3D Studio MAX just has to be the king of all cliches : 'Maximize your potential' , 'Maximize your creativity' , 'Power to the MAX' and all that stuff... It also has to be the oldest 3D graphics package that still hangs around. When it first appeared, in the early 90's in the form of 3D Studio for DOS, its notable contenders were Crystal Topas and, later on Caligari Truespace. Well, 3D Studio managed to gracefully shake off its challengers (does anybody remember Topas?) and to finally progress to the Windows platform.Thankfully, this latest transition was not a mere reengineering of the original DOS code, but a new code structure from the ground up. The Yost Group came up with a new interface and a new set of features, which from very first set the mark for all others to follow. But after a short while, the first complaints started to circulate : MAX is unstable, MAX requires Windows NT and does not utilize OpenGL accelerators, MAX requires an awful lot of plug ins for serious work. The stability and OS trouble was resolved after a couple of quick upgrades, but MAX still could not take advantage of powerful 3D cards. And it needed an expensive bunch of plug-ins on top of the $3000 quid cost of the main package for that extra impressive touch. When Lightwave 5.5 hit the shelves last summer, offering OpenGL and RenderGL acceleration, multi-channel morphing, bones and the best lens flare effects in the business for almost half of MAX's price, the users' pain started to become intolerable.
Thankfully, Kinetix, Autodesk's multimedia division, responded swiftly with a new release that puts an end to all that nagging. 3D Studio MAX R2 boasts over a thousand new features, as well as plug-in functionality that's integrated with the main package. The price tag is again quite high (around the 3000 quid mark, with upgrades costing around 600), but at least now you get what you pay for - and even more.
Ultimately, MAX is now the closest thing to workstation quality graphics that you can get your hands on without having to sell your house, and definitely the best of all Softimage wannabes. Sure, it helps to own a multi-processor behemoth with hundreds of Megabytes of RAM for MAX to run smoothly, but for small-budget productions, MAX will live peacefully even in your home PC. Familiarity with the original MAX interface is also a plus for any user, mainly because of the unique paradigm that the package utilizes.
At the low cost end, MAX now supports even the usual graphics cards that speed up games because of its native implementation of Direct3D. This means that if you own a PC that's decently powerful for business applications, but did not invest in a real 3D accelerator, you can still run MAX. -- although you will find your modeling tasks will become rather slow when the polygon count starts to rise. If you can live with that, or your job actually requires low polygon counts, as in modeling for games, then MAX is undisputedly the tool of choice.
Another addition to the new release that will prove helpful to a game developer is the addition of the complete MAX SDK and MAXscript, a powerful scripting language that gives you direct access to the rendering pipeline. Besides creating new plug-ins or rendering engines for MAX, you can now easily create a parser programme that translates scene data to another format suitable for your needs. If it's a plug-in you're going for, then MAX will remove the tedious task of setting up your project in Visual C++ ( Kinetix recommends that particular environment ) and leave you with the task of writing the actual working code.
The use of MAXscript also automates animation chores, such as creating different objects and using the same motion keys for all of them; a flock of birds comes to mind. Delving deeper into the modeling tools of MAX, the smoothing and polygon reduction modifiers have now been enhanced to easily provide different versions of objects with distinct levels of details and to assist organic modeling, a chore that usually leads to objects with many polygons. A related useful feature or the rendering engine is the 'don't antialias against background' option that creates crisp 2D sprites from your objects, ready to use in a game project or a Web page.
What really makes MAX stand out is the wealth of new ideas and improved tools that are presented in this release. When it comes to modeling, the most noted addition is the long-awaited NURBS modeler. Polygon modeling is fine for, well, polygonal objects, such as regular buildings and office furniture, but is inadequate for objects with curved surfaces, especially organic models. NURBS models do not try to approximate a curved surface with a large number of small polygons, a method that typically leads to long rendering times and poor results, but represent such surfaces with a grid of lines whose curvature is controlled through a set of controls vertices ( CDs ). Changing the position of these CDs has a relevant effect on the underlying portion of the surface; this change is not abrupt, as in the case of scaling an isolated mesh vertex, but smooth as inflating a balloon. You can model subtle changes or even creases on a surface just by moving or animating one or more CDs or introduce more detail where your objects really needs it, just by inserting more control vertices in that particular region.
A prime example for this modeling method is the construction of realistic human faces: one can start with a small set of NURBS and manipulate them by pulling and pushing their CDs. In more detailed areas, such as the mouth and eyes regions, extra detail can be introduced by simply adding more CDs. Facial animation is now an easy chore with smoother results, because moving correctly positioned CDs can have a result similar to muscle action.
Further modification of a NURBS objects is also supported. One welcome touch is the option to create such models, instead of polygonal ones, as a result of traditional modeling techniques, such as lofting and fitting. Even the usual primitives, such as cubes or the awe-inspiring teapot, can be transformed to a NURBS representation at the time of creation. Speaking of primitives, new parametric objects created with one mouse button click include capsules, oil tanks and different types of doors and windows. These new primitives are hardly earth-shaking, but since all of their parameters can be animated, they can prove useful in creating unusual scenes.
In general, MAX stands true to its claim that 'everything is animatable'; almost all objects and their parameters can be changed to provide different effects. Even sub-object elements, such as faces or vertices can be altered, to provide impressive morphing effects. Animation does not have to follow a linear route: the position of the objects and key interpolation can be ruled by controllers, in order to render effects such as acceleration or oscillation.
Another impressive addition that helps to create these effects is the introduction of dynamic properties for each object. You can create different objects that bounce off a rigid surface in a different manner, signifying different elasticity and mass properties. These objects will not deform automatically, i.e. a ball will not squash when it hits the ground, you will still need a plug-in for that. Other scenes whose creation can be simplified with the use of dynamics include cars colliding or skipping off a slippery road or modeling that famous banana kick with enough swerve to fool any goalkeeper.
Going through the menus of MAX, one discovers that there are plenty of useful additions now incorporated in the program which previously were plugins. New compound objects, including scatter and 3D arrays, and space warps, which can now be unassigned and treated as world space modifiers, are just the beginning. Users will be happy to find out that MAX now incorporates extra plug-in functionality, such as particle systems similar to Sandblaster or lens effects with the quality of LenzFX. This actually makes the relevant third-party plug-ins obsolete. In any case, plugin versions which were coded for the previous MAX release will not work with the new one, due to the new data structures that are included, NURBS and all. Integrating these plug-ins into the main package means that they are more stable and faster and that they can happily interact with other MAX object types. For example, you can bind a Wind space warp to a Bubble particle system and watch those bubbles carried away by a current or create that plane exhaust effect with particle trails. The lens effects implementation is quite impressive, too: you can adjust their parameters and see the result almost instantly in a dedicated interface. If you're careful and don't overdo it, effects such as lens flares, glows or gases can give your rendering that extra artistic or atmospheric touch.
Another useful addition is the improvement of the Inverse Kinematics tools. Solving for even the most complex systems is achieved in real time. Such systems can be used not only with a boned structure that can be created automatically, but also as a controller for other objects. Animating is also aided by the enhanced Track view models windows: copying of keys between tracks is now supported and expression controllers can be evaluated at any time through the new Debug function. Finally, the morphing tools have been extended to use multiple weighted targets, which is ideal for facial animation and new controllers include RGB or XYZ values, as well as a randomize keys utility.
Where MAX really shows its new teeth is in rendering. Before you begin modeling anything or using the new effects, try rendering one of the scenes that you created using release 1.x. You will find a 10%-15% performance increase which allows you to add more objects and effects in your scene and still see them in action more quickly. Among the new features, the new set of procedural texture maps really stand out; you can now include water or smoke effects in your objects' surface properties or stucco and splat for a superb paint effect.
And last, but almost certainly not least, there's ray tracing (sigh!). If you want to find out about this method's advantages over usual rendering, you can check out the official Kinetix site ( http://www.ktx.com ) or the home page of the shareware programme POV-Ray ( http://www.povray.org ) . The results are really amazing : perfect mirrors and reflections, shadows as crisp or soft as you want them and true reflection and refraction effects. Until now, 3D Studio had calculated such effects as maps, which was essentially the same as walking behind a mirror in order to see your reflection. Now, MAX follows, or rather traces, each ray from a visible object back to a light source, taking into account any objects it may reflect on or refract through. You can even get the infinite mirrors effect, in which you can see multiple reflections of yourself when standing between two opposite facing mirrors. And because ray tracing is a material and not an object property, you can use it for the objects that really need it, for example glass or prisms, and have all other objects rendered the usual way. This selective ray tracing option is quite effective in reducing your rendering time.
In addition to creating great-looking material within MAX, you can also integrate filmed footage with your animation or still image in Video Post or export 3D and Z-buffer data to compositing programs. You can also use Adobe Photoshop or Premiere plug-ins for extra 2D effects or transitions, with animated parameters which can be controlled from the track view window.
It's hard not to be satisfied by MAX; the program is admittedly expensive, but it is certainly worth it. The learning curve is not too steep, even for a first time user, although there is enough depth and richness in this diverse package to satisfy the master user. The manuals, as always with Autodesk/Kinetix, are excellent and they can also be found on the CD-ROM in HTML format.
Besides these, Kinetix has provided us with lots of productivity-enhancing features; drag and drop of objects and material maps is supported and a preview and scene management utility, called Asset Manager, can help organize large projects.
On the whole, MAX easily tops everything out there - if you can afford it. It will also be productive in a wide spectrum of PCs, starting with a P120 ( the official minimum requirement ) and going up the ladder to multiple Pentium II systems. Furthermore, a good graphics card is a must, although it will only speed up modeling and animating, not rendering ; the latter is aided by the presence of huge amounts of RAM - as with all 3D packages you can never have too much of that with MAX. The price is high, but it's right, too - the Internet and your TV screen should be swarming any time now with hard evidence. MAX once again sets the standard for others to continue - be sure to check it out.
This review was written by Kostas Karpouzis and he can be reached by email at kkarpou@softlab.ece.ntua.gr.
