The newest incarnation of Discreet’s 3D Studio Max modeling and animation solution program has users and beta testers taking their stiffened thumbs and turning them skywards.

The third installment of the Max series, known as R3, is home to 800 new feature changes and enhancements from Autodesk’s Discreet division. Having not had an overhaul this significant since Version 2 was released in 1997, Discreet is certain that with the changes to the product and the advancements made, the end product will make up for the wait in the eyes of users.

The new features within R3 include a fully reconstructed renderer, advanced organic modeling opportunities, a completely customizable interface and core character animation tools that can add effective deformation or secondary dynamic motion. Another notable innovation is R3’s external referencing capabilities, making it easier for artists to work on the same project simultaneously.

‘Overall, the focus of Max R3 was to improve the productivity and to increase the productivity and add enhancements that will support more productivity,’ says Autodesk’s Warren Currell, who reluctantly admits that a major focus of R3 is, in fact, productivity. Currell is impressed with the new advancements made by the company in the last three years. ‘Max R1 was released in 1996, so you have a very rapid revolution of the software.’

There are many other new features, perhaps too many to mention, however to better illustrate the advancements made by Discreet on the 3D Studio Max R3, Chris Bond of Frantic Films, Digital Post president Alex Olegnowicz and Silicon Knight’s art director Ken McCulloch discuss the many pros and the cons of using the upgraded version. And not to spoil the ending, but they all really like it.

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winnipeg post shop Frantic Film’s co-owner Chris Bond is quite taken with many of the advancements of the new Max, but particularly enjoys the reconstructed renderer. According to Bond, the upgraded accuracy and flexibility of the new renderer is evident when applying Max R3’s shading, sampling, anti-aliasing and shadow capability plug-ins.

‘You can render now to Renderman and to Mental Ray and a bunch of new built-in renderers, so it puts the work into the high end of the production pipeline,’ says Bond while tweaking an animated dinosaur he has just created with the program. ‘We have the capabilities to use renderers that were used in Jurassic Park, Men in Black and Star Wars. We’re technically in that league now.’

The new renderer helps artists to better control the look of their animation without the process of having to switch rendering programs in the middle of the process, and still retains the qualities of previous versions, including speed.

‘Now we are approaching a really fine cinematic quality,’ says Ken McCulloch of video game producer Silicon Knights out of St. Catharines, Ont. McCulloch says he has been using the 3D Studio Max product on various games since version R1, and the newest advancements to R3’s renderer are helpful in his field.

‘The renderer has been improved to such a point that we can choose a style we want to get out and render in that style. So if we want it sharp and clear, we can get it. If we want a soft, fuzzy detail, we can specify in the anti-aliasing and we’re rocking.’

Alex Olegnowicz reports that he and the staff at Toronto-based Digital Post are very pleased with the R3, saying that ‘since they got their hands on it, they haven’t gone back to the 2.5.’ He agrees that welcome strides have been taken in the reconstruction of the renderer, and says there is more control over the images. Olegnowicz’s greatest joy comes with the modeling improvements with R3.

‘Most of the modeling tools and the modifiers for the different measures that create the models are really cool. We were waiting for that,’ he says.

R3 gives the modeler a choice of modeling with polygon mesh, patch and spline, and nurbs, with advanced options for each. ‘The patch modeling has really been improved so you don’t have to use nurbs. You can use patches and they are a lot easier to control and manipulate than nurbs,’ says Olegnowicz.

‘They have incorporated a lot of plug-ins that used to be extra but now they are part of the package, which is really amazing,’ he adds.

There are a substantial number of plug-ins available for previous versions of the 3D Studio Max, and many have in time been included built into the product. Discreet reports that there will be over 300 plug-ins available specifically for R3 when the product officially launches later in the summer.

Perhaps the most appreciated of the new features are the external referencing capabilities (XRef) whereby it becomes easier on Max R3 to work on the same material simultaneously with other animators or modelers.

Additionally, when a change is made to a detail on a character from the source scene where the specific image originates, R3 will change it in every scene thereafter. For example, take something as simple as a red lamp that shouldn’t be in a blue room. Instead of having to go through every file to remove it, the XRef feature will get rid of it automatically, removing it from every scene once instructed. Or it will just change the color from red to blue if that is preferable.

The folks at Frantic are already taking advantage of R3’s XRef features.

‘We’ve got about six seats on Max R3 right now and it allows six people to work better on one project,’ says Bond.

McCulloch wishes he had had Max R3 earlier than he received it for a beta-test, as he says he could have used the XRef for different reasons. While working on a game, he had to change a very small detail on one of the characters – hair color.

‘We were redoing old animation and old geometry and removing it altogether, whereas with the external referencing on Max R3 we could have just done the changes and rendered without having to screw around with this file and that file,’ he says. ‘We could have just loaded them up and rendered them out. Unfortunately, we didn’t have Max R3 for that project and we had to do it the hard way.’

Very positive reviews from all beta-testers thus far have encouraged Currell and Autodesk to be confident about the latest version of Max R3.

The price is even agreeable to McCulloch, who approves of the $5,100 price tag for a full copy or $1,200 for the upgrade.

‘Realistically there is nothing else on the market, including Maya and Softimage, that enables us to get as much versatility that we need as Max,’ says McCulloch.