Connection Extension Pack release for 3dsmax 2010

[BrianKitts]

from autodesk's site:

The Connection Extension for Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2010 design visualization software offers a range of new and enhanced connectivity features exclusively to Autodesk® Subscription program customers.

 

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=13402511&siteID=123112

 

 

My personal favorite highlights include.....

 

Streamlined Compositing with OpenEXR

A rewritten OpenEXR translator makes it easier to work with compositing applications, enabling you to seamlessly blend CG animation with live action footage.

(I'm hoping this update will allow chaos group to revamp Vray to writeout multichannel EXR's through the max output as opposed to the vrimg output)

 

Extensive Connectivity with Google SketchUp

Extension for 3ds Max Design 2010 features a powerful new SKP file translator that enables you to bring SketchUp scenes into 3ds Max Design with a high degree of data preservation.

 

from the area.com about the sketchup plugin

Support for the double-faced materials workflow available in SketchUp, so arbitrary surface orientations don’t cause models to appear to be missing faces when displayed in 3ds Max.

Preservation of original pivot and scaling values of objects and instances.

Consolidation of material references. Multiple uses of the same SketchUp material are collected and referenced back to a single material, saving revision time.

 

 

.... there's a few more, but those two jumped out at me, pretty nice update for those of use who work with designers who do alot of sketchup work.... although I can quickly see this becoming a sore spot for those who aren't on the subscription service if they have to pay for the feature....

Edited August 3, 2009 by BrianKitts

[Dave Buckley]

luckily i do have access to subscription center and i believe that that last one alone could well be the best thing since sliced bread

 

or at least its significant anyway

[Dave Buckley]

in fact i take that back. now i think the SAT translator is probably the most significant for me. until now it was impossible to get native inventor files into max without them both being licensed and installed on the same machine.

 

i know this still doesn't allow that but i'm pretty sure this would stop me needing to try and convince every customer we have using max and inventor that they also need the Okino translators.

 

i don't have anything against these translators, but as an Autodesk reseller it wasn't the greatest selling point for our customers doing digital prototyping. and now that inventor revit has that link then it opens up the door to our architectural customers too.

 

i'm actually looking forward to sharing this news in the morning and getting some meetings arranged to show this working (providing it does) testing 1 2

[Justin Hunt]

am I reading this correctly, even if your on subscription you have to buy this pack??

 

jhv

[Greg Law]

This looks good and makes my subscription payment I made last week worth while.

My provider told me the pack is part of the subscription and won't cost anything for those on it. Hope he is right.

 

My firm does a lot of sketchup work so it will be a great help.

[Dave Buckley]

nope you will not have to pay extra, it will be available as a download on subscription center as of 10th august so i believe

[Justin Hunt]

great, there web site is as clear as mud sometimes. until the 10th then

 

jhv

[Dave Buckley]

yeh apparently so, that came from ken pimental on his blog over at the area. in case you can't find it, he only mentions the download date in the comments underneath the blog post and not in the actual post

 

it does look good though

[Dave Buckley]

another bit of good news about this, along with the connection extension you also get a license of imagemodeller and matchmover

[quizzy]

dave, where did you read that imagemodeler thingy?? link?

[Dave Buckley]

erm . . . insider knowledge so watch this space

 

i did double check though before i mentioned it on here.

 

can't really give you my source, but as i've said before i work for an autodesk reseller so we tend to have other sources which the general public don't.

 

logins to certain autodesk website areas and such. but i haven't been told i can't distribute that information so i thought i would

[Dave Buckley]

well there you go, it has now been posted on ken's blog a per what bri said.

 

i found out elsewhere this morning through the channel

[quizzy]

excellent.. now I dont need to upgrade my imagemodeler 4... nice!!

[kenpimentel]

Enjoy all the goodies! Let us know how they work for you.

[Dave Buckley]

not working very well at the minute ken as it still doesn't seem to be available?????

 

it is the 10th today isn't it??

[Dave Buckley]

i'm eager but unfortunately check this what i just found on Ken's Area Blog in the comments section

 

"Posted by Ken Pimentel on Aug 07, 2009 at 04:14 PM

 

Note: Your subscription downloads won't be available until 12 EST August 10th, 2009! I hear that many people are trying to find them now, you need to wait a few more days."

 

Hmmm, looks like we gotta wait another couple of days

Edited August 10, 2009 by Dave Buckley

[Dave Buckley]

ignore me, its monday and it was a heavy weekend

 

i read it all wrong, i was reading lazily

 

all i saw was the number 12 and the word August.

 

i thought it had been delayed for 2 days, and when i check on Subs centre and it isn't there it just stopped the need for me to re-read it to realise i was wrong

 

i shall delete the post before anyone else thinks i'm a complete idiot

[Dave Buckley]

looks like its live

[Dave Buckley]

first thoughts?? anyone managed to play with it much??

 

i've just about read the help guide, so now i can start to play with it.

 

i'm doing a lot of digital prototyping at the minute so the SAT Translation is working like a dream (that one i have tested) i can see where all of the options of the body objects would be useful however, i'm yet to find a bad mesh on import

 

so far the best feature of the SAT import for me is the 'view dependant rendering approximation'

 

for those that haven't managed to have a read/play yet, let me explain how i'm using it during first tests.

 

import a mesh into perspective viewport

now when max renders the mesh, it needs to convert it to an mesh, rather than the 'mesh interpretation that is visible in the viewport (body object)

obviously depending on the object i have imported this could take quite a drastic effect on render time if the mesh is complex.

however using this setting, the 'render-time' mesh generation takes into account how close objects are to the camera, if they are further away then the mesh translation is as refined as those objects close to the camera that need the extra detail

 

so the mesh generation depends on how big it is in the viewport rather than it's actual size. if i had a sphere that covered 10 pixels in the screen, then the mesh translation uses less polygons than if that same sphere was taking up 100 pixels in the screen

 

testing continues . . . now onto the sketchup stuff.

 

oh and the import is quick compared to older methods with solids from the likes of inventor, thumbs up so far from me (not had any crashes yet either)

[kenpimentel]

Thanks for all the feedback on the SAT/body workflow! Glad it is working for you. That is going to be the basis for a lot of our future workflows when working with CAD data, so it is important it works well for you now!

 

Bad News:

We've discovered a problem with the product key for Imagemodeler. It may have been set up incorrectly with a limit smaller than requested. We're not sure yet, but we'll figure it out and post a new product key when we have a solution. For now, you should be able to use it in 30day trial mode. Once we get it figured out, we'll blog the solution, inform the forum, and I'll tweet it along with updating the sub site. Sorry, sometimes even simple things are complex.

[Dave Buckley]

ken i just made another post over on the area thread detailing a problem i have come across with the SAT face mapping features

 

let's say i apply a new material to a 'body object' and make it visible in viewport. technically i can then control that material per face.

 

so i can go into face sub-object of the editable body object and i want to change the rotation of the image map just on that face without affecting all the other faces that contain the same material.

 

great i can do it using the face display parameters rollout and it updates in the viewport so i can see my change has been made.

 

this is where the problem lies. if i make any more than 3 changes to the face mapping rollout then the viewport stops refreshing and in order to see my changes i have to either change the paramterization of the surface or make some other significant change that will force the viewport to refresh or render it.

 

is this the way its meant to be?? i could imagine it being quite annoying if i was incrementally changing the offset of a texture per face etc

 

just pointing things out as i see them

[BrianKitts]

New EXR export is working pretty well. (using vray)

 

Haven't had any success getting a mutlichannel EXR to write out properly from the vray frame buffer. But if you turn off the vray framebuffer and render through the max buffer all works as it should.

 

Hopefully this is something chaosgroup can sort out on their end. But as far as the Autodesk side goes..... working like a charm!

[Greg Law]

I checked out the Sketchup import. This is a big one for me. Thanks to all concerned.

The only problem I had with it was the model appeared black in the viewport. Maybe this is just a texture pathing issue. I haven't had time to check it yet.

[kenpimentel]

You have to remember that Sketchup models are notorious for not having their faces correctly oriented. We did what we could to minimize this.

 

Also, make sure you are using SP1 as I thought we fixed some issue related to this. Not sure.

[Greg Law]

Yes, I do have SP1 installed. I installed it before the Extension pack. I did have a look at the face direction, seemed ok. I flipped part of it and still had the same problem. I will look into it more this weekend.