Introduction

Discreet's 3ds max is huge, feature-rich software package currently holding an elite spot as one of the most popular 3d modeling, animation and rendering packages, particularly for the game industry. It is found in the arsenals of many mega-game producers such as Rockstar Games, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Blizzard Entertainment. To maintain this preferred position, discreet has been aggressively updating 3ds max with new tools and features. 3ds max 7 shipped in October, 2004 and it marks the second major upgrade to the software in the last two years.

With so much power in a single application, the question isn't whether you need Max. If you work in the gaming industry, this decision has probably already been made for you, but the real question is, "Are the new features in 3ds max 7 good enough to bug my supervisors to shell out for the cost of the upgrade?" This becomes a particularly tough question when you realize that you just bugged your boss last year for an upgrade.

Last year's upgrade to 3ds max 6 included a lot of features geared towards architectural users including primitive objects for creating doors, windows, stairs and foliage and a complete set of architectural materials. But, for this year, I'm happy to say, many of the new features found in 3ds max 7 are geared towards game developers. A sampling of these new features include Character Studio, several new and much needed modeling improvements, the ability to create normal maps, a walkthrough navigation mode, an exporter for mobile devices, and a paint deformation feature. If you are using 3ds max for character animation, then the answer on upgrading should be an exciting, "Oh yea."

Character Studio included

The biggest new feature added to 3ds max 7 is the inclusion of the popular Character Studio plug-in within the base package. Character Studio was previously only available as a separate plug-in costing several hundred dollars, but it is now included in 3ds max 7 without a significant increase in the overall price. This should make any penny pinchers in your organization happy and should give you some good ammo to justify the cost of the upgrade.

So, what's so special about Character Studio? Well, if you enjoy manually creating, constraining and rigging character skeletons, then maybe you don't need it, but Character Studio dramatically speeds up the animation pipeline for working with characters.

Character Studio includes three unique modules—Biped, Physique and Crowd. Using Biped, you can create pre-made linked and realistically constrained human-shaped skeletons by simply dragging in the viewport. These biped skeletons can be edited by adding, removing and transforming links to represent other forms such as animals or monsters. Bipeds can then be animated walking, running or jumping by simply placing footsteps in the scene that define where the character moves. With the footsteps in place, the biped knows automatically how to create realistic secondary motion like swinging arms and bobbing ponytails.

The Crowd module is used to control the behavior of multiple characters moving about the scene by defining specific behaviors for the characters to follow such as pursuing a goal object or avoiding obstacles. Using the Crowd feature, you can quickly animate an entire scene of characters moving about a scene without worrying about whether the characters will walk into one another or walk through scene objects like walls or props.

The Character Studio tools aren't new, but they have been improved with this version including an optimized crowd solver that computes solutions 10 times faster.

New Modeling Features

Max's modeling features have always been excellent, including support for meshes, patches, NURBS, Metaballs, Lofts, Booleans, Morphs and numerous other modeling types. But, perhaps the most robust modeling type in 3ds max is the Editable Poly object and most of the new modeling features in 3ds max 7 apply to Editable Poly objects. Perhaps the biggest new feature is the inclusion of the Edit Poly modifier, which lets you make changes to a primitive object using the Editable Poly features that can be removed or reapplied using the Modifier Stack. This ability to buffer your object from the current set of changes is extremely helpful on complex modeling jobs.

Two more new modeling features to 3ds max 7 include a Paint Deformation interface that lets you deform the surface of a model using a brush to push, pull and relax vertices. With this feature, you can add more organic-looking detail to a model without having to select or work with sub-objects. 3ds max 7 also includes a paint selection tool that works with objects and sub-objects.

Editable Poly objects also include a Preserve UVs feature that lets you edit an object after a texture map has been applied without altering the texture map's UV coordinates. This is a huge time-saver for projects that require any last minute geometry changes.

The Skin Wrap modifier is also new to 3ds max 7. It lets you animate a low-res skin and then link the animated skin to a high-res version of the skin that receives all the animation keys applied to the low-res skin making the process of animating skins much easier.

For those who avoid smoothing meshes until render time, 3ds max 7 includes an optimized version of the MeshSmooth modifier called TurboSmooth that can smooth objects much quicker for real-time updates in the viewports.

Normal Maps

Materials and textures are applied to objects in Max using a separate interface known as the Material Editor. Using this interface, you can create unique materials and map textures onto objects. Max also includes a Channel Editor that lets you manipulate which texture maps are applied to which channel. Max can also bake textures into objects to simulate effects such as lighting without the overhead.

3ds max 7 includes tools for generating normal maps. Normal maps let you recreate the details of a high-res model and apply them onto a low-res model as a map that acts like an advanced bump map. Figure 3 shows a simple sphere that has been enhanced with a normal map produced from the high-res sphere object. This sphere still has the same number of polygons as the low-res sphere, but the normal map presents much of the detail of the high-res sphere without the additional polygons.

Animating

Animating in Max is accomplished using traditional keyframe animation techniques using an intuitive interface with full access to function curves and a dope sheet, but you can also automate the motion of objects using what Max calls Controllers. These Controllers let you define specific types of motions such as flexing, spring-like motion, and expression-based actions.

You can also animate objects using Max's built-in reactor features. The reactor interface uses the same routines used by many different gaming engines to simulate realistic dynamics based on physically-defined properties. Reactor includes support for soft and rigid body collisions, as well as, cloth, rope and water interactions.

New to 3ds max 7 is the Reaction Manager that lets you drive the animation of objects based on the properties of another object. For example, an enemy can be set to rotate to face a hero as the hero moves about the scene. By setting up reactions, you can animate the main character and have supplemental objects respond as needed.

One of the coolest new features is Max's Walk Through Navigation mode found in 3ds max 7. This mode lets you move through a scene in the viewport using the arrow keys and mouse just as if you were playing a 1st person shooter video game. With this mode, it becomes easy to locate the exact view you want, or animate moving through the scene.

Rendering

Max's rendering features are outstanding, including a cell-shaded rendering option, advanced lighting options such as Global Illumination and Radiosity, and raytracing. Network rendering support is also included. Max also includes an in-the-box license of mental ray 3.3. Improvements to the latest version of mental ray include physically accurate global illumination based on photometric lights, transparent shadows with caustics, and a generally easier setup method.

Exporting to Mobile Devices

Max can import several different 3d formats including DXF, OBJ and even IGES. It can also export rendered images and video to many common formats and some not-so-common formats including HDRI and Shockwave. In 3ds max 7, you can now export scenes and animations to the JSR-184 (M3G) file format for mobile devices. Max 7 also includes a separate Java-based player that you can use to view your exported M3G files.

Expandability

Another huge benefit of 3ds max is its ability to be expanded. Max ships with an extensive SDK that can be used to create plug-ins that install seamlessly into the interface. Many third-party plug-ins are available, or you can create your own. For small expansion tasks, Max includes MAXScript, a script-based authoring language that can be used to automate repetitive tasks or alter the interface controls. The Max interface also includes several customization features that let you change everything from menu commands to interface colors.

Summary

With its wealth of features, 3ds max has earned its right to be among the top 3d modeling, animation and rendering packages available. If Max has a downside, it would have to be its complexity. Becoming familiar with all the new features will take a fair amount of time and even with a lengthy study, many features will still remain a mystery after years of use. Thankfully, Max ships with a detailed web-based User Reference and a thorough set of tutorials that help befuddle the new stuff.

Despite its complexity, 3ds max has everything you need. If you want a state-of-the-art computer animation package with all the bells and whistles, especially for creating game content, you need not look any further. 3ds max version 7 adds some much needed features to the mix and the packaging of Character Studio makes it well worth the upgrade price.

For more information on 3ds max 7, visit the Max product pages on discreet's web site at www.discreet.com/3dsmax.