Am I the only one who likes 3DS max?[Edited]

(THIS IS NOT A COMPARISON TO BLENDER)

Personally I like the User interface, and somethings that are included I like,

Like the auto-grid system,
Or the fact that you can draw splines as if it were a pen tool,

And the “Tesselate” button which saves you having to create a loop cut to get perfect square subdivisions

And the “Generate Topology” button which I am surprised that it isn’t available in other software for some reason

Or the garmen- erm… actually no that one’s actually pretty um… bad. It get’s the job done though.

Now I have taken some time to think about why people don’t like it…

It’s probably because no release has that many significant updates and a plethora of new bugs to explore and get mad about.

And the fact that the only half decent tutorial site is 3D sphere

Every other website just gives the most vague and uninteresting Vray/Zbrush commercials that are passed out as tutorials( 3D total comes to mind.[Not all of the 3d total tutorials are bad though])

Or maybe how it’s just so obvious that Autodesk is going to stop supporting it, we don’t know when or how or why, but it will happen.

@@fdfxd

A slight nudge for you to write your praises in the appropriate forum

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max/ct-p/area-c1
but don´t expect that the developers would ever read your stuff, Autodesk seems to be prone in ignoring starting freelancers, small studios or single professionals. :wink:

No, I think this is the appropriate forum since this is where people who seem to have this opinion roam and

It might not be blender, but it’s CG.

Are you using 3ds max with 1gb ram?:confused:

On this forum, directly comparing software in a non-objective way is verboten.

But I’m not really comparing 3ds max to anything, I’m just saying that I like it,

although…I just noticed that this should be in the “other software” forum…

Well yes, but why do you like it? Try answering that in a way Blender users can understand without drawing any kind of subjective comparison. Good luck. :stuck_out_tongue:

Okay thx,
Will add why when I edit it…

I used to really like 3DS Max. In fact I still use my old copy of Max 2009 from time to time.
My problem with the newer versions of Max is that they’re just bloated with so much stuff I don’t need, also I don’t like the way Autodesk is going generally (with subscription-only license models and porting over entire software packages to Maya and Max, making them even more bloated)

3DS Max is a great tool for stuff like archviz (with the great plugin support) and game-assets. Everything else seems like it’s Maya-territory now with Softimage gone and Mudbox being promptly made obsolete with the sculpting tech being implemented in Maya.

Well dang. Seems like I ventured into a little bit of an AutoDesk-rant there but I genuinely don’t trust them to do anything right anymore and I do think that 3DS Max’s future looks bleak.

EDIT: Oh, one thing I totally forgot is that I really like the non-destructive modeling with modifiers in Max. It is just awesome to be able to add a modifier to parts of your mesh and then continuing to edit that part on top of the still running modifier is awesome.
I do agree with John Lancaster though that Max has way too many modifiers that could easily be compressed into fewer, more powerful ones.

I don’t like 3DS for the following reasons.

  1. Autodesk has severely bloated Maxe’s UI (unnecessarily) beyond the “carrying capacity” of the UI design. It needs to be reworked at least slightly so that it resembles the old UI while being more compact, simple, and intuitive.

  2. Program settings are far too spread out. The same apply to all the different menus you need to use to really customize your UI. There needs to be only one highly optimized menu for each of these, no more.

  3. Seriously? I don’t want 5GB worth of your stupid pre-made materials! Let me exclude them from the install!

  4. Maxes material system is not intuitive enough.

5.Organize the freaking modeling tools and modifiers into less, more powerful ones. Max has so many tools that you can pick from several to get the job done. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING! All this does is bloat the UI and confuse people.
-I only need 1 tool with good options to extrude, inset, and bevel. ONLY NEED 1 tool for all of that! I don’t need or want 3 different ones! Combine tools that can be combined and RETIRE the old ones afterwards.
-STOP breaking up modifiers and tools that essentially do the same things slightly differently! Combine them and add a couple more options.

  1. RETIRE TOOLS AND FEATURES THAT HAVE BEEN REPLACED.

Aside from all that, it’s not half bad.

~Rant over.

Also, it’s obvious that Maya will be their only 3D app sometime in the future. 3DS Max will at some point dissolve like softimage and its tech/resources will be migrated into Maya.

I have seen max f*ck up more than once in a studio environment. In fact there were a lot of times were blender saved the day.

I have seen perfectly fine max files go corrupt and either fail to open or blow the mesh / UV.

I have seen max stubbornly fail to rebake a texture map which was originally baked in max ?

I have seen CAT rigs get broken on updates, and cause finished animations get dumbed.

Compare Max’s “Conform” to Blender’s “Shrinkwrap Modifier”

Compare Max’s “Skin wrap Modifier” to Blender’s “Transfer Weights” or “Data Transfer Modifier”

Compare Max’s “Multi Resolution Modifier” to Blender’s “Decimate Modifier”

etc… etc…

ompare Max’s “Multi Resolution Modifier” to Blender’s “Decimate Modifier”

I thought max’s equivalent of decimate was “pro optimizer”

you can compare both. Like John Lancaster pointed out 2 modifiers which do similar things…

Yeah I guess admittedly that is pretty stupid…

No, you aren’t the only person to like Max. However asking that question here, in this forum, is likely to get into a quagmire of bias as asking people if they’re happy using Blender.

I studied 3dsmax a long ago, and I think it is good. But I hate to install software, so I turned to portable Blender later

The infamous viewcube is a truly unnecessary feature, horrid.
Max users always have to search for features even the simplest ones to create stuff.- seems like the UI is highly bloated.
small and little 3Dviewport compared to the gigantic UI.
the huge size of Max. Bloatware ugh.
Rental-only is stupid
uncertainty on how long max still will be supported is a reason to either flee from Autodesk or to ignore them completely.




So what’s the deal with scaling things in 3DS Max? You’ve got me interested now.

@Thenewone

Actually all you have to do is click and hold the scale tool and then select the actual scale tool… I’m starting to see what you mean by the asinine interface