Can someone explain 3ds max?

[hendu]

I got a chance to give Max 11 a good try today.

From an engineering perspective, it's a piece of poop.


- Every time you do something (open a menu, hover a button...) the whole app flickers. It's
like they re-implemented a toolkit, poorly. Damage, they have not heard of it.
Dragging/resizing the window shows this effect in a much stronger view.

- Fonts are not anti-aliased. Probably due to their own clumsy toolkit, as surmised above.

- Their help crashed the first time I pressed F1.

- The theme is very low contrast, it consists of two colors: light grey on dark grey. This
makes it very difficult to distinguish one button from another, when they both are light
grey circles with slightly different light grey scribble inside them.

- Very slow startup.

- Not possible to configure it to have Y up. It can export that way, but not change the
editing view.

- Apparently not possible to configure it to have a decent preview in the 3d viewport.


These are just the most glaring faults. They're making it painfully obvious how incompetent
they are, I have a hard time figuring out how they're even still in business, not even
talking about commanding the kind of prices Max sells for.

You'd think an app that's been in development since 1995, that costs more for one license
than an UI designer would cost for 3-4 weeks, would even get basic usability right. It
doesn't.


I feel sorry for the artists...

[shadowslair]

I`m using version 2012, been using 3ds max since version 7.

I got a chance to give Max 11 a good try today. From an engineering perspective, it's a piece of poop.

From an engineering perspective, it`s a quite complicated tool, consisting from many different subtools, made to work together.

- Every time you do something (open a menu, hover a button...) the whole app flickers. It's
like they re-implemented a toolkit, poorly. Damage, they have not heard of it.
Dragging/resizing the window shows this effect in a much stronger view.

None of these happens here.

- Fonts are not anti-aliased. Probably due to their own clumsy toolkit, as surmised above.

Fonts are pretty much okay, I also think that antialising them will result in much harder-to-read fonts, so font sizes will need to be bigger.

- Their help crashed the first time I pressed F1.

Well, I don`t quite remember ever pressing F1, even by accident, but a simple press just made the firefox popup with the autodesk documentation, which I believe is the intended behaviour.

- The theme is very low contrast, it consists of two colors: light grey on dark grey. This
makes it very difficult to distinguish one button from another, when they both are light
grey circles with slightly different light grey scribble inside them.

On my monitor here, which I assume to be nicely calibrated, everything looks just fine. And you can always adjust the theme the way you`d like it. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoFvGxEZ-Ww )

- Very slow startup.

On my ancient home machine: WinXp, Pentium Dual E5700 3Ghz, 2Gb Ram, 1Gb ATI5670 it starts for 12 seconds, having to load about 20 extra external plugins/startup scripts. IMO its ok.

- Not possible to configure it to have Y up. It can export that way, but not change the
editing view.

Never actually thought about this as being an issue, or the need to change it, but yes, it may be nice to have this feature.

- Apparently not possible to configure it to have a decent preview in the 3d viewport.

Using custom shaders, I can get 1:1 result as in the application models are made for, except for some more advanced stuff, which is rare.

These are just the most glaring faults. They're making it painfully obvious how incompetent
they are, I have a hard time figuring out how they're even still in business, not even
talking about commanding the kind of prices Max sells for.

I did not see a single serious fault from all you mentioned so far. And yes, for some reason they`re still in the business, and are still doing fine.

You'd think an app that's been in development since 1995, that costs more for one license
than an UI designer would cost for 3-4 weeks, would even get basic usability right. It
doesn't.

I`m so used to the interface, that I`d kill the guy, who tries to change the UI. Know at least 50 more peeps that`d do the same.

I feel sorry for the artists...

Well, don`t be. Artists are just fine, making all designers ideas true, even the most ridiculous ones. Making their living money, feeding their children, and living happily.

In fact I understand how you feel. I feel the same with Blender, while there are many artists that like it alot. It`s a matter of personal preference I guess.
As every software, it definitely has its crashes, issues and stuff, making us tear our hair, but most of which usually appear while doing more advanced stuff like animations and stuff with some big scenes and in some particular cases, but are being fixed in time. I personally find it as a useful tool that helps me get the job done. It comes with a trial period, so everyone who doesn`t like it won`t be forced to buy and use it.

[Mel]

MAX Works fine for me. and if the colors are a problem, they can be completely customized. I have been working with 3DS for more than 15 years now and never have disappointed me.

i have never seen any serious flick issue. Maybe redraw problems, but only when it is heavily loaded. (and i mean 12 Gigs of RAM) or when the video driver was wasted due to very long and heavy usage sessions.

The whole program is built over MAXScript, you can edit the script of almost any command of 3DSMAX (press the RMB over the buttons, in most of them you can edit the script they run) I don't know if that is what makes MAX slow, but it is a flexible system.

I don't see as a problem that the fonts in 3DS MAX aren't antialiased.

The help always worked for me. How are you running 3DS MAX?

The Z up axis is a choice they made in the times of 3DSR4 in MS-DOS long, long ago, and i don't think it will ever change. Not an issue inside the program really, and the exporters/importers provide correct conversions

The preview may use shaders, but the only way to have them is to use DirectX9c (not even DirectX10, only DX9) as the graphics driver. You can have any amount of shadow mapped lights, both directional and omnidirectional, ambient occlusion and the posibility to use custom shaders using the DirectX Shader material. thought using realtime shaders isn't what 3DS MAX is meant for, so don't expect much from it. 3DS MAX isn't meant for real time graphics.

And finally, you aren't forced to use it. If you don't like it, use another software.

This was done in 3DS MAX 5, for instance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNNqHxiEuTQ

If it is the most extended, it is just a matter that the rest of 3D applications only reached the average user when their Windows versions appeared. Maya, Softimage or Lightwave were Unix or Amiga only in their times, when 3DS/3DS MAX has been MS-DOS/Windows always.

I wil agree with you, though, that it startup is extremely slow.

[hendu]

None of these happens here.

"Works for me" does not mean the issue does not exist. It happens on every machine there, so clearly their QA failed. All are evergreen radeons, with dual screens, on win7 64-bit - not an uncommon setup by any chance.

I did not see a single serious fault from all you mentioned so far. And yes, for some reason they`re still in the business, and are still doing fine.

Slow and buggy are not serious faults to you? Or buttons that can't be distinguished from each other in the shipped default theme?

It indeed seems like they move by sheer inertia, and people who got accustomed to it before stay using it even though it's crap.

And finally, you aren't forced to use it. If you don't like it, use another software.

Entirely correct. Now that I know how bad it is, I'll be avoiding it for the rest of my life.

Before trying it, I thought it was simply like Blender - hard to use UI, but powerful and usable. Now I know how badly hacked together it really is.

[kazymjir]

Hey Hendu, I think you may have "switching to something new" effect.

After using some software for a long time and then switching to another one, usually you think the new one sucks. A good example is... Facebook! Look what was people reaction to "timeline" - they all was yelling it suck, that Facebook is falling, that they will be not using Facebook with this crap, etc. But after some time, people just accustomed to the "timeline" and nobody cares about it.

Just try to accommodate to the new software. After a week or two you may find this software useful. I had the same when I was switching the software I was working on by years. Usually a few weeks is enough for accommodation.

About all this flickering, etc, check your computer settings. Maybe you have refresh rate too low, maybe you have something with the configuration.

About the theme contrast - just adjust your monitor. In many games, before the first play, the game opens a contrast/brightness configuration to adjust monitor settings. Try messing with contrast/brightness levels and you will fix the annoying contrast problem.

[Mel]

I use a laptop with Windows 7 64bit and an Nvidia card. Something i have seen not obstant, is that whenever i have used an ATI card, MAX starts having issues sooner or later, though with NVidia, i never faced any trouble.

Not obstant, their customer help program is or at least was some years ago, fairly good, they provided new versions of the programs with bugfixes to those who reported the bugs for free. Later, they started providing free SP1 versions, maybe contacting them could solve anything.

On my end i am trying to get into Blender, but to no avail, its UI is just too confusing for me. Happens something similar to Softimage too, the user interface is what keeps me from using it.

[kazymjir]

IMO all is just matter of habit, about UI

[hendu]

I don't have any years of experience using some other 3d modeler, so I don't think that's it. I also think Blender's UI sucks, however it seems to have much less bugs than Max - curious, when one is free and one is >3k$

I didn't list anything about the UI for exactly that reason - I need a few weeks using it before I can say whether the UI is good (button placement, default keyboard actions etc). The button coloring being bad by default is something different, it's not something you can get used to - if it's bad, it stays bad no matter how long you use it. After a couple of hours I had to use them by memorizing their places, and hovering each time to get the tooltip to be sure it was the right button...

--

I simply expect a decent quality app for that price. Having so many elementary bugs, while still being that costly, is something I have a really hard time understanding. That's the main point of this thread.

[hendu]

Got to try a newer version, 2013. It has every bug except the f1 help crash. Also, the 2013 version's default theme has buttons that you can actually distinguish


I've now used it for a few weeks. While it certainly works, the UI is in many places unintuitive, illogical, and clearly patched many times over the years. I've used worse UIs, but also better ones.

[chronologicaldot]

Just curious: What are you using it for? Is it because there are some features in 3ds max you can't get elsewhere?
If you're just using it for model design, there are other model makers that are easier to use. Personally, out of the dozen or so free/shareware model editors I've tried, I prefer Metasequoia.
If you're looking for something else that matches what 3ds max can do, then I understand your situation.

[Mel]

I am giving a try to Blender, and for now, i think i could make the same with both programs... It really depends on the skill of the user. On the animation field and UV mapping options, i still can't really tell though.

Don't expect improvements on MAX's interface, because unless they made it once and for all from scratch, it will keep relying on the same system they created more than 15 years ago

[fmx]

Bugs aside, the whole point of using any application is to create content quickly -
many Max users, including myself, have adapted to the bugs and nuances and are able to quickly create whatever we need using any given version of Max

So dont waste your time whining about bugs and imperfections, spend some time to learn how to do things and create the assets you need for your projects.

But I can understand why you brought up this topic
since you're a programmer yourself and wouldn't have created such a buggy application in the first place

[hendu]

I'm taking a course in Max, to see what it's like

So no, haven't splashed a few grand on such a buggy app, nor do I intend to. Not really intending to actually use it for anything either, just to get a look at the modeling side's workflow.


I'll probably end up using Blender if I actually need to model something (that's not architectural - I'm pretty good in NetRadiant, it's just not meant for fine modeling). Misfit model, which I can also use well, only works for smaller models.

[hendu]

We babby-tier modelers now. The software is still a piece of crap, if I wrote something that buggy I'd get fired.

[Klunk]

takes at least 6 months on any top 3d package to become proficient enough to make a proper judgement, and that's 6 month of production asset creation. The trouble with all these packages is their desire to be all things to all men, from a 500 poly game asset production tool to 50 million poly scene for rendering an over the top film cgi sequence. Though the second can be sometimes very useful for the first (render to texture, baked radiosity lighting etc) it can bloat the application down in unnecessary functionality. The best modeller I've ever used was lightwave, intuitive, easy to pick up.... was it as good a production tool as Max no probably not, as the scripting and SDK make its such very powerful with streamlined and versatile pipelines. Use it don't use it, but as an 3D asset creation tool it does everything it says on the tin.