3ds max 7 from Discreet, announced at SIGGRAPH’04 and now shipping,
includes several important new features and numerous improvements,
making it worth the upgrade fee for existing Max artists and a tempting
deal for those eyeing Max and waiting for the right time to buy in.

While the hardware requirements are still modest ( Discreet says it’ll
run on a 500-MHz Pentium III), max 7 includes some very sophisticated
features-such as physically accurate global illumination-that would
bring even a loaded PIII to its virtual knees. I installed max 7 on a
2.6-GHz HP Pentium 4. With its 533-MHz bus, 1 GB of RAM and ATI FireGL
card, the PC is a solid workhorse that 3ds max 7 seemed to like.

Version 7 of 3ds max has maturity and solid performance that’s
reflected in the look and feel of the interface, one that takes full
advantage of whatever OpenGL and/or DirectX 9 video card is installed.
If your video card is limited, max 7 offers excellent software-only 3D
previews. Experienced max artists will like the subtle interface
improvements, and those new to max will find that the interface doesn’t
get in the way of learning.

For artists who have been eyeing 3ds max but haven’t yet made the
investment, the big news is the inclusion of Character Studio. Once
considered the "must-have" plug-in for 3ds max, even back when it was
called 3D Studio Max, Character Studio is the essential plug-in for
character animation.

Character Studio consists of three components for controlling an
animated character or characters: one for skeletal and IK control
(Biped), another for muscle and skin deformation (Physique) and one for
multiple character control (Crowd).

Biped is a generic, pre-built, customizable rig for human-like
characters. It serves as a foundation for almost all character
skeletons, and can be used straight out of the box or can be configured
with additional legs or arms for quadrupeds, for example, or other
characters, such as birds, whose knees bend in reverse.

Character Studio is an excellent launching point for building skeletal
rigs for animation, but rarely will the stock rig be used without
tweaking. Each component can be scaled and tweaked depending on the
character’s physical proportions and animation needs.

For getting that sense of bulging skin and six-pack abs, you need a
good personal trainer, or at least Physique. Wrapping skin around a
skeleton and having it deform correctly has always been challenging,
but modern tools like Physique ease the process. Physique allows a max
animator to wrap 3ds max bones, or Character Studio’s Biped bones, with
a character’s geometry and applies the movements of the underlying
bones to the geometry. Using Physique, geometry deformation can be
tweaked to allow for proportional bending, creasing and bulging, giving
a character the flexibility needed to look real.

Crowd, the third component of Character Studio, manipulates large
amounts of data in the form of character models and their associated
behaviors. Once a character is built and animated, Crowd is used to
replicate and apply behaviors to the character, such as walking,
running or flying, making it easy to create a swarm of bees or a
platoon of attacking aliens. There are, of course, performance
variations involved in crowd simulations, depending on the complexity
of the character or number of characters to be animated, but the
underlying engine for Crowd in this new release is notably faster than
earlier versions.

Mental Ray, the alternate render engine included with 3ds max, has been
improved in several ways. In version 3.3, a sub-surface scattering
shader now provides a way to render elements like realistic skin,
thanks to its ability to simulate light penetrating the upper layers of
an object and illuminating it from within.

Global illumination, the effect of light bouncing off objects in a
scene and lighting other objects, has also been improved by simplifying
its user interface and adding Photometric Lighting, making it
physically accurate.

Scenes employing both sub-surface scattering and global illumination
will need extra time to render. It’s difficult to quantify the degree
of impact because all scenes are different in size, complexity, number
of surfaces affected, number of lights involved, etc. If your project
requires realistic output and the scene length is more than the average
30-second TV spot (rendering approximately 900 frames at several
minutes per frame can really add up), consider setting up a render farm
using Backburner (it’s included with 3ds max) or farming it out to a
service bureau.

If you’re still clinging to bad memories of max’s early render engine,
maybe it’s time to revisit the program. The render engine has come a
long way over the last several revs and, with the inclusion of Mental
Ray, rendered frames look as good as anything seen on the silver screen.

Creating an array of objects can often be a process of trial and error,
but in 3ds max 7 the array tool has been improved dramatically with the
simple addition of a Preview button. This is one of those little things
that make a huge difference; imagine setting up a scene of a stadium
interior, and using the array tool to create the chairs. Without the
ability to preview, too much time can easily be wasted trying to
configure the arrangement of the chairs. The Preview feature not only
facilitates production, but invites experimentation. Now that’s cool.

3ds max 7 includes an abundance of tweaks and new items to the user
interface. It’s now possible to copy and paste object materials from
one object to another, making it easy to consistently "dress" objects.
"Quick Align" and "Clone and Align" under the Tools menu are welcome
additions, as is the ability to use MPEG movie files as animated
textures.

A new toolbar lets you switch instantly between up to three rendering
presets, and toolbar buttons for dialog boxes are now toggles, staying
depressed and turning yellow when the dialog box is open. Also, many of
the dialog boxes are now resizable, and there is a shortcut for
toggling the visibility of all open dialogs (CTRL+~).

If you’re deciding whether or not to upgrade to max 7, and you don’t
yet own Character Studio, the upgrade fee is a bargain in light of all
that’s included. Even if you already own Character Studio, the upgrade
to 3ds max 7 is worth the cost for the new version of Mental Ray and
the numerous other improvements.

For new users, 3ds max 7 is no small investment, and all options should
be weighed. If you need a multi-platform 3D app, you can rule out 3ds
max. If money is a factor, consider that 3ds max costs more than the
$2,000 for Maya’s base package, which also gives you a choice of three
platforms for Maya. It also costs slightly more than the $3,000 for
Maxon’s CINEMA 4D Studio bundle, available in either a Mac or Windows
version. However, buying into 3ds max gives you safe passage into a
very large community of users, a vast array of third-party plug-ins, a
name that clients recognize, a tool that’s used throughout the gaming
development community, and one powerful software package.