Webinars planned for 3ds Max XBR Update

[kenpimentel]

If you'd like to hear an update on our plans for restructuring 3ds Max (Project Excalibur or XBR) then follow this link:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/excalibur_xbr_update

[Bigjohn]

Definitely curious to hear more about this.

[piippo]

Curious, very :)

[kenpimentel]

Don't miss out on this, it is a once/year opportunity:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/xbr_webinar_last_chance

[Tom Ellis]

Thanks Ken, I got the email too, but this reminded me!

Just registered, although I'm on UK time and the only appropriate time will be when I'm driving home from work, so I'll either catch the later session or watch the stream later.

Either way, really excited to see where you're taking things. I've recently re-focused my career on Arch-Viz, so I'm spending a lot more time solely inside of Max now and keen to hear about some of the new developments you have going on.

Is that a hint at realtime rendering features on the screenshot in the link? :)
I was wondering whether that would be coming soon, since the elephant in the room is now pushing it's RT renderer.

[kenpimentel]

Stay tooned, ;)

[MattLichy]

Sweet, I registered

[Jesse Moody]

Registered and that Troll on the page is by Max Aristov (Artist at Valve, was my Lead at Raven Software while I was there)

Super talented dude.

Can't wait to see what is going on.

[Tom Ellis]

Just managed to catch an hour or so of the Webinar on my lunch break, really great stuff.

The direction the UI is going in looks incredible, certainly to me at least. It seems you've really taken on board what people have been saying about things becoming overcomplicated and unnecessary. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how it genuinely performs but it looks promising.

I do have a question though; when Shane was running through the realtime/viewport rendering showing the little FLV clip of the navigation, it seemed very very laggy. He was narrating saying 'you can see it is very easy to navigate' yet it was refreshing at about 0.25 fps. I'm assuming this should've appeared smoother and it was just the streaming feed?

Either way, the realtime visuals looked beautiful.

Very exciting stuff, thanks for letting us be a part of it!

[Spicypixel]

Wonder if they're going to be put up on a video site a week after showing?

[Tom Ellis]

@SpicyPixel: There will be a link available to the archived stream at some point today apparently. I'll post it if I get it.

[Esprite]

Audience Question
Q: If the MAX team and the MAYA team were to throw down...who would win?
A: We out-mass them by quite a bit and we fight dirty

LET'S GET IT ON

[piippo]

Really good insight on the webinar. Enjoyed the experience, wouldn't have hurt for it to be even longer. This gave a good overview of what the thinking is behind those ideas, which is great to hear.

[MattLichy]

Interesting stuff that is happening (watched the feed). I'm a bit scared though about the UI. Looks like Maya.. which I don't like. IT seems the Ribbon idea is going to be push through max entirely... from what was shown, which I dont think alot of people will like. I won't say much otherwise.. I guess we just have to wait and see.

I did hear there will be UV Unwrap info. in the new couple weeks... so I hope they did/are doing a big overhaul on that.

[kenpimentel]

XBR is scary for all of us. Thanks for tuning in. We'll have the webinar recording posted along with at least one video clip so that you can see it as it was intended. Dumb idea to try playing the video via webinar and then try to say how great it was... OK, won't do that again.

[piippo]

The UI ideas were going in the right direction in my opinion. I don't like to use ribbon now, as it takes too much space and it's just easier to grab the tools I use most either by using shortcuts or the times I need something that I don't have a shortcut for - from the sidepanel. BUT this only covers modeling, so for other things it would be nice to have UI tabs, like shown. Bit similar to modo, where it works fine (not saying XBR should carboncopy modo ;))

[PolyHertz]

Yea the city video was running at about half a frame per sec for me, not the best way to show it off :p

I was especially interested in the part about hotkey presets. Like everyone else I customize max a ton after a fresh install. One problem with saving and loading keboard setups is that they don't keep keys for custom macros and scripts so switching between different setups like that doesn't work currently. Speaking of which: When converting from one component selection to another (ex: vert>edge) the user ctrl clicks on the corresponding component button, but there's no hotkey for this by default like ctrl+1/2/3/4/5. That always came off as an inconsistency to me and is one of the first set of hotkeys I end up changing.

I'm hoping in Max2012 or 2013 we'll see a number of usability enhancements for some of the brush-based tools too. Like being able to easily change the Paint Selection Brush size without having to go into preferences. Or smooth with any of the graphite brushes (shift) instead of having it as a separate tool.

Waiting for the email with the video link sense I missed the first half of the presentation and am wondering what's going on with caddies.

[monster]

Yeah, I need XBR simulation like yesterday. It drives me crazy that Reactor, Hair and Fur, and Particle flow have completely different interfaces/workflows.

For XBR UI, we need trackviews and dopesheets to render just as fast as viewports.

[Mark Dygert]

Yeah, I need XBR simulation like yesterday. It drives me crazy that Reactor, Hair and Fur, and Particle flow have completely different interfaces/workflows.

For XBR UI, we need trackviews and dopesheets to render just as fast as viewports.HERE HERE!! +100 and add to it viewport speed with trajectories. Nothing kills even a low poly scene like having a trackview open with trajectories turned on. Right in the toilet...

Anyone have a link? I was signed up but missed it. The email said a link would be sent around for people who signed up and missed it... but so far I can't find any info on it.

[Bigjohn]

Any update on that link?

[kenpimentel]

Almost. I was converting to FLV on my laptop and it was taking 48+ hours. Now it crashed so I have to find someone who can do it faster. Sorry!

[Bigjohn]

Cool. No worries.

[MattLichy]

Yeah, I've been looking for a link in my email, but nothing yet :(

[kenpimentel]

OK, recording is up:
area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/xbr_webinar_results (http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/xbr_webinar_results)

Also, you might want to check out something we're doing for the community:
area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/announcing_3ds_max_community_wishlist (http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/announcing_3ds_max_community_wishlist)

[PolyHertz]

Ken: Just went to check out the wishlist and only the 'default settings' section seems to be working.

[r_fletch_r]

thanks Ken. I was really disappointed to have missed this when it went out live.

[kenpimentel]

Fixed the link, sorry!

[Bigjohn]

Webinar looked good. I enjoyed it, thanks for doing stuff like this.

I gotta say, that User Voice site is just brilliant. Depending on how it pans out over the years, it could be the greatest thing I've seen in a while.

[r_fletch_r]

The ribbon heavy UI is my only concern. I have nothing against the ribbon UI in theory but even with the latest .NET I still find it quite slow and it eats up far to much space on the top of the screen. the space issue is easy to fix but the speed is a sticking point. I have the same issues with caddies.

A couple of things made me very happy to hear, first of all was talk of quicksilvers functionality being tested in the viewport. Mental Mill was such a great step and now this is even more promising.

The idea of node based modifier stacks also sounds very promising (along with unified physics (WOW!))

anyway cheers for posting those links. Since you personally started showing up, my perceptions of AD
have been seriously changed for the better.

[Spicypixel]

Nice to see quicksilver being used as a viewport tech also. All of the features they outlined looked really positive :D

[MightyPea]

The slowness of the ribbon is quite painful, indeed. The graphs showing how far along the 'diet' and 'ui' are are worrying as well. 2010 and 2011 were part of xbr?! That's disheartening to find out, given how I certainly didn't experience any speedup in them! As mentioned, the interface is unresponsive, and when compared to older versions the boot has only gotten slower!
The UI changes haven't exacttly instilled any confidence in their designer's skill, either.

The ideas for docking and tabs sound good though!

Also, I remember you saying you were pushing for a public wishlist like this, Ken, and I'm glad to see it happen! I finally got to complain about one of my pet peeves, heh: https://autodesk.uservoice.com/forums/76763-publicsmallannoyingthings/suggestions/1489873-selection-highlighting-not-standard-expected-max
As well as voting on a lot of other people's requests, ofcourse.

[PolyHertz]

The slowness of the ribbon is quite painful, indeed. The graphs showing how far along the 'diet' and 'ui' are are worrying as well. 2010 and 2011 were part of xbr?! That's disheartening to find out, given how I certainly didn't experience any speedup in them! As mentioned, the interface is unresponsive, and when compared to older versions the boot has only gotten slower!.

Seems they have to build up the new before they can tear down the old, hence the current performance problems.

[kenpimentel]

People are experiencing roughly 40% startup time improvements with our "research project", you won't have to wait much longer to try it yourself...

[r_fletch_r]

indeed. it was april last year wasnt it :) I look forward to your usual round of I'm not telling you what this is but it sure looks cool.

[MightyPea]

Ken: Good news!

[Autocon]

Just watched the webinar. Some planned UI changes sound cool.

I did noticed that that at one point in the video they showed a slide that mentioned turning features off like, the caddies, the viewcube, the steering wheel thing and so forth. So it would seem like they understand that the caddie system is horrific and the old way of doing things was so much more effective/less frustrating.

My question is will Autodesk actually follow through with this and give me the option to remove this terrible caddie system in favor of the old more effect pop up box work flow? Even the idea of having those dialog boxes all in a similar place at all times like they mentioned when referring to the array tool would be a warm welcome to the current caddie system. Although I still like to be able to float windows where I want and have them always open in that same place.

the caddies system is what is preventing me from upgrading from 2010.