3D Max 2008

When you use a piece of software most of the day, you get to know what’s great about it and also the things that drive you mad. Let’s have a look at some of the new features of Max 2008 and see which can be useful for day to day use. Some of the key features for the new installment include Adaptive Degradation System, a new scene explorer, expanded DWG compatibility and an updated real-time preview of lighting.

Working on large architectural sites can often be a headache as you usually have to push the limits both size and polygon wise. Often you’re juggling millions of polygons, which is where the adaptive degradation system comes in to help. When using 2008 with the degradation on there is an improved viewport framerate when compared to previous versions of Max. It’s definitely more robust and less likely to crash than before. Generally though, having a structured layers system is probably a better way to work on a project when they reach that scale. Overall, a fairly noticeable improvement but it can of course reach the point where you have a framerate of 1 or 2.

Moving on to next feature, and also my pet hate, the new scene explorer. When I read about it I thought it sounded great. Often times it can be hard to single out a particular object or group quickly among thousands, even with naming conventions and tidy layers. So with the new improved explorer this task is supposed to be easy. First of all, when you reach the point when it’s really needed (ridiculous numbers of houses, kerbs and whatever else) the scene explorer takes an age to open. Before it was an instant dialog box and quite handy. But now, you click it, and sit there until it decides hmmm…. yes, it’s time to open!

This is most likely because of all the new methods of selection, filtering and searching but it almost reaches the point of being bloated. It probably wouldn’t annoy me so much if the filters worked properly. Even if you save your settings for next time, the explorer opens up with the default listing of objects by creation date, which I’ve never found useful. Normally if you have a selection before opening the explorer, that selection is highlighted upon opening. However, with the new explorer if you haven’t got the relevant category (ie. geometry etc) enabled it forgets that you ever made a selection beforehand. Probably not much but it can get frustrating to do it all day.

The real time preview, called Review, is a nice addition with 2008. You can make your light setup and see roughly it will affect your model. This can be very helpful for doing hero shots etc. where you need to know how the shadows will be casting to get the desired effect. The only problem can be if you have G.I. obviously as it doesn’t calculate the resulting ambient light.

3D Max is still the package of choice when modeling for architecture. The polygon modeling tools are great (even if the cut tool can still act a little strange) and 2008 has brought some nice changes and a robust piece of software you can enjoy trying to break.