Autodesk 3ds Max 2011

Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk 3ds Max Design software share core technology and features, but offer differentiated experiences and specialized toolsets. Autodesk 3ds Max 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and compositing software is designed for games developers, visual effects artists, and graphic designers working on games, film, and television content, while Autodesk 3ds Max Design is formulated for architects, designers, civil engineers, and 3D visualization.

What's New:

Quicksilver Hardware Renderer
Create high-fidelity pre-visualizations, animatics, design dailies, and marketing materials in less time with Quicksilver, an innovative, new hardware renderer that can help produce high-quality images at very fast speeds. This new multithreaded rendering engine in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 uses both the computer processing unit (CPU) and the graphics processing unit (GPU), and supports alpha and z-buffer render elements; depth of field; motion blur; dynamic reflections; area, photometric, ambient occlusion, and indirect lighting effects along with precision-adaptive shadow maps; and the ability to render at larger-than-screen resolutions.

Slate Material Editor
Easily visualize and edit material component relationships with Slate, a new node-based material editor in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 that helps significantly improve workflow and productivity for artists and designers creating and editing complex material networks. The intuitive schematic framework is engineered to handle the vast numbers of materials required by today’s demanding entertainment productions and design visualizations.

Local Edits to Containers
Collaborate more efficiently with significantly enhanced workflows for Containers that enable artists and designers to layer local edits nondestructively on top of referenced content. Better meet tight deadlines by working in parallel: while one user iteratively edits unlocked aspects of the container, another can continue to refine the underlying data. Multiple users can contribute changes to different elements of the same container at once, while simultaneous edits to the same component are prevented.

Modeling & Texturing Enhancements
New tools in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 and 3ds Max Design 2011 extend the Graphite modeling and Viewport Canvas toolsets to enable you to accelerate 3D modeling and texturing tasks:

• Expanded toolset for 3D painting and editing textures within the viewport
• Paint with object brushes to create geometry within a scene
• A new brush interface for editing UVW coordinates
• An interactive tool for extending edge loops

Viewport Display of Materials
Develop and refine scenes in a high-fidelity interactive display environment—without the constant need to re-render—with the new ability to view most 3ds Max or 3ds Max Design texture maps and materials in the viewport. Artists and designers can make interactive decisions in a context that more closely matches the final output, helping reduce errors and enhance the creative storytelling process.

Autodesk 3ds Max Composite
Enhance rendered passes and incorporate them into live action footage with 3ds Max® Composite, a fully featured, high-performance, high dynamic range (HDR)-capable compositor, based on technology from Autodesk® Toxik® compositing software. The 3ds Max Composite toolset incorporates keying, color correction, tracking, camera mapping, raster and vector paint, spline-based warping, motion blur, depth of field, and tools to support stereoscopic productions.

Core Features:

3D Modeling
Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk 3ds Max Design software have one of the richest 3D modeling toolsets in the industry:

• Efficiently create parametric and organic objects with polygon, spline, and NURBS-based modeling features.
• Liberate your creativity with more than 100 advanced polygonal modeling and freeform 3D design tools in the Graphite modeling toolset.
• Precisely control the number of faces or points in your object with ProOptimizer technology and reduce a selection’s complexity by up to 75 percent without loss of detail.
• Articulate minute details and optimize meshes for both interactive manipulation and rendering using subdivision surfaces and polygon smoothing.

Shading & Texturing
Access a vast range of texture painting, mapping, and layering options, while more easily keeping track of your assets within a scene:

• Perform creative texture mapping operations, including tiling, mirroring, decal placement, blurring, spline mapping, UV stretching, relaxation, Remove Distortion, Preserve UV, and UV template image export.
• Design and edit simple to complex shading hierarchies with the Slate material editor, taking advantage of extensive libraries of textures, images, image swatches, and procedural maps.
• Bake each object’s material and lighting into new texture maps with the Render to Texture functionality.

Animation
Create intelligent, believable characters and high-quality animations by tapping into a sophisticated toolset:

• Leverage procedural animation and rigging with CAT (Character Animation Toolkit), biped, and crowd-animation functionality.
• Use the Skin modifier and CAT Muscle to help achieve more precise, smoother control of skeletal deformation as bones move.
• Rig complex mechanical assemblies and characters with custom skeletons using 3ds Max bones, inverse kinematics (IK) solvers, and customizable rigging tools.
• Wire one- and two-way relationships between controllers to create simplified animation interfaces.
• Animate CAT, biped, and 3ds Max objects in layers to tweak dense motion capture data without compromising underlying keyframes.

Dynamics, Effects & Simulation
Create dynamics and effects with production-proven, high-performance toolsets:

• Use the built-in cloth-simulation engine to turn almost any 3D object into clothing, or build garments from scratch—and then make adjustments to and animate these cloth objects.
• Create hair, fur, and other strand-derived effects such as grass, and precisely control their styling and animation.
• Design sophisticated event-driven particle effects such as water, fire, spray, and snow, and control them with expressions, scripts, or direct manipulators.

Rendering
Achieve stunning image quality in less time with powerful 3D rendering software capabilities:

• Create high-fidelity pre-visualizations, animatics, and marketing materials with the innovative, new Quicksilver high-performance renderer.
• Quickly set up advanced photorealistic lighting and custom shaders with the mental ray® rendering engine.
• Take advantage of idle processors to finish rendering faster with unlimited batch rendering in mental ray.
• Visualize and manipulate a given region in both the viewport and Framebuffer with Reveal™ functionality.
• Output multiple passes simultaneously from supported rendering software, including high dynamic range (HDR) data from architecture and design materials, for reassembly in 3ds Max® Composite.

Pipeline Integration
Import data from a multitude of sources and smoothly transfer Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk 3ds Max Design data across file iterations, software applications, users, and locations:

• Use Autodesk® FBX® technology to exchange data with certain other leading 3D applications, including Autodesk® Maya® 3D animation, modeling, visual effects, rendering, and compositing software; Autodesk® Mudbox™ 3D digital sculpting and texture painting software; and Autodesk® Revit® Architecture building design software.
• Make the most of nondestructive file-link workflows to deal with upstream changes when working with Autodesk software that exports FBX file formats.
• Import solids data directly into Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk 3ds Max Design from Autodesk® Inventor® 3D CAD software.
• Aggregate data with support for more than 30 2D and 3D data formats, including 3ds, AI, DEM, XML, DDF, DWG, DXF, FBX, DAE, IGES, IPT, IAM, OBJ, STL, VRML, FLT, SAT, and SKP.

Only in 3ds Max

3ds Max SDK
The Autodesk 3ds Max SDK (Software Developer Kit) can be used to help extend and implement virtually every aspect of the Autodesk 3ds Max application, including scene geometry, animation controllers, camera effects, and atmospherics. Create new scene components, control the behavior of existing components, and export the scene data to custom data formats. Developers can leverage a new managed .NET plug-in loader, making it easier to develop plug-ins in C# or other .NET languages. With more than 200 sample plug-in projects, 3ds Max's comprehensive SDK offers both deep and broad access to satisfy even the most demanding production scenarios.

Suites Workflow
Autodesk 3ds Max is also available as part of a suite that combines the 3D modeling, animation rendering, and compositing software with certain other Autodesk applications, enabling you to meet challenging production demands and explore creative ideas faster. The Autodesk® 3ds Max® Entertainment Creation Suite, made up of Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk® Mudbox™, and Autodesk® MotionBuilder® software, combines industry-leading 3D modeling, animation, effects, and rendering tools; intuitive, organic modeling, texturing, and painting software; and real-time, interactive character animation and motion-editing software. Use Autodesk® FBX® technology to quickly transfer assets between these applications for more efficient collaboration.

System Requirements:

32-Bit 3ds Max 2011 or 3ds Max Design 2011 for Windows

64-Bit 3ds Max 2011 or 3ds Max Design 2011 for Windows