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After the shortened development cycle, earlier than normal release, and the limited number of new features in 3ds Max 2009, many people were questioning whether Autodesk was still willing to offer feature-rich upgrades to the package after purchasing it. The recent release of 3ds Max 2010 answers that question with a wholehearted, "Yes!" There are compelling new features and welcome enhancements in just about every major area of the software.
User Interface
- At first glance 3ds Max 2010 looks a bit different from earlier releases. For one thing the new default color scheme is dark, like many other Autodesk products. Another change to the UI is the addition of a Microsoft Office 2007-esque Ribbon, located under the menu and toolbar. The Ribbon updates dynamically to show tools pertinent to what the user is doing at that moment, which helps expose new features when they are needed.
Adding the new Graphite modeling tools (discussed later) into my workflow was easy because the Ribbon never overwhelmed me with options. Unfortunately, some aspects of the Ribbon are unnecessarily awkward. For instance, the button to open the material ID assignment dialog box is located on the right end of the Ribbon, but the dialog box always opens at the left end of the Ribbon, requiring that the mouse be moved to the opposite side of the 3ds Max window. Autodesk could've reduced extraneous mouse movements by having the Ribbon open floating dialogs on, or near, the Ribbon tools that call them. Even though I like the Ribbon I find the Max UI is becoming cluttered, with a menu bar, tool bar, and now the Ribbon. Hopefully in future releases Autodesk will find a way to unify these.
Modeling Tools
- The popular third party polygonal modeling tool PolyBoost has been integrated directly in to 3ds Max 2010 and is now referred to as Graphite. Graphite has tools for freeform polygonal sculpting with a wide variety of brushes, quickly re-topologizing a mesh, locking transforms to any surface on an object, creating and modifying smart selections, and drawing surfaces and shapes. The 100-or-so new modeling tools Graphite adds to 3ds Max expands an already impressive polygonal modeling toolbox with excellent new features.
3ds Max 2010 also introduces xView geometry checking....