3ds Max 2011 New Problems

[RevitGary]

Just thought I would start a post to discuss the any new issues involved with max 2011

the main one I noticed and cant believe my eyes in regards to materials

 

"Advanced parameters for Autodesk Materials (ambient occlusion, rounded corners, and performance tuning) are not yet supported"

 

How can this be possible? I got this from the known issues read me.

 

Anyone else notice this or any other problems. I cant imagine using it if it cant support these material features

 

 

ok here is another very disturbing known issue

 

"mental ray does not always release memory when a render is complete. Workaround: Restart 3ds Max / 3ds Max Design.

• In certain situations, when you load an XMSL file in a DirectX Material, while using the mental ray renderer, the software might stop working. Workaround: Use the Scanline or Quicksilver renderers in 3ds Max / 3ds Max Design"
  

The work around is dont use mental ray you have got to be kidding me

Edited April 8, 2010 by RevitGary

[Peter M. Gruhn]

> not supported

 

I wonder if there's some larger context, like "in Quicksilver" that is missing from that statement.

 

> does not release

 

On 2010 here and all I have to say is "no foolin'".

[Dave Buckley]

Object Paint Tools problem

 

Help file says:

 

"To apply objects to an edge selection with Fill:

Add to the scene one or more paint objects to paint into the scene, and an object to paint on. The latter must be an editable poly object OR an object with the Edit Poly modifier applied."

However the fill button isn't available when you have an edge loop selected on an object with edit poly modifier, yet as soon as i convert that object to an editable poly and collapse the stack, then the fill button becomes avaialble. Only small but still contradictory to what the help file tells you that you can do

[DanGrover]

Not a bug exactly, but I had a little play with quicksilver and I wasn't too impressed. Now, to be sure, the render times are brilliant, but you can't use A&D materials. Well, you can, but the reflections don't work. I had to use a standard material with a raytrace map in the reflection slot. It also didn't seem to cope well in a scene with an MR photo exposure control, LFW and dalight system with portals - I don't know which of these was causing the problems, but given that this is how I work, it's a bit of a pain.

 

It basically seems like I'll never be able to use it to send tests to clients by just hitting render. I'll have to re-do all the materials (when using MR I use A&D mats, and when using VRay I use the unsupported VRayMtrls) and possibly the lighting. How much can I change before it stops being a reasonable preview of what I'm actually going to send.

 

I understand it's very early days for this, and I definitely think it's a step in the right direction with regards to where they are going, and for sure it'll be useful one day when a few more features are supported, but for now It's not too much use to us.

[maciejwypych]

I've installed max design 2011 yesterday and today .... well I'm back on 2010.

When I open the new slate mat editor, I have no preview, and the display driver crashes.

I tried open gl, direct x and max drivers and sometimes even the "normal" mat edit crashes.

Tried with old, new & beta quadro drivers.

I have nvidia quadro fx 3500 at work, maybe it's not supported ? But it is a direct x 9 card, so it should work.

 

Any ideas?

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I'm not reading that as a contradiction. Maybe because I'm trying to follow it in my head w/ no software ;-).

 

Sounds like fill works under three circumstances:

 

1 - with a non-loop selection in an editable poly

2 - with a non-loop selection in an Edit Poly

3 - with a loop selection in an editable poly

 

If so, sounds like a weird bug. Gimme the code, it'll be fun to chase down.

[kenpimentel]

I've installed max design 2011 yesterday and today .... well I'm back on 2010.

When I open the new slate mat editor, I have no preview, and the display driver crashes.

I tried open gl, direct x and max drivers and sometimes even the "normal" mat edit crashes.

Tried with old, new & beta quadro drivers.

I have nvidia quadro fx 3500 at work, maybe it's not supported ? But it is a direct x 9 card, so it should work.

 

Any ideas?

 

Weird, but definitely sounds like a GPU driver problem. Odd that it works with 2010 but not 2011. Of course, we push the GPU harder with 2011. No reports of anything like this on the beta, and we had 1,000+ beta users. FX3,500 is pretty lame for a GPU. It only has 256Mb of memory. I think you should consider upgrading...

[kenpimentel]

"Advanced parameters for Autodesk Materials (ambient occlusion, rounded corners, and performance tuning) are not yet supported"

 

"mental ray does not always release memory when a render is complete. Workaround: Restart 3ds Max / 3ds Max Design.

 

re: adv parameters

We're as disappointed as you. The challenge was that this was an Autodesk-wide initiative and we were forced to ship with this limitation *at this time*.

 

re: mental ray

I believe the issue is that this has not been resolved by mental images yet, so we had to ship with what we had. This came in late in the process. I do not know when this will be fixed. Sorry!

[kenpimentel]

It basically seems like I'll never be able to use it to send tests to clients by just hitting render. I'll have to re-do all the materials (when using MR I use A&D mats, and when using VRay I use the unsupported VRayMtrls) and possibly the lighting. How much can I change before it stops being a reasonable preview of what I'm actually going to send.

 

I understand it's very early days for this, and I definitely think it's a step in the right direction with regards to where they are going, and for sure it'll be useful one day when a few more features are supported, but for now It's not too much use to us.

 

Very early days for us on this. More limitations than we want, but just the effort to port all the legacy max shaders to MetaSL was huge. We're laying new foundation as part of XBR - hope you can be patient with us.

[Devin Johnston]

I usually wait until the first SP comes out before trying to use the new version of Max for production, it's always littered with bugs and really can't be counted on to work correctly until then.

[kenpimentel]

I usually wait until the first SP comes out before trying to use the new version of Max for production, it's always littered with bugs and really can't be counted on to work correctly until then.

 

It's a complex piece of software, so I can understand the hesitancy. The beta group thought it was very stable - so it's promising.

[Dave Buckley]

bit of instability when importing FBX files :$ not linking, just importing

 

keeps crashing out regardless of the file

[BrianKitts]

bit of instability when importing FBX files :$ not linking, just importing

 

keeps crashing out regardless of the file

 

Why not use the file link..... it works SOOOO well for FBX!! Even if you just use it to import then, merge the file into the scene. I was shocked first time I used it and it cleaned up everything...no triangulation. and you have the option to join objects by material.... HUGE improvement.

 

and on another good note, have you ever seen max close SO FAST!

[DanGrover]

Very early days for us on this. More limitations than we want, but just the effort to port all the legacy max shaders to MetaSL was huge. We're laying new foundation as part of XBR - hope you can be patient with us.

 

Oh I have no doubt about that. As I say, I'm sure in the future it'll be tremendously useful.

[ihabkal]

I usually wait until the first SP comes out before trying to use the new version of Max for production, it's always littered with bugs and really can't be counted on to work correctly until then.

 

1

that's brilliant, I used to hastly upgrade, now I do the same thing as you. Still 2009 here and very happy with it.

by the way they released sp for 2010, before they had it in the market.

[kenpimentel]

1

that's brilliant, I used to hastly upgrade, now I do the same thing as you. Still 2009 here and very happy with it.

by the way they release sp for 2010, before they had it in the market.

 

Don't forget, 3ds Max 2011 has a new "Save as Previous" feature so you are no longer as dependent on the new release working as you used to be. You can move forwards with 2011 and easily fall back...

 

We did not have an SP for 2010, we had a hot fix for 2010 at time of launch. We are not aware of any major problems (yet) that would require a hot fix ASAP. We do have plans for regular hot fixes prior to an official service pack (not scheduled at this time).

[RevitGary]

. We are not aware of any major problems (yet) that would require a hot fix ASAP. We do have plans for regular hot fixes prior to an official service pack (not scheduled at this time).

 

It amazes me that you have to restart mental ray after a rendering. You are saying if i set up a batch render at night it will probably crash after a couple renderings and I should get up in the middle of the night to restart max so I can continue and see what I might end up with in the morning.

 

This is ridiculous you integrate a render engine in the last release and make it a huge selling point then dont support basic integration in the next release.

 

 

I cant even imagine what this means for doing animations. I am assuming max will just stop in the middle of an animation run. So you can restart it a couple times until you have a final set of images you can compile.

[Dave Buckley]

Why not use the file link..... it works SOOOO well for FBX!! Even if you just use it to import then, merge the file into the scene. I was shocked first time I used it and it cleaned up everything...no triangulation. and you have the option to join objects by material.... HUGE improvement.

 

and on another good note, have you ever seen max close SO FAST!

 

don't get me wrong i do use the file link, was merely pointing out something that doesn't work that should work

 

with regards to the triangulation, they've integrated the autoedges script into max now and scripted it a little more to autorun whenever you import an fbx file.

 

i did have a thread on here a while ago where someone customized that script for me so that it would do the very same thing as its doing now

[kenpimentel]

It amazes me that you have to restart mental ray after a rendering.

 

 

This is NOT accurate. Mental ray behavior is identical to the behavior of 3ds Max 2010. The change was introduced in 2010 - not 2011. We just isolated the problem in 2011 release cycle.

[Justin Hunt]

This is NOT accurate. Mental ray behavior is identical to the behavior of 3ds Max 2010. The change was introduced in 2010 - not 2011. We just isolated the problem in 2011 release cycle.

 

I agree with Ken here, there maybe certain circumstances that you will have to restart max, but certainly not every time you render. By the way, Vray has the same issue, sometimes it just wont release memory and guess what it crashes.

 

jhv

[ihabkal]

exactly. memory hold is an ancient problem, but with 8+GB ram mine doesn't crash, unless I attach a billion faces then it is my fault.

now here's somethign else: I am using max 2009 and autocad 2011, I can't import a dwg made by autocad 2011 ieven if I save it to 2004 format. I can however import it to max 2010. weird, no?

[maciejwypych]

Weird, but definitely sounds like a GPU driver problem. Odd that it works with 2010 but not 2011. Of course, we push the GPU harder with 2011. No reports of anything like this on the beta, and we had 1,000+ beta users. FX3,500 is pretty lame for a GPU. It only has 256Mb of memory. I think you should consider upgrading...

 

I've found the problem, it was a shader from the Forrest Pack plugin.

I thought the 2010 plugins are compatible with 2011 but it seems that not all of them.

[ihabkal]

yeah valdo says he's fixing a few things to make vray work with 2011.

I found a way to get autocad 2011 to save max 2009 compatible 2009. you just need to export the file into autocad 2007 format instead of saving it as a 2007 format.

[Dave Buckley]

new one (kind of) - i'm customizing my ribbon, and i have a new tab, on the tab is a panel, on that panel i have a split button, on that split button i have all of the modifiers that i use everyday appear as a short drop down list for quick access.

 

i'm just playing around with this as per the help doc, but i have added a condition to my split button that says, it is only visible when i have an edit poly selected or object with edit poly modifier selected.

 

so i save the ribbon etc and sure enough my button isn't visible because i have no objects in my scene

 

i create a teapot and add an edit poly modifier and woohoo my button comes back and i am able to apply one of the modifiers from the drop down list. but . . . as soon as i add a modifier, the button disappears. the only way to get it back is to convert to edit poly or add another edit poly modifier because of the rule. so the rule only applies if the object has the edit poly modifier constantly at the top of the stack. surely not the most efficient workflow.

 

i'm not saying this is the workflow i follow as i'd still need to go to the modify panel to adjust modifier settings so i'd just keep my modifier sets in there, but when the help document guides you to do something, you'd think it would be useful.

[kenpimentel]

Not sure that is "as designed" or not. But, post bugs here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=5600504&linkID=9241177