Autodesk 3ds Max 2015

3ds Max 2015

This page will give you an idea of the key features of Autodesk 3ds Max 2015 and the system requirements of Autodesk 3ds Max 2015.

Take a look around.

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3ds Max new features

3D animation

Get increased artistic control, better realism, and improved usability with the enhanced Populate crowd animation feature.

• Give characters more convincing walking, jogging, passing, turning, and seated behaviors.
• Control more aspects of how characters are generated to influence their outcome.
• Save textures for reuse and customization and for network sharing and rendering.
• Customize Populate through an SDK (software development kit).

3D modeling and texturing

OpenSubdiv support

Efficiently represent subdivision surfaces using OpenSubdiv libraries, open-sourced by Pixar and incorporating technology from Microsoft Research.

• Visualize your model interactively without the need to render for a better WYSIWYG experience, greater productivity, and more accurate realization of creative intent.
• Get faster in-viewport performance for meshes with high subdivision levels by taking advantage of both parallel CPU and GPU architectures.
• Reduce the guesswork when animating models and help shorten production times, with efficient smooth surface representation.
• Create complex topology in less time, by taking advantage of efficient crease modeling workflows with CreaseSet modifier and Crease Explorer.
• Easily transfer your models to and from certain other packages that support OpenSubdiv using FBX asset exchange technology and achieve a consistent appearance.

Enhanced ShaderFX

Get more shading options and better shader interoperability between 3ds Max, Maya, and Maya LT software.

• Create a wider range of procedural materials with new node patterns: wavelines, voronoi, simplex noise, and brick.
• Create normal maps from 2D grayscale images with a new bump utility node.
• Get faster access to the shaders you need, with a searchable node browser.

Point Cloud support

Import, visualize, snap to, and render massive point cloud datasets to create more precise models from real-world references.

• View point clouds in true color in the 3ds Max viewport, interactively adjust the extent of the cloud displayed, and create new geometry in context by snapping to point cloud vertices.
• Render point clouds with shadows in the NVIDIA^® mental ray^® renderer to visualize CG objects in real-world contexts in order to better communicate designs, or to previsualize animation shots.
• Take advantage of a connected reality capture workflow with certain other Autodesk solutions: ReCap reality capture software , AutoCAD software for 2D and 3D CAD, Revit building information modeling software, and Inventor 3D CAD software, with support for the .rcp and .rcs file formats.

ShaderFX

Easily create advanced HLSL viewport shaders with the ShaderFX real-time visual shader editor.

• Connect different nodes together using an intuitive click-drag workflow.
• Select from a powerful array of floating-point values, mathematical operations, texture maps, normal maps, and color nodes.
• Visualize the resulting materials, even those with animated values, in real time in the 3ds Max viewport.
• Use the advanced mode to drill down into the inner workings of each basic node.

Placement tools

Easily position and orient content relative to other content in your scene with new Placement tools.

• Take advantage of intuitive auto-parenting and aligning behaviors.
• Move objects along the surface of other meshes as though magnetically attracted.
• Quickly rotate objects as part of the same option.

Quad chamfer

Create a chamfered or beveled edge between two surfaces consisting of quads, rather than triangles, to help eliminate pinching.

3D rendering

improved ActiveShade rendering

Enjoy a faster ActiveShade preview rendering workflow that now supports mental ray.

• Watch the effects of changing lighting or materials interactively, to more easily refine your work.
• Use the ActiveShade preview rendering window with mental ray, NVIDIA^® iray^®, or scanline renderers.
• Experience faster interactive updates for both iray and mental ray.
• Get finer grain updates with more frequent captures of viewport navigation and switching, adjustments to light parameters, and certain other scene changes.

Accelerated viewport performance

Increase interactivity with substantially faster navigation, selection, and viewport texture baking.

• See particular benefits with dense meshes and scenes with texture maps.
• Enable anti-aliasing with minimal impact on performance so you can work quickly in a higher-fidelity environment.

Stereo Camera

Create more engaging entertainment content and design visualizations with the new Stereo Camera feature set*.

• Create stereoscopic camera rigs to author engaging 3D content.
• Choose from left eye, right eye, center, or anaglyph display modes views in the Nitrous viewport.
• Use in-scene 3D volumes to help with the adjustment of valid stereo zones.
• Take advantage of passive or active stereo** viewing.

UI, workflow & pipeline

Alembic support*

View massive datasets in the Nitrous Viewport, and transfer them more easily through your production pipeline with new Alembic support.

• Work with production-proven technology, co-developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd.
• Move complex data through a pipeline in a manageable form: complex animated and simulated data is distilled into a non-procedural, application-independent set of baked geometric results.
• Get more from your workstation, with highly efficient use of memory and disk space.
• Enjoy faster data transfer and load times, with the ability to export and load only selected geometry.

Enhanced scene management

Manage complex scenes more easily with enhancements to Scene Explorers.

• Organize data into nested layers to make it easier to work with large numbers of objects.
• Take advantage of support for docking and Workspaces, together with customizable quad menus, for enhanced productivity.

Python scripting

Extend and customize 3ds Max with the popular and easy-to-learn Python scripting language.

• Differentiate your 3ds Max capabilities with Python-based extensions.
• Integrate 3ds Max more easily into a Python-based pipeline.
• Execute Python scripts from MAXScript and the 3ds Max command line.
• Access a subset of the 3ds Max SDK (software development kit) from Python scripts, including the ability to evaluate MAXScript code.

3DS Max 2015 System Requirements

Operating System

Microsoft^® Windows^® 7 (SP1), Windows^® 8 and Windows^® 8.1 Professional operating system

Browser

• Apple^® Safari^® web browser
• Google Chrome^TM web browser
• Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^® web browser
• Mozilla^® Firefox^® web browser

Hardware

• CPU 64-bit Intel^® or AMD^® multi-core processor
• Graphics Hardware Refer to the Recommended Hardware wizard for a detailed list of recommended systems and graphics cards
• RAM 4 GB of RAM (8GB recommended)
• Disk Space 4.5GB of free disk space for install
• Pointing Device Three-button mouse