and more efficient rendering, and more.

V-Ray 6 adds even more functionality to the V-Ray Frame Buffer and enables you to further streamline your workflow and make better decisions as you review your work.

Users can now render with V-Ray in any host application and benefit from the powerful suite of Chaos products and services with just a single license.

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Go anywhere your creative instincts take you and build anything imaginable — faster than ever before. 

Create faster and render better than ever before. Populate your scenes with millions of 3D objects to create natural-looking landscapes and realistic environments quickly and easily. Generate detailed surfaces using repeating geometric patterns at no extra memory cost. Create beautiful custom skies with procedural clouds, collaborate in the Cloud, and much more.

Pricing and Licensing 

To simplify the V-Ray product line and to offer customers more value and flexibility, Chaos will no longer sell V-Ray for specific host applications. Instead, customers will only need to purchase a single V-Ray license to access all V-Ray integrations, including 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Revit, Rhino, SketchUp, and Unreal.

V-Ray will also be offered in three tiers:  Solo, Premium, and Enterprise.

Chaos V-Ray Solo

For customers looking for the most cost-effective way to use V-Ray on a single computer, Solo is a great option. This node-locked V-Ray license can be used to set up and render on a single machine using any supported host integration. Access to 3D content on Chaos Cosmos is also included. V-Ray Solo is an excellent choice for those looking to save money without compromising on quality or features. Solo node-locked licenses will be available as monthly, annual, and 3-year subscriptions.

Chaos V-Ray Premium

The Premium tier is the best option for most customers and is comparable to the previous V-Ray Collection offering. With this tier, customers can install V-Ray on any machine and use it with any supported host application. Premium also includes a floating license for Chaos companion products, such as Phoenix, Player, Scans, and Vantage. In addition, it includes a starting pack of 20 free credits for Chaos Cloud rendering and access to the growing Chaos Cosmos content library. Premium floating licenses will be available as monthly, annual, and 3-year subscriptions.

Chaos V-Ray Enterprise

Enterprise is the most cost-effective option for studios and firms that need 5 or more licenses of V-Ray. Customers get all of the benefits of the Premium tier, but priced at a discount for multiple seats. Enterprise floating licenses will be available as annual and 3-year subscriptions. New license sales will be subscription only Subscriptions are an easy and flexible way for customers to stay current with all updates and new features of V-Ray. Monthly, annual, and 3-year subscription options are available for Solo and Premium tiers, providing an affordable option to start using V-Ray right away while benefiting from further discounted pricing for longer subscription plans. Enterprise plans do not include a monthly option and are priced for annual and 3-year terms.

There will be no perpetual license options for new customers.

	Solo	Premium	Enterprise
License Type	Node-locked license	Floating license	Floating license
Min. # of licenses	1	1	5
Support included	Yes	Yes	Yes
Included products:
Chaos V-Ray all*	✅	✅	✅
Chaos Cosmos	✅	✅	✅
Chaos Cloud**		✅	✅
Chaos Phoenix		✅	✅
Chaos Vantage		✅	✅
Chaos Player		✅	✅
Chaos Scans		✅	✅

Buy V-Ray 6 for 3ds Max

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So, what is volumetric video?

It’s a technique to record a live video performance and play it back from any angle. Cameras capture multiple vantage points simultaneously, and post-processing converts all the video captures into an animated volumetric dataset and 3d model. This 3d representation can be imported into any 3d environment extending the creative potential to playback and manipulate this animated data. It brings a new dimension to working with video over a flat 2d video taken from a single camera’s perspective

But why? We can only see from one point of view.

Volumetric video data offers another level of control and flexibility. Data can be embedded into immersive real-time virtual or augmented reality applications or used as part of video productions. Volumetric video adds an engaging advantage to creative processes. Viewing 3d video on the fly while it’s playing back from any angle is a powerful proposition for creative users. You can manipulate the lighting and colour, and, with a little interpolation, AI can help clean or smooth volumetric data and enhance the overall result.

Why would I need to do that?

Although volumetric video is in its infancy, volumetric data is not a new concept. Many consumer devices have been able to record and track video playback via cameras and infrared devices in applications to interpret gesture control or scan objects and faces for pseudo-3d or, when done professionally, highly detailed 3d models and complete environmental renditions. For example, the consumer photogrammetry approach typically uses a camera or video to capture an object placed centrally, and pictures are taken from multiple angles. Take enough photographs of the subject a detailed 3d model will materialise. It is a common technique that has been available for decades. Volumetric video capture records a complete performance, and there are many use cases.

Imagine being at a sports game or a music festival as a spectator. You can replay the event and watch it from any position. It’s possible to feel like you are standing on stage or viewing a replay of a memorable sporting victory from any angle. You control where you are standing by not having physical limitations, which you can’t get to see watching television. It takes you closer to the feeling of being there.

In creative industries, you can manipulate an actor’s performance even after a recording has finished or use the data to drive other CG characters.

Volumetric video and the extrapolated 3d data enhance the degree of control over precisely what you want to achieve. It opens up many creative benefits.

The concepts are similar to other virtual production tools but where volumetric video differs is that it captures physical movements and environments, not just stationary-based objects. But both have their uses and complement each other.

When you say perspective…

I mean exactly that. The great thing about volumetric video is that it records the scene in full 3d, so you aren’t even limited to the perspectives of the capturing devices. You can move, using a 3d camera, anywhere in the scene and view it from any angle. Think of a football game, where you want to view the action from a freely movable camera. Clearly, you can have thousands of cameras, covering every available angle and distance. Well, volumetric video builds that scene in 3d, so if you want to watch a glorious goal you can do so from any point of view, up close or taking in the whole pitch (or anything in between).

One more trick of this technology is that you can put yourself in the position of any of the performers, or even a static object in the scene, for an immersive experience.

There are also clear benefits beyond the entertainment field. Imagine a medical setting where a tricky situation can be observed from different perspectives or natural world events that can be preserved digitally. The opportunities are still growing.

Right, so what else?

Think about a trip to your favourite online shop. Imagine being able to choose an outfit and see it from any angle, at your pace and your direction. Some tools already exist that simulate this, as well as placing objects virtually in a space, but volume video takes this to a whole new level. Pick a wardrobe and decorate a space, then share that with whoever you so wish, for feedback or just to show off your style.

Ok, I’m sold. How do I get started?

To start the process, you’ll want a set of cameras, positioned similarly to how motion capture works, with a mesh of cameras surrounding a volume. The difference here is that shape, light, and colour are captured, not just the motion. Because of this, an evenly lit volume might be best but that will depend on the situation.

Next up, the captured footage will need to be processed ready for the consumer, or further edited or integrated into a 3d scene. Tools like Depthkit, HoloCap and Holosuite by Arcturus are ideal for this. The latter also offers non-linear editing tools to ease your projects along.

Once processed and edited, you can begin integrating the volumetric files into augmented or virtual reality projects, deliver online with real-time navigation of your scenes and much more.

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Graham explores the latest Autodesk Maya2023​ release, including the new Bifrost USD​ integration, and Arnold updates.

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What’s in the Arnold toolset 

Flexible and extensible API
Integrate Arnold into external applications and create custom shaders, cameras, light filters, and output drivers.

Universal Scene Description (USD) support
Maximize the power of USD with Arnold in production scenarios.

Imagers
Use Bloom, Light Mixer, Noice, and OptiX denoiser imagers to control lighting effects and automatically denoise after each render.

Stand-alone command-line renderer
Arnold has a native scene description format stored in human-readable text files. Easily edit, read, and write these files via the C/Python API.

Standard Surface shader
Produce a wide range of materials and looks with this energy-saving, physically-based uber shader.

Standard Hair shader
Render hair and fur with this physically based shader, based on the d’Eon and Zinke models for specular and diffuse shading.

Alembic procedural
Render Alembic files directly without any translation with a native procedural.

Profiling API and structured statistics
Identify performance issues and optimize rendering processes more easily with an extensive set of tools.

Material assignments and overrides
With operators, override any part of a scene at render time and enable support for open standard frameworks such as MaterialX.

Built-in Cryptomatte
Create ID mattes automatically with support for motion blur, transparency, and depth of field.

Integrated OpenColorIO v2
Take advantage of OpenColorIO v2 for state-of-the-art colour management.

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3D Modelling

Enhanced Retopology tools
Automatically reconstruct polygonal mesh data as clean quad-based topology with uncompromising accuracy. These tools can be used to reduce complex and high-resolution assets and enhance generative designs and traditional modelling work inside of 3ds Max.

Enhanced Smart Extrude
Interactively extrude faces on 3D objects using flexible Smart Extrude operations like cut-through and overlap. Rebuild and stitch adjacent faces automatically without needing to manually repair hidden faces or geometric data.

Mesh and surface modelling
Create parametric and organic objects with polygon, subdivision surface and spline-based modelling features.

Modifier stack workflow
Quickly conceptualise, iterate and explore design ideas using a range of unique modifiers.

Spline workflows
Create and animate geometry in several intuitive ways with spline tools.

Texturing and Shading

Open Shading Language (OSL) support
Generate high-quality textures that display accurately in the viewport using new or pre-existing OSL maps with any supported renderer.

Baking to texture
Experience a streamlined, intuitive and fully scriptable texture baking experience with support for PBR (physically based rendering) materials, overrides and OSL workflows.

Material editor
Add material finishes, change textures and use vibrant colours to create photorealistic designs.

Lighting
Illuminate and enhance your scenes using photometric lights and standard lights.

3D Rendering

Integrated Arnold renderer
Use the Arnold GPU renderer to view scene changes in real-time, including lighting, materials and camera.

Interactive viewports
Reduce design iteration with render-quality viewport previews, displaying PBR (physically based rendering) materials and camera effects directly.

ActiveShade viewport
With an interactive rendering experience, see your scene in a near-final rendering quality as you’re working.

Physical camera
Simulate real-life camera settings such as shutter speed, aperture, depth of field and exposure.

Scene converter
Seamlessly and consistently change materials, lights, cameras and renderers from one to another.

Animation and effects

Character animation tools
Create procedural character animations and rigs with CAT (character animation toolkit), biped and crowd tools.

Motion paths
Preview and adjust animation paths directly in the viewport.

3ds Max fluids
Create realistic liquid behaviours, such as water, oil and lava, as well as replicate gravity and collision effects.

Particle flow effects
Create sophisticated particle effects such as water, fire, spray and snow.

Extensive plug-in library
Access hundreds of industry-leading third-party plug-ins from our extensive community.

Workflow pipeline

Enhanced Software security
Use Safe Scene Script Execution to protect your work against malicious scripts that could be part of scene files and the Malware Removal functionality, which detects and removes known malicious scripts from scene files and startup scripts.

Python 3
Get tighter pipeline integration with support for Python 3.

Enhanced Pipeline integration support
Easily customise 3ds Max to fit your production pipeline needs.

Modern UI and workspaces
Create your own customised workspaces with a more modern, responsive, high-DPI-ready user interface.

New GL Transmission Format (glTF) support
Publish assets from your 3ds Max scene to glTF 3D content for use in web applications, online shops, browser games and other online plug sockets.

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The price is right.

Small agile teams are born out of the necessity to develop new tools and applications. The pioneering work in visual effects is often the starting point for innovation. Every few years, new digital content creation tools bridge a productivity gap, reimagine a VFX workflow, or forge ever more efficient ways to work more collaboratively to achieve and deliver ever-increasingly more complex shots.

Almost any application in the VFX space will have had a beginning with a similar story behind them. There is an overwhelming expectation to find commercial validity to support product longevity and increase market presence; otherwise, their competitors will take over. However, when done correctly, positive transformations in productivity and praise for innovation are recognised and rewarded by a loyal user base. Commercial success is practically secured. When enough noise is made, smaller firms are a target for acquisition by larger corporate giants looking to increase their market presence.

Over the last 20 years, the tools used for digital content creation, especially in the world of visual effects, have seen a lot of merging and consolidation due in no small part to acquisition.

Acquisition can happen in various ways and while it may be in the form of some type of capital investment, what is of more obvious concern to us in visual effects and content creation is the acquisition or merging of brands and what impact that has on the end-user experience over time.

For others, the worry is more about any adaptation or evolution of tools they had implemented into their pipeline. Would the new owner develop the tools into something that didn’t fit with what the artist or studio had initially bought them for, or could they be ended entirely?

The answers to these questions are varied and each case has a different outcome and can change over time.

Sometimes, one developer acquires a business or tool to gain access to part of the technology or to embed technology that is simply lacking in their own product offering, which is often the most common reason. Whether that technology is sequestered by another that the new owner already has or if it is run as before but under the new leadership is another matter and can go both ways.

Autodesk continues its recent acquisitions to bolster its industry advancement and competitive edge; recent examples include its acquisition of Tangent Labs and Moxion, facilitating its well-known strategy of becoming a true platform provider. Maxon’s recent purchase of Pixologic is a similar example.

Whichever process, evolution and outcome happens, the key to this from an end-user perspective, is to understand the impact on your own work, your business costs and forward planning.

Open to all

Of course, there is a totally different aspect to the consolidation of VFX technologies and it is certainly a bigger one, with far-reaching impact for everybody involved in this industry and one which has largely positive outcomes for all.

Having technologies that can fit into as many different pipelines as possible is a good thing for studios and artists alike, as it means that assets are more easily utilised in different ways, the talent pool becomes more dynamic, training needs are far fewer and the costs to the business are (hopefully) reduced.

What we are talking about here is the move to cross-platform technologies. By this, I don’t mean which OS a studio might use but the way certain elements of the VFX workflow have been and are being increasingly developed.

Although there are limitations, things like the OBJ and FBX file format meant that assets created in one tool could be used in another. The benefits here are clear, however, there have been other moves in the industry that take this well beyond the simple sharing of a model.

Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) is one such development and has seen rapid uptake, not just by studios and artists, but by other developers who are keen to support the open-source tools. This move makes it easier, more efficient and effective for teams to contribute to a project, from different locations, software suits and pipelines.

Epic’s Unreal Engine has become a huge tool, not just for game development but for all manner of use cases, from architecture to virtual production. Support for Unreal Engine has broadened too, not just in terms of the user base but other developers. SideFX and Chaos amongst others have developed tools for Unreal Engine integration and going back to acquisition, Epic now owns Quixel and rapidly added Megascans to the Unreal ecosystem.

And let’s not forget “collaboration”, as this often binds competitive products together, allowing the end-user to create effortlessly and optimise their pipeline; it’s natural that Maya (Autodesk) works seamlessly with Nuke (The Foundry) and Photoshop (Adobe) with 3ds Max (Autodesk), for example.

How do I know what’s best?

This is where we come in. Here at Bluegfx we understand your production needs and can help inform your decisions, not just in where to invest, but how you can build a pipeline and workflow, so it provides you the best solution for staging effective and efficient processes.

We have a dedicated team of technical and workflow specialists that keep up to date on all aspects of the industry and the wider community, so they can guide you through the process of initiating or developing your tech needs.

Whether you need guidance on your existing pipeline, or simply want to chat about best practices or what tools you can integrate to best support your production workflow, or if you are looking to start something new, we can guide you through the process.

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Bifrost makes it possible for 3D artists and TDs to create serious effects in Maya quickly and easily using a new visual programming environment.

Ready-to-Use Graphs 

From dust motes and volumetric clouds to fire and explosions, artists can explore a library of pre-built Bifrost graphs in the new Bifrost Browser to create great looking effects fast. Graphs can also be used as a starting point for creating custom effects from scratch. Users can then publish their own graphs to the Browser for other artists to easily find and re-use.

One Graph

In a single visual programming graph called the Bifrost Graph Editor, technical artists and TDs can mix nodes ranging from math operations, to file IO, particles, volumes, mesh or surface operations, and even simulations.

Realistic Previews

With Arnold integrated in Maya, artists can see exactly what their effects will look like after lighting and rendering, right in the Arnold Viewport. They can also see near-final previews of their effects in Viewport 2.0.

Not only do accurate previews reduce the potential for last minute iterations later on in production, they also provide artists with a more creatively engaging experience by making it easier to see the results of changes they make at interactive rates.

Detailed Smoke, Fire, and Explosions

New solvers for aerodynamics (Aero) and combustion make it easy for artists to create deceptively natural-looking smoke, fire, and explosions.

Simple artistic controls let artists adjust boundary conditions for effects to create more physically-accurate interactions with the surrounding scene and set up adaptivity to automatically add or remove detail depending on characteristics such as velocity, turbulence, and smoke density.

The combustion solver performs computational chemistry and thermodynamics to simulate the physical reactions of fire, flames, and explosions.

Artists can choose from an array of realworld fuels like methane and butane, and the solver automatically generates realistic outputs such as (digital) carbon monoxide and water vapor.

The Material Point Method

The Material Point Method (MPM) was made famous by its use as a snow solver in Disney’s Frozen. Autodesk teamed up with Jixie Effects, founded by members of the original research team, to develop a production-ready MPM solver. One of the key advantages of MPM is that the behavior of simulations remains consistent as resolution increases. While the original MPM work focused on granular simulation of snow, Jixie Effects has extended the Bifrost MPM solver to now tackle other phenomena, including:

• MPM Granular – Simulates granular materials such as sand and mud, as well as snow
• MPM Cloth – Simulates dynamic thin shells and cloth such as textiles, aluminum, and plastics
• MPM Fibers – Simulates dynamics of each fiber (or strand) individually

High-Performance Particle System

Using particles to drive aerodynamic and combustion simulations is a common and effective workflow. Entirely crafted using visual programming, the new particle system in Bifrost adds even more power to what was previously possible with particles in Maya with the ability to now break open and customize the system as needed.

Artistic Effects with Volumes

To create a desired effect, artists often need to convert between meshes, points and volumes, and process volumes for artistic effects. Bifrost comes loaded with a number of nodes for these purposes including converting meshes, points, and particles to volumes; converting volumes back to meshes; smoothing volumes; sampling properties of volumes; and scattering points inside volumes.

Technical artists can also use visual programming to artistically process volumes including advecting volumes with noise and adding noise to a volume.

Flexible Instancing

Bifrost introduces high performance, render-oriented instancing empowering users to create enormous complexity in their scenes without having to worry about overloading memory or slowing performance. At the heart of instancing is point-based geometry.

Artists can create instances with any number of procedural and artist-driven techniques, and then apply them to scattered points, particle systems such as the MPM solver, and vertices of any other geometry. Instance shapes are flexible and can be easily adjusted using a simple selection mechanism that can select between multiple layers of variation.

For example, one layer might distinguish between grass and flowers, and another might drill down to select variations of each.

Tightly integrated with Arnold instancing and Viewport 2.0, artists can instance any renderable Bifrost geometry including meshes, volumes, strands or points, as well as fully renderable assets in the form of render archives, such as Arnold .ass files.

Detailed Hair, Fur, and Fuzz

The world is full of fibres. From hair and fur to fuzz, clothing, grass, and even dust, artists frequently need to model things consisting of multiple fibres (or strands). Bifrost makes it simple for artists to do so procedurally.

• Using colored strands, artists can draw flowlines, vectors, and links between different elements to better understand data.
• It’s easy to alter the way strands look with controls for adjusting thickness, color, and orientation.
• Strands can be rendered using Arnold as either ribbons for hair shaders or cylinders for all other Arnold curve rendering options.

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Autodesk is introducing all-new experiences for Texture Baking and Install, major improvements to the Viewport, and key enhancements to Substance tools, ProSound and SketchUp import. You will also find speed improvements throughout your process from installation to rendering, and 3ds Max Python 3 now set as default Python interpreter.

User Challenges

The industries you serve are constantly changing and becoming more competitive. Customer demands and expectations are also increasing. New workflows and standards are required. More work needs to be done faster, and on projects that are growing in size and in complexity.

What’s New in 3ds Max 2021

MODERNIZATION

Bake to Texture

Streamlined, intuitive and fully scriptable texture baking experience, with support for PBR ( Physically Based Rendering), Overrides and OSL workflows.

• Modernized tools that support new physically based rendering (PBR) workflows
  • Roughness and Metalness maps added in Arnold
  • MikkT Normal maps support (industry standard)
•  New baked element for map override allows advanced and powerful workflow with OSL and procedural maps
• Streamlined experience
  • A more intuitive feature as all settings and functionalities are exposed in a linear way, align with the user journey.
• Fully scriptable for customization and automation.

Note: The legacy Render to Texture and Render to Surface tools are still available in 3ds Max. The goal is to have feature parity before removing the old functionalities.

Installer
The online and offline installation process has been overhauled for a simpler and faster experience.

• Faster and fewer clicks to install 3ds Max. Testing showed up to a 50% speed improvement, though results vary greatly based on machine specifications and internet bandwidth.
• In-product messaging to prompt user to install missing or optional components.

Scripting with Python 3
We are investing in improving 3ds Max’s Python support to offer developers and technical artists a modern and robust experience for extending and integrating 3ds Max into production pipelines.

• 3ds Max 2021 comes with Python 3 and an improved pymxs API that gives access to all the 3ds Max features.
• Our integration of PySide2 allows developers and technical artists to create cross-application user interfaces that work seamlessly in 3ds Max.
• Off-the-shelf Python 3 extension libraries are fully supported, extending the reach and power of the tools our user can create.

Note: Python 3 is the default Python interpreter, however Python 2 is still supported when explicitly enabled through a 3ds Max command line switch or environment variable.

Arnold as the Default Renderer
Presenting users with a modern and high-end rendering experience right out of the box.

• 3ds Max 2021 ships with Arnold 6.0
• Supports new Bake to Texture workflows.
• New Scene Converter scripts provided to efficiently convert from V-Ray and Corona materials to the Physical Material.

PERFORMANCE

Physically Based Rendering (PBR) 3ds Max 2021 adds several features to simplify the use of PBR workflows in the viewport when rendering, and when working with real time engines.

• The renderer-independent Physical Material in now the default everywhere, which facilitates modern, physically based rendering and real-time engines to take maximum advantage of it.
• New, simplified PBR Materials specifically intended for simplifying real-time engine workflows.
• The viewport shader for the Physical Material is improved to give a visual appearance that is much closer to the final appearance in real-time engines (game, VR, etc.)
• Full export/import of Physical Material in FBX.

Improved Viewport Quality & Settings
Simpler viewport configuration workflows allow you to produce high quality and high-fidelity viewports which were previously cumbersome to achieve.

• Viewport Settings can now be saved as presets
• New Progressive refinement controls in the UI
• Ambient Occlusion is now always visible when manipulating the viewport
• New roughness support for the Physical Material
• Viewport Statistics Performance improvements
• Shadows for lights are now on by default

OSL Shaders
Enhanced UI and new shaders improve the overall user experience with OSL.

• The OSL shaders now support a custom UI template designed in Qt designer, as well as several new ways to drive UI from the metadata, allowing a much more visually appealing and useable UI.
• (Some of the) new OSL shaders in 2021:
  • Color Correction
  • HDRI Environment
  • HDRI Lights
  • Float and Color Curves
  • Camera Projection
  • Object Projection
  • Spherical Projection
  • Uber Noise

File I/O
Saving scene files with a very large number of assets has been significantly sped up.

• This improvement also benefits Autobackup (Autosave) and Hold operations.
• Files with more assets have greater speed improvements. In our testing, we found that a scene with roughly thousand assets could save 50% faster.

Modeling
New Chamfering improvements and Weighted Normals modifier

• Chamfer improvements: Providing consistency with the Chamfer modifier work that was added and refined in previous 2020 releases, we have added support for our new chamfer technology to the vertex, edge, and face level component modes of an Edit Poly modifier and Editable Poly object. Users can now utilize the benefits of 3ds Max’s leading chamfer technology to add detail and refinement to their Poly models.
  • Enhanced chamfer support for Edit Poly and Editable Poly operations inside of 3ds Max
  • Preserves and works with existing UV data when generating new mesh results
  • Added support for Uniform, Radial, and Patch chamfer types
  • Added support for Edge Depth, End Bias, and Radial Bias control and refinement
  • Smoothing support for the generated results so that you can blend the new geometry into existing mesh data.
• Weighted Normals modifier: Based on user demand, we’ve added support for weighted normals to be calculated and applied to models in 3ds max. o Generate new explicit normals for your mesh data faster and better than ever before possible inside of 3ds max.
  • Use Area, Angle, or Largest Face weight options to influence the direction of the computed normal results
  • Generate hard edge normals for your mesh via defined Smoothing Groups/Defined Hard Edges, UV seams, and/or Edge Angle that you have already placed on your mesh.
  • Control the smoothing/blending of the various results to increase the output

FIT & FINISH

SketchUp Import
We continue to enhance the ATF-based SketchUp importer in an effort to make it the only SketchUp importer necessary in 3ds Max.

• Based on customer feedback, we have added the following options:
  • The ability to completely skip importing Hidden Elements from the SketchUp file
  • The ability to preserve Layer information from the SketchUp file and use it automatically assign imported objects to matching Max layers

Substance
New Substance2 map type, performance improvements, and many new capabilities.

• Updates to latest Substance engine for native SBSAR file loading. No longer need to export maps from Substance Designer.
• Support for up to 8k textures.
• Support for all render engines that ship with Max (Arnold, Scanline, Quicksilver, ART)
• New, scripted tools to quickly set up Substances with a particular type of material or to bake out maps to files.
• The Substance plugin now comes as a separate component to install; therefore, you only need to install it when you need it.

Note: The legacy Substance map is still included, however we may look to remove it in the future.

ProSound
Improved audio support.

• Added support for 24bit .wav files
• Added support for 88.2kHz and 96khz sample rates.
• Added support for unlimited number of audio clips. (Previously there was a maximum of 100 clips.)
• Fixed sound issue causing audio to play at 50% volume after frame 100.

FBX Improvements

• The option to export animation only when exporting to FBX is now available in the UI. It was formerly available via scripting only.
• Added support in FBX exporter for Shell material – option to export the original of the baked material.
• Along with Physical Material support, FBX was updated to support exporting and importing OSL nodes in 3ds Max
• Post-Sampling key reduction can be disabled by script. This may be useful when importing subtle animation data that needs preserved when resampled.

3rd Party Developer Tools
Plugin compatibility with 3ds Max 2020, and improvements to Plugin Packaging.

• 3ds Max 2021 supports plugins compiled for 3ds Max 2020, giving users the freedom to migrate when they are ready, without worrying whether their preferred tools and plugins are available.
• The Plugin Package format now supports AMG and OSL shaders, and Scene Converter extensions. This allows a wider range of plugins to use the application plugin packaging format.
• Using the application plugin package format makes it easy to distribute the plugins on the Autodesk App Store, and simplifies development and installation of plugins for 3ds Max.

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Find out more

Visit our product page here for more details 

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Contact Us

Call us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu