A review of 3DStudio Max
3dStudioMax has been around for a looong time. They started in Canada under the name Kinetex with 3dsmax1 i guess (i've only seen as early as 2.5). Current version is 3dsmax7 and it's a whopper. Autodesk now owns the code and supports it to this day. Calling their offices will get you an answering machine, however someone with a brain will call you back in a day or so. I do not have version 7. I attempted to upgrade my version 3.1 to version 7 but missed tragically the cut-off deadline but a couple of seasons. This was a painful mistake that will cost me thousands if i ever choose to upgrade. Yet still i remain a hateful lover of this program. Enough so that i've dedicated an entire section to the cause. We'll see where it goes as time goes on.
Firstly, i need to point out that i have never been through a more disasterous learning process with a program as i have had with 3dsmax3.1. After i purchased a copy from a reseller (back then, this was the only way). I attempted installing it over the next couple of years. Yes years! I know, i'm stupid and all that, but i have learned how to do some pretty tricky things on a computer. Things like compiling apache over an ssh shell, rebuilding windows to hide the microsoft logo, installed and patched linux with no hardware drivers, etc ad nauseum. There was a huge list of problems preventing me from operating this program out of the box. Firstly, was hardware, my system would not consider running it, despite meeting the minimum requirements. Do not choose the wrong video driver! A little hard to find readme showed how to manually change this via the command line.
The hardware dongle. Thank goodness if you do not know what i am talking about when i say dongle. It's that little blue thing you have to keep at all times and move to each machine you want to use? Urgggggggg!!! Anyone hear of a printer cable not liking to be unplugged? The woes of yester year. The dongle is no longer a part of the max plan i believe.
The SDK installation, don't get me started. The Max SDK (Standard Developer's Kit) is a magic gum drop just out of reach, or so it seemed. My purposes made the SDK crucial for my cause. I own VisualC++ and wanted to start compiling my own plug-ins. Seems the 3.1 version i paid for did not include the SDK installation. If i sound negative i'm not, this is the con part is all, this program renders like a dream.
So i won't explain all the "since thens", needless to say, Poser and VRML were brought to the forefront while i kept plugging away at max. Now i have every component i need, my former reseller hooked me up and my HyperThreaded chip is finally baking renders like a microwave.
A fan i am of studio max. Once you get it running. The interface was a bear to learn starting out but that's because i kept discovering accidental shortcuts which would hide certain sections of the menu for weeks at a time. I know it's a simple fix, Under Customize, "Revert to startup UI".
I cannot speak enough about the speed of 3dsmax3 at rendering. I'm sure it could be faster, but i can bake a 100 frame AVI in under a minute. I am not used to this speed with other renderers, aka Poser or PovRay.
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