IMAGINiT Visualization Solutions Blog

3ds Max and Maya added to Autodesk Assistance Program

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Mark Gerhard) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:08:11 EDT

Got laid-off recently? Autodesk wants to help. You can get now get free software licenses of 3ds Max and Maya as part of the Autodesk Assistance Program. Designed to help "displaced employees update thier skills and improve their employability in a down economy". Autodesk is offering 90 day student licenses, free online training, as well as reduced cost classroom training through resellers.

To read all about it, click here. To see if you are eligible or to apply for the program click here.

Accelerate Mental Ray Translation on Revit Imports

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Mark Gerhard) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:49:01 EDT

If you have a file in Revit with RPC entourage and you export to FBX, the file can become very very big. This file can then take a really long time to import to 3ds Max Design. You can speed up this process by making a change to an INI file used by the Custom UI and Defaults Switcher. Here's how:

Locate where your 3dsmax.ini fileis stored. On my system this is C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign\2010 - 32bit\enu. There should be a defaults folder there.
In the DesignVIZ.mentalray subfolder locate the CurrentDefaults.ini file and open it using Notepad.
Locate the [Performance] section. There are two lines where you will change the value from 0 to 1.
- Don'tRepeatRefMag=1
- InvalidateTMOptimization=1
Save the file, then use the Custom UI and Defaults switcher to reselect the DesignVIZ.mental.ray profile.
Restart Max, and try the import again.

If you can't find this file, search for Factory Defaults\DesignVIZ.mentalray folder and edit the CurrentDefaults.ini there. If the user folder isn't found, 3ds Max Design uses this location instead.

This trick should also speed up translation times during rendering. Let me know if you find this useful. Who knew? Pierre-Felix Breton at Autodesk. Thanks from users everywhere!

Mental Ray Revit vs Max

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Mark Gerhard) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:20:33 EDT

I get a lot of questions from users regarding rendering in Revit and Autodesk 3ds Max Design. Both products have the same renderer (mental ray 3.7), so people want to know, when should I render in Revit and when should I render in 3ds Max? Since it's the same renderer, why not only render in Revit?

Essentially, you should use mental ray Rendering in Revit while you are in the design process, to validate your work. To see if what you think you are designing is actually what you've created, the Revit rendering will do a good job of showing you the materials and lighting and give you a sense of the space.

However, when you are rendering for client presentation or municipal approval process, it's a good idea to move the file to 3ds Max Design and continue your renderings there. While the quality is identical between the two products, the rendering speed and available controls will lead you to 3ds Max everytime. 3ds Max clocks in at up to 10 times faster speeds when rendering the same files.

When mental ray starts a render it first goes through a translation process which turns the entire scene into a mental ray specific file. This is called the Geometry Cache in 3ds Max, and once you have calculated this, you can choose to reuse it, so that you don't have to recalculate it each time you render. After calculating the Geometry Cache, you can also calculate and reuse the Final Gather Map. Most important is that you can do this independently from the rendering. If you are working on a big scene with limited memory, this is a life-saver, and this is not available to Revit users, only 3DS Max will give you this option.

The other critical thing that Max provides over Revit is the ability to scale your render time by using more processors through network rendering. Revit doesn't support the concept of a render farm, 3DS Max does.You can cut your render time in half by using a second processor, the more computers that share the work of the rendering, the faster it goes. Use 10 computers and render in 1/10 of the time. And it doesn't cost anything extra, you can install 3ds Max free of charge on additional machines for renderfarm use. 3ds Max has a feature called Split Scanline, part of network rendering, which allows you to render a large resolution image in bits and pieces over many different computers. When its finished it automatically stitches the parts into a seamless single image. Revit doesn't have anything like this.

We recently did a rendering in Revit at the very best quality setting. It took over 4 days to get the rendering finished. Do you have this kind of time? I didn't think so. The same file on a single computer with 3ds Max renders in about 10 hours. If I use a render farm with 10 machines, I could render this in about an hour. Something to think about.

HotFix - Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Mark Gerhard) — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:15:40 EDT

There is a brand-new HotFix download available for 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design 2010.

Here are the issues the Hot Fix addresses:

Localized Versions - Particle Flow Window mouse pointer issues resolves when running English version on Japanese OS (or using Language for non-Unicode programs set to Japanese.
Materials - fixed maxscript error issue.
Parameter Wiring - Wire sub-controllers no longer removed during garbage collection.
Undo - There are five undo fixes where the undo stack got cleared when it shouldn't have. See if you still have undo stack problems and let us know if there are more to resolve.

To download the hotfix click here.

FBX Update

imaginitfeeds@rand.com (Mark Gerhard) — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:13:57 EDT

When you go to import an FBX file in 3ds Max Design , there's a button you might have missed at the bottom left that says Web Update. The Web Update button will check the version number of your FBX exporter, and alert you if there is a new one.

Well, there's a new one.

On April 9th, Autodesk released a majorly enhanced version of the FBX plugin for all the products. FBX allows for file translation between Revit and 3ds Max Design, as well as Maya, Motionbuilder and even SoftImage for those of you in the media and entertainment side.

FBX (formerly known as filmbox) came to Autodesk via the Alias acquistion. Originally made by a company called Kaydara, FBX was a format designed to transfer motion capture animation data, and as such is very good at 3D and Animation. It supports NURBS, polygons and subdivision surfaces, morph targets and blend shapes, materials and textures, lights, cameras, hierarchies, inverse kinematics, deformations and envelopes. And Autodesk says it's going to add more. There's a huge long list of bugfixes you can read on Ken Pimentel's blog.

One extremely cool thing about the new FBX are the Biped Enhancements that come all with it. They're calling if Biped merge-back workflow. This means you can now take Biped animation, edit it in Motionbuilder and send it back via FBX.

If I understand this correctly, once you've installed the new FBX, you can choose "update scene elements" during import and it will let you copy your FBX animation information onto existing Bipeds in the scene. To download the new FBX update click here.