Thursday, November 18th, 2010 Posted by Jim Thacker

Round-up: new 3ds Max plug-ins, tools and shaders

We get a lot of news about new 3ds Max plug-ins, not all of which makes it up onto the site at the time. So to take advantage of a little lull in other stories, we thought we’d do a round-up of some of the most striking we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks.

First up is iCube’s vehicle rigging plug-in MadCar 3.0 – a kind of Max equivalent of Craft Animations’ Maya own 3ds Max tools, automating the rigging process and enabling users to control a 3D vehicle with the keyboard or a game controller to create real-time animation.

The new version enables users to rig vehicles with any number of wheels, and simplifies behaviour settings for the wheels and suspension. The package also includes a procedural map that generates tyre tracks on the surface on which the vehicle is moving. (V-Ray only).

MadCar 3.0 costs €200 (around $270). You can download version 1.0 for 3ds Max 2009 for free here.

Next, Alessandro Cangelosi has posted beta 0.85 of r | shaders, his collection of production-proven procedural shaders, derived from his commercial work.

The latest release adds a new ground shader, an updated user manual, and compatibility with 3ds max 2011. The next beta will be released before the end of November and will contain final shader in the collection, Magma. Final release is expected by the end of the year.

r|shaders costs $165 on pre-order: a special discounted rate that also includes the Deep Ocean shader for free. More details here.

Over in the world of virtual reality, Tree C Technology has released version 6.2 of its VR4MAX software. The plug-in turns models into real-time interactive demos.

Version 6.2 promises mental ray updates in addition to the new features of the recent 6.0 release, which include full 64-bit support, improved multi-threaded rendering, fully integrated ODE physics, hardware-accelerated character skinning and an infinite water object.

A standalone licence of VR4MAX Generator 6.2 costs €1,100 (around $1,485). More details here.

And finally, Cyber Radiance’s excellent Hair Farm plug-in has just received a 1.2.3 update and now boasts an extensive list of new features, as you can read on MAX Plugins.de.

Hair Farm 1.2.3 is available for Max 9 to 2011 and costs $699.95.

Visit the Hair Farm website here