Autodesk announces 2011 products, features

On the eve of GDC, Autodesk has announced its latest set of updates.

http://area.autodesk.com/products

They've also opened up a new games developer section over at The Area. Too bad Autodesk didn't do anything about the hideous interface!

http://area.autodesk.com/forum/game-developer-zone/

 

that XSI 2011 look tasty , the face robot tools could save me huge time few month before for a job i did using heavy lips sync too , XD...

 

OOOH, funnily the most exciting thing for me is the Filmbox 2011. Assuming unity will offer support for new features.

I noticed that FBX 2011 will support instancing, which means that we could build full levels in our native 3D app, so Max, Maya etc can be used as an object placement editor where we will only need to use Unity for setting up gameplay and final materials.

That and support for LOD are pretty big

I hope Unity 3 will support Instances, LOD, and maybe some easy way to change coordinate systems between 3D app native right handed to Unity's Left handed system.

 

Hi Tysoe,

These are very valid wishes but we're getting to feature freeze, so no promises. Although proper solution for conversion of coordinate features is on my personal wish list too...

Regards,
Paulius LIEKIS
Unity Technologies

 

That's probably something Unity would have to do, maybe, but the rest you could do in the Asset Importing stuff in Unity Pro. Maybe if someone implemented the correct parsing, Unity could integrate it for 3.x so non-Pro users would have it..

 

Excellent news Paulius. Looking forward to seeing the last few glitches in the art pipeline disappear.

 

these releases are pretty awesome

 

GPU rendering in 3dsmax 2011 could be exciting, and I'll be interested in seeing how the new node based material editor pans out.

My favourite feature is probably CAT animation. CAT's easily the best animation tool for game character animation. I just hope they keep developing it. Biped development pretty much stopped after they brought that into the main app.

 

The node based Mat Editor is cool, but I would probably never use it for making games, but its sure is going to be handy for high end users. So Im just glad they gave us the choice to choose between the new and the old

I wish they had put some more effort in "splines". Right now C4D is superior to Max spline wise.

 

I quite like max splines for 2D work. I find it more intuitive than Adobe illustrator hehe. But I know what you mean. Spline modeling is ok, nurbs last time I looked was awful.

I still think 3dsmax is overall the best polygon modeler for games. It's a shame that Unity art pipeline doesn't really let you do much with materials, means that the only parts of max that you ever get to use materials for is texture baking and menu's etc.

Perhaps someday Unity will get a CGFX importer/converter for shaders created outside the engine though the ones that come with unity cover most things well.

 

I love splines, I just hate the way Max handles it.
You should try C4D and play around with splines.
I have used max for ten years and tried C4D in 2009, so hard getting to know a new software but I should use C4D instead of Max.

These upgrades look like they havent thought about pleasing the Game Devs but more the high end people

 

Game dev includes all sorts of things from pre rendered FMV, texture baking, high end animation features still get exported. And some engines allow you to use 3dsmax as a WYSIWYG editor complete with shaders.

Game artists use more than just basic modeling, animation and UV mapping tools even if those do make up the bulk of the work.

Having realtime shaders, Ambient occlusion and dynamic shadows in 3dsmax viewports is pretty handy. And before I switched to Unity I used Ogre with a commercial exporter that converted shaderFX shaders to ogre with the click of a button. Ogre has two exporters that render a max viewport using the Ogre render engine so you can pretty much work WYSIWYG in 3dsmax and see how everything looks including shadows and shaders in realtime.

With the new FBX 2011 and its instance support you may be able to do some of the level editing in your 3D app in unity, IF they support fbx new support for instanced geometry.

I've looked at C4D on occasion, most recently when I was trying the mac. It was decent but in my opinion still not up to 3dsmax. I decided to skip the mac mainly because of the lack of 3dsmax. Tried parallels desktop and vmware fusion but decided they were a waste of time.

At the end of the day different artists feel comfortable with different tools. Just like I prefer oil paints over acrylics and find oils much more flexible despite the fairly long drying times.

 

I know But what you see in Max is NOT what you get IMO.
Thats one of the main things I learned in the 10 years developing games. Luminox "shader lab" (Great Max plug in) http://www.lumonix.biz/shaderfx.html, supports export to Quest3D but...... but..... but setting shaders up in Max was a waste of time because you had to tweak in Quest anyway
As soon as get something to export into the engine I do it. The game editor screen is the "canvas" not the 3D application.
But hey that is just my experience. Yes it depends what area/line of work you are in and you favourite work flow.

I do agree that on the animation side we could have something interesting, hope FBX and Unity lets us get it exported "in".

(btw, this was not meant as 3D application battle )