What's New in 3ds Max 2021?

In this blog post, I will look at some of the new features and updates released in 3ds Max 2021.

I am particularly interested in interoperability with other applications. Not just in the Autodesk collection but in material and texture shaders for use with various renderers. I am, therefore very pleased to see the workflow with Substance designer.

If you have not used or heard of it, please look at https://www.substance3d.com/products/substance-designer/ 

Substance Tools

For visualisation in Interior design this is a great step in interaction with 3ds Max, the chosen renderer and the texture material in the final renderer shader. Substance is a 3D authoring tool not another image manipulation or photo editor but an exceptional procedural tool creating unique and detailed textures for any scene and level of detail.

Python

The way that we can optimise Python in 3ds Max has been something that many have asked for over recent years. For those that are not familiar, Python is growing in popularity as a core high level programming language.

Chamfer

In the video below, I also wanted to look at a couple of the features that appeared in 2020 that many were not aware of at its first release. The first one was the Chamfer on the modifier stack. In poly modelling, creating good edge detail in 3ds Max has been something surface modelling has suffered from for quite a while. The feature sets in the Chamfer modifier are a lot more comprehensive and there is the ability to save a pre-set. Something I did recently while creating organic curved surface quad modelling on a sofa cushion. Using the Chamfer for the seam on the cushion cover.



While thinking about interoperability with other applications I thought it would be good to look at general workflow to get other geometry into 3ds Max for animation and render. Having a cleaner and more efficient way to transfer Revit and Inventor geometry has been something I have been very keen to in much of my visualisation career. Getting a seamless flow from one to another is essential in a busy visualisation studio. I believe not only within the Autodesk collections but with 3rd party applications we are very close to that seamless workflow.

Viewport

Lastly the feature developed in 3ds Max 2020 that is fully implemented in 2021 is the floating viewport. I find this surprisingly useful now that I have started to use it in a productive way.



I urge you to look at this feature. I still have my elevation viewports together with a perspective viewport and can float a camera viewport to keep an eye on the composition I am creating.

Watch our video below to see these new features in action:

Author

Geoff Alder

Geoff Alder has been training Autodesk applications for 25 years. He came into training from practical experience in the building industry. He has designed and carried out technical training all over the world. Geoff is a particularly dedicated trainer on 3D applications and has won awards from Autodesk for training on 3ds max.