This release was recieved as is and placed in this forum for public consumtion. It should not be read as an accurate release document as Discreet.com can and probably will change their release specifications before final launch of this product. 3d-palace.com cannot place itself liable for any information contained below. 3d-palace was officially given permission to make this release.
EMBARGO UNTIL Monday, 28. July, 2003 (or as otherwise advised)
PRESS FACT SHEET - 3DS MAX 6
ANNNOUNCEMENT: Discreet launches 3ds max 6
PRODUCT & VERSION: 3ds max™ 6
PRICING: $3,495 US
AUDIENCE: Professional 3D animators, artists and designers
MARKETS: Games, Design Visualization, Film/Video Effects, Education, Government, Corporate, and Web
USER BASE: 180,000+ worldwide
LAUNCH: Siggraph 2003 – San Diego, CA – July 29-31st
HIGHLIGHTS:
Discreet enters Siggraph 2003 with the launch of version 6 of 3ds max™, the world’s most popular 3D modeling, animation and rendering solution. This new version has a particular focus on the needs of the game development and visualization markets, while continuing to offer substantial additional value for all traditional 3ds max users.
The emphasis on game development is not only feature related, but will also be accompanied by major partnership announcements, reinforcing the position of
3ds max 6 as the most committed and best integrated solution for the game development pipeline.
The emphasis on visualization is intended to expand 3ds max adoption into this growing sector as well as leverage the Autodesk installation base with new found integration workflows between the family of products.
LAUNCH THEME:
Evolve—The theme of the 3ds max 6 launch and release. 3ds max 6 lets artists evolve to wherever they want to go; it lets artists experiment, expand and evolve their talent, letting them find their own path to approaching and solving 3D tasks. Projects evolve naturally from concept to delivery—that facilitates creativity and removes workflow barriers. With 3ds max 6, the artist achieves the results for any platform, format, or client demand. The product snaps into any workflow as a natural evolutionary extension to existing pipelines. “Revolutionary” approaches jar well-tuned systems. Evolve with 3ds max 6, and enjoy fast returns atop of the ease of a stable yet feature-packed release.
o Gamers evolve game titles faster, targeting any platform from PC and consoles to mobile formats with time-to-market delivery and high-quality content.
o Architects evolve from traditional design techniques to the beauty of 3D visualization with 3ds max 6, moving the client closer to the decision—faster.
o Film animators evolve their pipeline to new levels of efficiency; Maya and XSI are reputable applications in film; adding 3ds max gives the entire pipeline a productivity boost.
o Aspiring students evolve quickly from novice to master learning 3ds max 6’s deep and broad set of modeling, animation and rendering tools. Learning 3ds max 6 ensures a 3D career in the market of any animator’s choice.
o Government designers evolve with new methods of visual simulation with new OpenFlight support.
FEATURES: 3ds max 6
3ds max 6 represents a comprehensive engineering delivery, with brand new features, as well as increased focus on the quality and reliability across all modeling, animation and rendering tools.
What’s New:
Games
3ds max 6 has customer-driven features dedicated specifically for the game developers:
Access to data and batch processing of this data either inside or outside of 3ds max is a consistent theme in many of the features.
Schematic View: Schematic View is a graphical representation of the 3ds max scene graph and depicts relationships between objects, modifiers, controllers and custom attributes. The completely reworked schematic view includes new layout control (load/save layouts per scene/character, et al), a fleshed-out filtering system, and the ability to add/edit/delete most modifiers, controllers, wires, and constraints.
Paint Studio: New integrated 3D painting system for the creation of texture and other maps. Includes support for multiple layers, painting on multiple channels and across multiple objects. Based on Right Hemisphere’s industry-leading paint technology.
Maxscript support on the 3ds max command line, .max file data accessible from outside of 3ds max.
Render to Texture: Radiosity solutions for texture-baking (and any other texture-baking requirements) can now be calculated over your 3ds max render farm.
Vertex Paint: Painting vertex colors in 3ds max 6 received a significant update in workflow and functionality:
o Paint game-specific data into vertex channels, such as how slippery a floor is, or how much damage a lava flow inflicts on the character.
o New brush tools, including pressure-sensitivity, blurring, and the ability to tint existing vertex colors.
o Selections—Use vertex & face selections as a mask for interactively painting on the parts of the object you want—and Soft Selections allow for feathered control
o Each Vertex Paint Modifier gives a single layer of color, with Photoshop-style blending modes and opacity control.
DX9 support will be made available as it has been from 3ds max 5.11 and will also include support for the dynamic generation of UI from Microsoft’s .FX shader parameters.
Spline/Patch Improvements: Time saving enhancements to make the process of modeling with Patches and Spline Cages faster.
UVW Unwrap Enhancements: The industry’s best mapping utility now gives users the ability to “relax” mapping coordinates—making it easier to place your textures onto 3D objects without “Stretching”.
Mirror Skin Weights: Character rigging gets faster with automatic mirroring of skin weighting across an object.
Improved Multi-Material Workflow: Makes the process of managing multiple–textures-per-object easier.
Critical partner relationships with all Middleware vendors, including game engines (Criterion, NDL, Lithtech, et al) and 3rd party add-on technologies (Bionatics, NxN, et al). Current relationship with Criterion to build new tools for mobile game market, PS2, and “next generation” console development. Discreet is also committed to providing industry-leading SDK/API exposure for those houses building their own tools.
Mobile Gaming with a set of exporters, and the first move to Mobile Gaming Middleware players, including Criterion.
Design Visualization
Benefiting from its close relationship with parent company Autodesk, Discreet delivers 3ds max 6 with the ideal workflow for designers and visualization specialists in Industrial Design, Architecture, Building and Manufacturing markets with its unmatched integration with Autodesk’s product line: AutoCAD, Architectural Desktop (ADT) and Inventor.
The latest Autodesk release of Architectural Desktop includes a new VIZ Render rendering solution for photo-realistic results. These VIZ Render capabilities have been embedded in 3ds max 6.
3ds max 6 has customer-driven features dedicated specifically for the design visualization market:
Integration with Autodesk products: transfer data between 3ds max 6 and any application that supports the .dwg format such as ADT and AutoCAD. 3ds max 6 also opens ADT VIZ Render files directly for advanced visualization work.
Architectural Material: The 3ds max renderer and mental ray support new Physical Material properties.
Other VIZ Render Features: The geometry organization and material propagation work done for VIZ Render is now intrinsic to 3ds max 6. Much of the rendering and radiosity performance and quality improvements accomplished in ADT VIZ Render are included in 3ds max 6.
Layer Manager: The Layer Manager now operates as a Modeless dialogue (switch layer states such as Visibility/Selectability/Renderable, etc without having to close the window) – simplifying workflow significantly.
User Interface Improvements: 3ds max 6 will include custom ini with default settings appropriate for each user domain.
Rendering Presets: The ability to save rendering presets (able to be called from the command line) for frequently used settings will streamline rendering tasks. Global Rendering Settings, Raytrace Globals, Advanced Lighting, Environment, and Effects settings will all be preserved.
Tabbed Render Dialogue: All relevant rendering settings, from Environment Effects to Output Options, are now accessible from within a single Rendering component in the 3ds max UI.
Support for mental ray 3.2: This renderer noted for its use in film is also a leading rendering solution in the architectural visualization industry noted for its ability to render physically accurate lighting, reflections and shadows. mental ray is integrated and directly accessible through the 3ds max user interface. This FREE rendering solution is included as part of the shipping version of 3ds max 6, used as one of the preferred technologies for the best in film and television effects, game cinematics, and design visualizations. Not only will 3ds max 6 ship with a single license of Mental Ray 3.2, but the implementation has been updated and now includes shader support within the Materials Editor, and new Mental Ray specific shader types from the LUME TOOLS collection.
Support “renderable” property flag for lights : A preference that gives artists the ability to not render those lights in the scene that are hidden. Perfect for trying multiple lighting setups within the same scene, or for focusing on certain types of lighting within the scene (ie working on the lights that affect the columns only, or those that provide the ambient room lighting, etc)
Command Line Rendering (see below)
Video/Film/Cinematics
3ds max 6 will excite animators creating television and film visual effects or game cinematics:
reactor 2: Integrated directly within 3ds max 6, these new features stunt man / rag doll, vehicle dynamics and a more advanced fracture.
Particle Flow: a Discreet-developed event-driven particle system for creating complex particle systems – already used on effects-intensive feature films such as The Core and XMEN-2, Particle Flow gives artists an intuitive interface for creating realistic fountains, fog, snow, splashes, contrails, explosions, and other environmental effects.
Command Line Rendering: Technical Directors and rendering specialists will be able to perform batch operations – rendering can be started from a command line prompt, and text files are able to drive rendering operations without engaging the 3ds max UI.
Region Net Render: Enables the rendering of single frames to be deployed over the entire render farm by breaking the frame up into “buckets” and deploying them across the network.
3D Paint (see above)
Support for mental ray 3.2 (see above)
Rendering Presets (see above)
Schematic View (see above)
Tabbed Render Dialogue (see above)
Layer Manager (see above)
Mirror Skin Weights (see above)
Patch Improvements (see above)
HDRI Support: Allows for the use of HDRI maps to simulate photorealistic lighting of a 3D scene, based on an image map
Blobmesh Object
Improved Job Archiving controls: Enable job archiving directly from the Job Submissions dialogue.
Government Simulation:
Discreet has partnered with several leading OpenFlight translator companies to deliver without any additional charge the best available OpenFlight translation to the 3ds max 6 artist.
Workflow/General Improvements
Many areas of 3ds max have been greatly enhanced and stabilized, including:
A new layer manager
Speed improvements to the Dope Sheet editor
Nearly 100 severe yet obscure bugs have been fixed during the development of 3ds max 6 instead of during the beta/bug fix period.
What else is new in 3ds max 6?
A new look! Including:
o New packaging
o New icon
o New marketing look-and-feel
o New advertising
o More community outreach
o More online streamed tutorials
Why is 3ds max the most used 3d product?
The industry’s most cost effective 3D solution
No other solution offers such value, especially when life cycle costs of talent, productivity, appropriate features for the task, , etc. are taken into account.
The industry’s most productive 3D solution
No other solution enables studios to build, animate, and render as much content in any given period of time as 3ds max 6. Driven from the beginning by the need to create high-quality 3D quickly and efficiently, 3ds max 6’s mature workflow and depth allows artists in all markets to achieve the results they desire in less time—allowing for faster time to market, more experimentation and creativity, and small studios to compete directly with the major players (who often rely on custom tools on top of off-the-shelf-software) for high-profile work.
3ds max 6—the leader for PC and console game development
For both the artist and developer, building a game of any type, from PC to console, 3ds max 6 will go from start to finish faster and cheaper than anything else. For those using middleware solutions, 3ds max 6 sets the standard for middleware integration tools.
3ds max 6—the leading choice for Visualization
3ds max 6 imports assets from any standard CAD or Design Package and offers unsurpassed animation and rendering tools for product, mechanical, and architectural designs using real-world lighting information – all wrapped with an industry-proven interface with a shorter learning cycle than any other professional 3D application.
3ds max 6—the best partner product for visualizing designs from Autodesk products
Discreet’s tight integration with Autodesk and support of the industry-standard DWG file format ensures the highest degree of interoperability with leading design solutions.
3ds max 6—High-volume, high-quality film effects production
With more approaches to modeling, animating, and rendering than any other package, 3ds max 6 delivers production artists highly-creative flexibility to building “film-quality” effects and characters. Furthermore, data built in 3ds max 6 is highly scalable, integrates perfectly into existing film-effects (3D and compositing) pipelines, and has the depth required to allow advanced studios to build seamless custom tools.
What does Discreet want the world to know about 3ds max 6?
In a mature and frenzied market, Discreet is the dependable partner. We are pleased to deliver a solid, on-time, and feature-packed release of 3ds max 6. Our launch is designed to let the community know our continued and unwavering commitment to 3D, from engineering to marketing to sales and support.
We won’t shock the world with price changes, reduced feature sets per release, lacking customer support, or hype-based marketing. Discreet wants our customers to evolve to the next level, at their own comfortable pace. 3ds max 6 carries a lot of new features and increased reliability, but it works naturally in any pipeline, in multiple markets. Our 3D products are part of Discreet’s overall portfolio of Academy-Award winning graphics/effects, editing and media streaming solutions – combined with the powerhouse backing of Autodesk. Evolve. With Discreet 3ds max 6.
EMBARGO UNTIL Monday, 28. July, 2003 (or as otherwise advised)
PRESS FACT SHEET - 3DS MAX 6
ANNNOUNCEMENT: Discreet launches 3ds max 6
PRODUCT & VERSION: 3ds max™ 6
PRICING: $3,495 US
AUDIENCE: Professional 3D animators, artists and designers
MARKETS: Games, Design Visualization, Film/Video Effects, Education, Government, Corporate, and Web
USER BASE: 180,000+ worldwide
LAUNCH: Siggraph 2003 – San Diego, CA – July 29-31st
HIGHLIGHTS:
Discreet enters Siggraph 2003 with the launch of version 6 of 3ds max™, the world’s most popular 3D modeling, animation and rendering solution. This new version has a particular focus on the needs of the game development and visualization markets, while continuing to offer substantial additional value for all traditional 3ds max users.
The emphasis on game development is not only feature related, but will also be accompanied by major partnership announcements, reinforcing the position of
3ds max 6 as the most committed and best integrated solution for the game development pipeline.
The emphasis on visualization is intended to expand 3ds max adoption into this growing sector as well as leverage the Autodesk installation base with new found integration workflows between the family of products.
LAUNCH THEME:
Evolve—The theme of the 3ds max 6 launch and release. 3ds max 6 lets artists evolve to wherever they want to go; it lets artists experiment, expand and evolve their talent, letting them find their own path to approaching and solving 3D tasks. Projects evolve naturally from concept to delivery—that facilitates creativity and removes workflow barriers. With 3ds max 6, the artist achieves the results for any platform, format, or client demand. The product snaps into any workflow as a natural evolutionary extension to existing pipelines. “Revolutionary” approaches jar well-tuned systems. Evolve with 3ds max 6, and enjoy fast returns atop of the ease of a stable yet feature-packed release.
o Gamers evolve game titles faster, targeting any platform from PC and consoles to mobile formats with time-to-market delivery and high-quality content.
o Architects evolve from traditional design techniques to the beauty of 3D visualization with 3ds max 6, moving the client closer to the decision—faster.
o Film animators evolve their pipeline to new levels of efficiency; Maya and XSI are reputable applications in film; adding 3ds max gives the entire pipeline a productivity boost.
o Aspiring students evolve quickly from novice to master learning 3ds max 6’s deep and broad set of modeling, animation and rendering tools. Learning 3ds max 6 ensures a 3D career in the market of any animator’s choice.
o Government designers evolve with new methods of visual simulation with new OpenFlight support.
FEATURES: 3ds max 6
3ds max 6 represents a comprehensive engineering delivery, with brand new features, as well as increased focus on the quality and reliability across all modeling, animation and rendering tools.
What’s New:
Games
3ds max 6 has customer-driven features dedicated specifically for the game developers:
Access to data and batch processing of this data either inside or outside of 3ds max is a consistent theme in many of the features.
Schematic View: Schematic View is a graphical representation of the 3ds max scene graph and depicts relationships between objects, modifiers, controllers and custom attributes. The completely reworked schematic view includes new layout control (load/save layouts per scene/character, et al), a fleshed-out filtering system, and the ability to add/edit/delete most modifiers, controllers, wires, and constraints.
Paint Studio: New integrated 3D painting system for the creation of texture and other maps. Includes support for multiple layers, painting on multiple channels and across multiple objects. Based on Right Hemisphere’s industry-leading paint technology.
Maxscript support on the 3ds max command line, .max file data accessible from outside of 3ds max.
Render to Texture: Radiosity solutions for texture-baking (and any other texture-baking requirements) can now be calculated over your 3ds max render farm.
Vertex Paint: Painting vertex colors in 3ds max 6 received a significant update in workflow and functionality:
o Paint game-specific data into vertex channels, such as how slippery a floor is, or how much damage a lava flow inflicts on the character.
o New brush tools, including pressure-sensitivity, blurring, and the ability to tint existing vertex colors.
o Selections—Use vertex & face selections as a mask for interactively painting on the parts of the object you want—and Soft Selections allow for feathered control
o Each Vertex Paint Modifier gives a single layer of color, with Photoshop-style blending modes and opacity control.
DX9 support will be made available as it has been from 3ds max 5.11 and will also include support for the dynamic generation of UI from Microsoft’s .FX shader parameters.
Spline/Patch Improvements: Time saving enhancements to make the process of modeling with Patches and Spline Cages faster.
UVW Unwrap Enhancements: The industry’s best mapping utility now gives users the ability to “relax” mapping coordinates—making it easier to place your textures onto 3D objects without “Stretching”.
Mirror Skin Weights: Character rigging gets faster with automatic mirroring of skin weighting across an object.
Improved Multi-Material Workflow: Makes the process of managing multiple–textures-per-object easier.
Critical partner relationships with all Middleware vendors, including game engines (Criterion, NDL, Lithtech, et al) and 3rd party add-on technologies (Bionatics, NxN, et al). Current relationship with Criterion to build new tools for mobile game market, PS2, and “next generation” console development. Discreet is also committed to providing industry-leading SDK/API exposure for those houses building their own tools.
Mobile Gaming with a set of exporters, and the first move to Mobile Gaming Middleware players, including Criterion.
Design Visualization
Benefiting from its close relationship with parent company Autodesk, Discreet delivers 3ds max 6 with the ideal workflow for designers and visualization specialists in Industrial Design, Architecture, Building and Manufacturing markets with its unmatched integration with Autodesk’s product line: AutoCAD, Architectural Desktop (ADT) and Inventor.
The latest Autodesk release of Architectural Desktop includes a new VIZ Render rendering solution for photo-realistic results. These VIZ Render capabilities have been embedded in 3ds max 6.
3ds max 6 has customer-driven features dedicated specifically for the design visualization market:
Integration with Autodesk products: transfer data between 3ds max 6 and any application that supports the .dwg format such as ADT and AutoCAD. 3ds max 6 also opens ADT VIZ Render files directly for advanced visualization work.
Architectural Material: The 3ds max renderer and mental ray support new Physical Material properties.
Other VIZ Render Features: The geometry organization and material propagation work done for VIZ Render is now intrinsic to 3ds max 6. Much of the rendering and radiosity performance and quality improvements accomplished in ADT VIZ Render are included in 3ds max 6.
Layer Manager: The Layer Manager now operates as a Modeless dialogue (switch layer states such as Visibility/Selectability/Renderable, etc without having to close the window) – simplifying workflow significantly.
User Interface Improvements: 3ds max 6 will include custom ini with default settings appropriate for each user domain.
Rendering Presets: The ability to save rendering presets (able to be called from the command line) for frequently used settings will streamline rendering tasks. Global Rendering Settings, Raytrace Globals, Advanced Lighting, Environment, and Effects settings will all be preserved.
Tabbed Render Dialogue: All relevant rendering settings, from Environment Effects to Output Options, are now accessible from within a single Rendering component in the 3ds max UI.
Support for mental ray 3.2: This renderer noted for its use in film is also a leading rendering solution in the architectural visualization industry noted for its ability to render physically accurate lighting, reflections and shadows. mental ray is integrated and directly accessible through the 3ds max user interface. This FREE rendering solution is included as part of the shipping version of 3ds max 6, used as one of the preferred technologies for the best in film and television effects, game cinematics, and design visualizations. Not only will 3ds max 6 ship with a single license of Mental Ray 3.2, but the implementation has been updated and now includes shader support within the Materials Editor, and new Mental Ray specific shader types from the LUME TOOLS collection.
Support “renderable” property flag for lights : A preference that gives artists the ability to not render those lights in the scene that are hidden. Perfect for trying multiple lighting setups within the same scene, or for focusing on certain types of lighting within the scene (ie working on the lights that affect the columns only, or those that provide the ambient room lighting, etc)
Command Line Rendering (see below)
Video/Film/Cinematics
3ds max 6 will excite animators creating television and film visual effects or game cinematics:
reactor 2: Integrated directly within 3ds max 6, these new features stunt man / rag doll, vehicle dynamics and a more advanced fracture.
Particle Flow: a Discreet-developed event-driven particle system for creating complex particle systems – already used on effects-intensive feature films such as The Core and XMEN-2, Particle Flow gives artists an intuitive interface for creating realistic fountains, fog, snow, splashes, contrails, explosions, and other environmental effects.
Command Line Rendering: Technical Directors and rendering specialists will be able to perform batch operations – rendering can be started from a command line prompt, and text files are able to drive rendering operations without engaging the 3ds max UI.
Region Net Render: Enables the rendering of single frames to be deployed over the entire render farm by breaking the frame up into “buckets” and deploying them across the network.
3D Paint (see above)
Support for mental ray 3.2 (see above)
Rendering Presets (see above)
Schematic View (see above)
Tabbed Render Dialogue (see above)
Layer Manager (see above)
Mirror Skin Weights (see above)
Patch Improvements (see above)
HDRI Support: Allows for the use of HDRI maps to simulate photorealistic lighting of a 3D scene, based on an image map
Blobmesh Object
Improved Job Archiving controls: Enable job archiving directly from the Job Submissions dialogue.
Government Simulation:
Discreet has partnered with several leading OpenFlight translator companies to deliver without any additional charge the best available OpenFlight translation to the 3ds max 6 artist.
Workflow/General Improvements
Many areas of 3ds max have been greatly enhanced and stabilized, including:
A new layer manager
Speed improvements to the Dope Sheet editor
Nearly 100 severe yet obscure bugs have been fixed during the development of 3ds max 6 instead of during the beta/bug fix period.
What else is new in 3ds max 6?
A new look! Including:
o New packaging
o New icon
o New marketing look-and-feel
o New advertising
o More community outreach
o More online streamed tutorials
Why is 3ds max the most used 3d product?
The industry’s most cost effective 3D solution
No other solution offers such value, especially when life cycle costs of talent, productivity, appropriate features for the task, , etc. are taken into account.
The industry’s most productive 3D solution
No other solution enables studios to build, animate, and render as much content in any given period of time as 3ds max 6. Driven from the beginning by the need to create high-quality 3D quickly and efficiently, 3ds max 6’s mature workflow and depth allows artists in all markets to achieve the results they desire in less time—allowing for faster time to market, more experimentation and creativity, and small studios to compete directly with the major players (who often rely on custom tools on top of off-the-shelf-software) for high-profile work.
3ds max 6—the leader for PC and console game development
For both the artist and developer, building a game of any type, from PC to console, 3ds max 6 will go from start to finish faster and cheaper than anything else. For those using middleware solutions, 3ds max 6 sets the standard for middleware integration tools.
3ds max 6—the leading choice for Visualization
3ds max 6 imports assets from any standard CAD or Design Package and offers unsurpassed animation and rendering tools for product, mechanical, and architectural designs using real-world lighting information – all wrapped with an industry-proven interface with a shorter learning cycle than any other professional 3D application.
3ds max 6—the best partner product for visualizing designs from Autodesk products
Discreet’s tight integration with Autodesk and support of the industry-standard DWG file format ensures the highest degree of interoperability with leading design solutions.
3ds max 6—High-volume, high-quality film effects production
With more approaches to modeling, animating, and rendering than any other package, 3ds max 6 delivers production artists highly-creative flexibility to building “film-quality” effects and characters. Furthermore, data built in 3ds max 6 is highly scalable, integrates perfectly into existing film-effects (3D and compositing) pipelines, and has the depth required to allow advanced studios to build seamless custom tools.
What does Discreet want the world to know about 3ds max 6?
In a mature and frenzied market, Discreet is the dependable partner. We are pleased to deliver a solid, on-time, and feature-packed release of 3ds max 6. Our launch is designed to let the community know our continued and unwavering commitment to 3D, from engineering to marketing to sales and support.
We won’t shock the world with price changes, reduced feature sets per release, lacking customer support, or hype-based marketing. Discreet wants our customers to evolve to the next level, at their own comfortable pace. 3ds max 6 carries a lot of new features and increased reliability, but it works naturally in any pipeline, in multiple markets. Our 3D products are part of Discreet’s overall portfolio of Academy-Award winning graphics/effects, editing and media streaming solutions – combined with the powerhouse backing of Autodesk. Evolve. With Discreet 3ds max 6.
