Sneak peek: The future of 3ds Max
Autodesk has posted an eight-minute video showing fixes for ‘Small Annoying Things’ in 3ds Max.
The SATs – which are more quirks of Max than bugs: think not being able to use a gradient background in the viewport or pan and rotate while cutting – were submitted and voted for by Autodesk forum users.
It being that time of year, the updates are likely, but not guaranteed, to make their way into 3ds Max 2013: a point made by Autodesk’s Ken Pimentel in an accompanying blog post.
‘Expectation setting’ for Max 2013
In what he describes as “expectation setting”, Pimentel hints that the next release of Max will feature further progress towards a unified dynamics system and development of the new Nitrous viewport.
The UI remains a focus of development, although Pimentel comments that the topic is “so freaking sensitive with users” that some of its ideas have had to be returned to the drawing board.
The company expects to present the refined ideas at its next public showing of Project Excalibur (XBR), the ongoing under-the-hood rewrite of 3ds Max, via a webinar in March or April.
The developer has also “formalized a multi-year relationship” with Orbaz Technologies’ Oleg Bayborodin, the architect of 3ds Max’s Particle Flow system, although no results will be seen in the coming year.
Updated 7 February: Following some of the comments posted on this story, we think it’s important to reiterate that the video above is not a preview of 3ds Max 2013. Some of the changes may indeed make it into the next release, but they’re unlikely to be the only new features. See Ken Pimentel’s blog post for more.