MetaSL Shaders

MetaSL Shaders

Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 provides a number of MetaSL shaders you can use in the Slate Material Editor to create shader trees. In addition, with the Map To Material Conversion material node MetaSL shader trees can be visible in viewports and renderings.

Material/Map Browser

The Material/Map Browser has been redesigned to feature a simpler and more accessible interface that is also an integral part of the Slate Material Editor.

Autodesk Materials and the Autodesk Material Library

Autodesk Materials replace ProMaterials, using a new interface that allows you to share materials with models from AutoCAD, Autodesk Revit, and Autodesk Inventor. (Scenes from earrlier 3ds Max versions that use ProMaterials continue to render in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011.)

In addition, the Autodesk Materials form the basis for the Autodesk Material Library, which provides 700 ready-made materials you can use in your scenes.

Viewport Canvas Expansion

Viewport Canvas has been significantly enhanced and improved to the point that it is, in effect, an entirely new feature. For example, you can now paint directly onto any 3D object with any map in any material. And new painting tools include Blur, Sharpen, Dodge, and Burn. But perhaps most important, you can now paint in multiple layers that can interact with one another the same way as in Adobe Photoshop.

Rendering

Quicksilver Hardware Renderer

The Quicksilver Hardware renderer is an extremely fast renderer that uses your system’s graphics hardware (GPU) to produce high-quality images.

Bitmap Pager Changes

In Autodesk 3ds Max 2011, you can disable or enable bitmap paging from the Asset Tracking dialog Bitmap Performance And Memory menu, or the Global Settings And Defaults For Bitmap Proxies dialog.

Preview Animations

“Preview” has been renamed “Animated Sequence File,” and the commands for preview animations are now grouped with Create Still Image File in the Grab Viewport Group on the Tools menu. See Create Animated Sequence File.

Character-Animation Improvements

CAT

CAT provides a complete toolset ideally suited for rigging and animating multi-legged characters as well as humanoids. It includes numerous built-in rigs such as a dragon with four legs and two wings, a spider, and a centipede with 18 legs. These can easily be animated along paths with no foot sliding using the graph-based CATMotion editor. CAT’s easy-to-use layering system supports color-coding of layers so you can see which layer is contributing to the motion at any given moment. See CAT, and for a comparison of CAT and character studio, see Character Animation.

mental ray Improvements

mental ray 2011

mental ray 2011 is supported with 3ds Max. For further information about mental ray 2011, view the help file from Help > Additional Help.