• 3ds Max Design User Interface
• Data and Scene Management 
• Modelling
• Polygon Modelling and Texturing
• Spline/Extended Spline Modelling
• Multiple Rendering 
• Rendering Controls and Effects
• Light Simulation and Analysis
• General Animation
• Character Animation
• High-Level Animation
• Modifiers
• Space Warps
• Dynamics
• Cloth
• Particles
• Hair and Fur 
• ProSound
• MAXScript
• Connectivity and Integration

3ds Max Design User Interface

Maximise your productivity.

• Gain unmatched productivity through a combination of performance and workflow features, including a fast, high-quality viewport environment, schematic view, multiple coordinate systems, interactive axis constraints, customisable menus and buttons, viewport grips/manipulators, and modeless keyboard entry. Achieve efficiency through streamlined workflows, custom hotkeys, and cross-application navigation tools like ViewCube™ and SteeringWheels® functionalities.
• Use the unique modifier stack for a visual, parametric workflow; any change made in the modifier stack is automatically propagated to the end result. Work nonlinearly on a completed high-resolution character model; revert to the original low-resolution geometry at the bottom of the stack and add details, such as buttons on a shirt or tweaks to the nose. Those changes pass through finishing modifiers (such as smoothing, mapping, and skinning) to appear in the completed character.
• Use the mouse- or tablet-based paintbrush interface for object selection and deformation, vertex colour, and radiosity touchup.

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Data and Scene Management

Boost productivity and workflow flexibility with external and internal data and scene management features.

• Facilitate the use and transfer of 3ds Max Design data among file iterations, users, and locations with file-management utilities, including project folders, relative paths, repathing tools, asset tracking, Containers, increment on save, auto-backup, resource collector, dynamic texture reloading, and log files.
• Use the Scene Explorer Panel to sort, filter, and search a scene by any object type or property (including metadata) with stackable filtering, sorting, and searching criteria. Save and store multiple explorer instances and link, unlink, rename, hide, freeze, and delete objects regardless of the objects currently selected in the scene. Configure columns to display and edit any object property - a feature that can be extended using MAXScript.
• Manage complex scenes and animations with an intelligent external file-referencing feature for scenes, objects, or materials.
• Work in layers using the Layer Manager to quickly isolate related scene elements.
• Manage source controls for in-use assets with Asset Tracker, a feature tightly integrated with Autodesk® Vault data-management software and compatible with most third-party data-management solutions.
• Transfer building information models from Revit® Architecture building design software into 3ds Max Design with the Recognize™ scene-loading technology.
• Use Material Explorer to navigate and manage all rendering-related assets in a scene.
• The new Containers toolset in 3ds Max Design 2010 facilitates collaboration and flexible workflows by enabling users to collect multiple objects of a complex scene into a single container. Place related objects - such as sections of a city - in a container and treat them as a single element. To improve scene performance, temporarily unload containers from the viewport display while maintaining their relationships to the scene and reload later when needed - saving memory, increasing viewport performance, and decreasing load and save times. Translate, delete, copy, or save container nodes; use containers to override object properties for scene organisation without affecting layer organisation (similar to a nested layer workflow); and reference multiple containers created by others into a single scene so users can work together in context. Users can access and edit each other’s container, allowing flexible workflows while also imposing constraints on what can be edited.

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Modelling

Create parametric shapes and objects to begin modelling quickly.

• The vast selection of ready-to-use geometry includes standard and extended primitives, 2D shapes, and architectural elements, such as doors, windows, and stairs.
• Create compound objects with the Scatter, Connect, Booleans, ShapeMerge, Morph, BlobMesh, Terrain, and Loft operations.
• Convert procedural and compound objects to base-geometric types - editable mesh, editable poly, editable patch, or NURBS objects - for more detailed editing.
• Use 2D shapes as a starting point for creating editable splines and spline cages for conversion to any 3D geometry type.

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Polygon Modelling and Texturing

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 takes its renowned polygon modelling functionality to a higher level. With at least 100 new tools for freeform design and advanced polygonal modelling, the Graphite modelling toolkit facilitates creativity and artistic freedom, and is displayed in a central location so it’s easier to find the right tool for the job. Customise the tool display or hide the command panel and model in Expert Mode.

In addition to the many modelling and mapping tools available in previous versions of the software, the Graphite toolkit includes new tools for many operations including

• Sculpting with assorted brushes
• Quick retopologising
• Granular polygon editing
• Locking transforms to any surface
• Freeform creation of vertices
• Modifying and creating smart selections
• Quick drawing of surfaces and shapes
• Quick transformations

Polygon Modelling Tools

• Choose from a complete set of creation and editing tools including create, collapse, attach, bridge, flip, hinge from edge, turn, cut, split, slice, quick slice, wedge, bevel, extrude, chamfer vertex, extrude along a curve, mirror, edge loop, and edge ring.
• Use ProBooleans to reevaluate and optimise the topology of meshes; quickly fracture geometry into smaller, individual chunks with ProCutter.
• Take advantage of workflow features, including Preserve UVs, which separates texture coordinates from the polygon vertices to edit the mesh without destroying UV data; subobject (vertices, edges, faces); selection sets, which intelligently convert between different types of selections (such as edges to vertices); interactive previewing of edits and animated edits; and the ability to make modelling hotkeys and pivots become temporary overrides.
• Select from a range of modelling modifiers for working with geometry and subobject geometry in the modifier stack, including Projection, Edit Normals, Vertex Paint, and those that let you bend, bevel, cap holes, cross section, displace, extrude, and subdivide polygons.

Subdivision Surfaces and Polygon Smoothing

• Subdivision methods include NURMS, which produces an object similar to a NURBS object; classic, which, like MeshSmooth, produces three- and four-sided facets; and quad output, which produces only four-sided facets.
• Mesh smoothing of polygon objects provides control over the polygon count of the final mesh for render optimisation or level of detail.
• Subdivision surface and polygon smoothing tools - when modelling with the modifier stack - include a hierarchical subdivisions surface modifier, MeshSmooth, and TurboSmooth.

Optimisation Tools

• Geometry cleanup and level-of-detail tools enable scene optimisation for interactive display.
• The ProOptimizer provides precise control over the number of faces or points in a scene or model. Remove useful faces last to reduce a selection up to 75 percent without losing detail.

Texture Assignment/Editing
Autodesk 3ds Max Design offers a wide range of operations for creative texture and planar mapping, including tiling, mirroring, decals, angle, rotate, blur, spline mapping, UV stretching, and relaxation; Remove Distortion; Preserve UV; and UV template image export.

• Paint directly on 3D models in the viewport to create new maps or extend existing ones using brushes, blend modes, fill, clone, and erase.
• Use the streamlined texture workflow to select from unlimited texture combinations, a material/map browser with support for drag-and-drop assignment, and hierarchies with thumbnails.
• Select from UV workflow features including Pelt mapping, which defines custom seams and enables users to unfold UVs according to those seams; copy and paste (of materials, maps, and colours); and quick mapping types (box, cylindrical, spherical).
• Use up to 99 UV sets for texture layering.
• Select from extensive UVW mapping tools, including direct manipulation of texture mapping coordinates.
• Work in the modifier stack with texture modifiers such as Camera Map, Material Modifier, UVW mapping, UV Xform, Map Scaler, and Surface Mapper.
• Test or query for flipped or overlapping faces and unwelded vertices with the xView Mesh Analyzer.
• Navigate and manage all rendering-related assets in a scene with Material Explorer.
• See Rendering for more about shaders and materials.

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Spline/Extended Spline Modelling

• Precise spline-based curve and surface construction tools include loft, one- and two-rail sweep, bevelling, extrude, filet, cap, offset, lathe, ruled, mirror, and multisided blend.
• Attach, detach, align, stitch together, extend, fillet, or rebuild surfaces with a high degree of control over parameterisation and continuity.
• Merge multiple NURBS patches into a single polygon mesh.
• Deform, lathe, normalise spline, set spline render properties, sweep, and trim/extend using spline modifiers when modelling with the modifier stack. A range of modifiers is provided for direct manipulation of subobject geometry (Curve CV, Surface CV, surface).

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Multiple Rendering

Use multiple renderers -tightly integrated through a consistent rendering interface - to create scene in your design visualisation project.

3ds Max Design Production Renderer

• Fast scanline rendering enables efficient, production-quality software renders.
• Raytrace materials and maps provide realistic reflections and refractions.
• Effects include depth of field, motion blur, film grain, hair, and fur, and lens-based effects.
• Photometric lighting support allows the use of real-world lighting profiles.
• Plug-ins available for volumetric light and fog, as well as for fire, provide atmospheric effects.
• Advanced software shader types include anisotropic, metal, and ink ‘n paint (for cartoon looks).
• High-quality software particle rendering provides fine control over the assignment of materials to particles.
• mental ray® renderer shading software works with conventional 3ds Max Design software materials.

Integrated mental ray Renderer
High-level integration with the mental ray renderer results in significantly shorter render setup times and improved overall usability.

• The mental ray renderer provides physical sun and sky workflow.
• Select from advanced photorealistic lighting features, such as Global Illumination, caustics, blurry reflections and refractions, ambient occlusion, and motion-blurred particles and contours shading.
• Create custom mental ray shaders.
• Convert light baking of shadows and lights, including Global Illumination and Final Gather, to file textures or to colour-per-vertex data.
• Use real-world lighting profiles for rendering or lighting analysis through photometric lighting support.
• Directly render fur and hair.
• Use architectural and car-paint shaders for rich, easy-to-use rendering capabilities.
• Use Sky Portal to simplify the lighting of indoor scenes with outdoor lighting and re-creating the lighting of windows, skylights, open doors, and more.
• Select from a variety of physically based mental ray materials from manufacturing-supplied data and professional images with the ProMaterials™ library. Materials include glossy or matte wall paint, solid glass, and concrete.
• Save memory through Proxy Objects support.

mental ray Satellite

• Contains the same functionality as the integrated mental ray renderer.
• Assists in distributing render jobs over processors located across a network.
• Includes eight licenses with each 3ds Max Design licence at no additional charge.

VUE File Renderer
Create VUE files in an editable ASCII format.

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Rendering Controls and Effects

Set up and evaluate your scene or create realistic particle effects.

Viewport Renderer

• The multithreaded viewport maximises productivity and creativity; adaptive degradation technology automatically simplifies the scene display to meet user-defined target frame rates.
• 3ds Max Design 2010 is the first animation program to integrate mental images’ powerful mental mill® technology, enabling 3ds Max Design users to develop, test, and maintain shaders and complex shader graphs for GPU/CPU and software rendering with real-time visual feedback - no programming skills required. Use the mental mill Artist Edition software to create completely hardware agnostic MetaSL shaders?no need to reauthor them for different target platforms. mental mill supports CgFX, HLSL, and GLSL, and is read natively by mental ray® software and RealityServer®. The mental mill API also enables third parties to develop back-end plug-ins for other targets, including special purpose processors and other software renderers.
• Users get immediate feedback on various render settings. Review features include
  • GPU-based, real-time shadow support, including self-shadowing and up to 64 lights simultaneously
  • Interactive previewing of objects/scenes using the 3ds Max Design Sun/Sky workflow system
  • Support for mental ray architectural and design material settings
  • Full Photometric light and IES file support
  • Support for ambient occlusion, HDRI-based lighting, hardware, antialiasing, soft shadows, interactive exposure control

Reveal
Reveal™ functionality lets designers visualise and manipulate a given region in both the Viewport and Framebuffer.

• The rendered image Framebuffer contains a toolset for quickly validating changes in a render by optionally filtering out objects, regions, or processes to temporarily balance quality versus speed versus completeness - modulate render speed by toggling geometry translation or through lighting calculation and image-quality settings, based on what the user wants to update.
• Users can autogenerate regions around selections.
• Reuse temporary Final Gather maps any time.

ActiveShade
Evaluate lighting and material changes in a scene with the Preview window.

Render Elements

• Output multiple components from any software renderer simultaneously for reassembly in a compositor; output elements include diffuse colour, lighting, alpha, reflection, refraction, and shadow. Store Z-depth and motion vector data separately for use in post processes.
• Use the mental ray render element to extract HDR data from architecture and design materials; use another element to extract user-defined data from a shader tree.

Render to Texture

• Bake each object’s material and lighting into new texture maps.
• Easily generate specific characteristics - diffuse colour, height, normal, lighting, and mental ray ambient occlusion - through element output support.

Material Design Workflow

• Use the Material Editor to design and edit simple-to-complex shading hierarchies.
• Display texture and image libraries or image swatches with Material/Map Navigator for easy management and selection.
• Select from an extensive library of 3D procedural maps, including cellular, dent, falloff, marble, noise, particle age, particle motion blur, planet, smoke, stucco, wood, and waves.

Render Management

• Render on an unlimited number of networked machines running the same operating system (mental ray excepted) using Autodesk® Backburner™ render management software.
• Share render settings with colleagues, reduce scene setup time, and keep rendering parameters consistent by loading and saving Render Presets for active renderers, lighting schemes, and overall render quality.

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Light Simulation and Analysis

Exposure

• Use 3ds Max Design software’s exclusive Exposure™ lighting analysis technology to simulate and analyse sun, sky, and artificial lighting in a 3D architectural design. This functionality assists architects in light-intensity and required indoor-environmental quality evaluations, such as for LEED EQ Credit 8.1. Exposure has been validated by the National Research Council, Canada’s leading organisation for scientific research, and the same organisation that validated the renowned Radiance backward raytrace renderer as a daylight simulation tool.
• Create light measurement grids of any shape at any location in 3D space; grids can be scaled and rotated.
• Apply the light metering; choose either graphical or file output.
• Use the quick-settings dashboard interface to access render, light, and material settings.
• Achieve more sustainable designs by analysing sun, sky, and artificial lighting, and accurately predicting how light will interact with your design.
• Analytically explore direct lighting effects with interactive results right in the viewport.
• Load complex designs and interactively adjust lighting while watching lighting levels displayed directly as colours in the scene.

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General Animation

Benefit from a broad range of tools for keyframe and procedural animation that can be used for almost any parameter in your scene.

General Keyframing

• Two keying modes - set key and auto key - offer support for different keyframing workflows. Fast and intuitive keyframing controls - cut, copy, and paste - let the user create animations with ease.
• View and edit animation trajectories directly in the viewport.

Animation Controllers

• Use a wide range of controllers, both key-based and parametric, to animate the full transformation or the position, rotation, or scale of objects.
• Key-based controllers, such as Bézier and TCB, store values and interpolation methods in each key, which can be edited with those controls.

Constrained Animation

• Animate objects along curves with controls for alignment, banking, velocity, smoothness, and looping, and along surfaces with controls for alignment. Weight path-controlled animation between multiple curves, and animate the weight.
• Constrain objects to animate with other objects - including look at, orientation in different coordinate spaces, and linking at different points in time. These constraints also support animated weighting between more than one target.
• Collapse resulting constrained animation into standard keyframes for further editing.

Procedural Animation

• Parametric controllers - each with unique controls - store values that affect the animation.
• Create procedural animation based on numerous built-in controllers including noise, expressions, waveform, spring, and audio.
• Collapse resulting procedural animation into standard keyframes for further editing.

Script and Expression Controllers

• Use custom controllers as expressions and scripts. Expressions control the animation by any math function, as well as by any MAXScript; scripts control the animation by any relationship describable using MAXScript.
• Collapse resulting script or expression-based animation into standard keyframes for further editing.

List Controllers

• Blend multiple animation tracks into a single result using a hierarchy of controllers in a list.
• Use list controllers to store different animation poses and versions on the same object or objects.
• Weigh and animate the influence of each controller in the list.

Reaction Controllers
Set up reactions to make objects respond to animation; set up and trigger states for reactions with desired values to control the reacting object without having to key by hand.

Parameter Wiring

• Wire together one- and two-way relationships between controllers to offer a more custom method of keying animation.
• Implement custom animation controls by wiring user interface elements such as sliders and spinners to objects’ animatable tracks. Control multiple attributes with a single slider.

Track View: Curve Editor and Dope Sheet

• Edit keyframe animation track by track using curves along the timeline to more easily visualise the components of the interpolation.
• Curve editing tools include limiting, curve drawing, and curve modifiers.
• Edit keys individually or in groups and ranges using the Dope Sheet; slide, move, and scale keys or sets of keys in both time and value. Edit animation track by track by copying, pasting, and instancing controllers.
• Use Track Sets to organise complex animation into discrete entities for easier editing.
• Precisely control dense animation using soft selection fall off and Reduced Keys that maintain the integrity of the original animation.
• Load sound tracks into a Track View for easy synchronisation with targeted animation.

Ghosting
Evaluate object motion by viewing the animation before and after the current frame.

Modifier Animation
The modifier stack offers users another procedural approach to animation as all modifier parameters can be keyed.

• Use the Point Cache modifier to save and load surface deformations for easy swapping and fast playback.
• Use the Morpher modifier an interface for organising and animating morphing targets; includes support for progressive morphing.

Skinning

• Use the Skin or Physique modifier to achieve precise, smooth control of skeletal deformation as joints are moved, even in challenging areas such as shoulders.
• Control skin deformation using direct vertex weights or volumes of vertices defined by envelopes, or both.
• Achieve the accuracy and flexibility needed for complicated characters with tools for easy editing and proximity-based transfer between models with capabilities such as weight tables, paintable weights, and saving and loading of weights. 
• Use rigid bind skinning to animate low-polygon models or as a diagnostic tool for regular skeleton animation.
• Use additional modifiers, such as Skin Wrap and Skin Morph, to drive meshes with other meshes and make targeted weighting adjustments in tricky areas.

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Character Animation

Find the tools you need to animate sophisticated digital characters.

Biped Overview
The integrated Biped toolset provides fast, intelligent biped, physique, and crowd animation functionality.

• Biped automates the creation of bipedal and quadrupedal character skeletons; users can animate the character before the skeleton structure has been determined and retarget onto bipeds/quadrupeds of differing structures.
• Biped delivers state-of-the-art, intuitive FK/IK blending as well as a powerful IK pivot-animating system that lets hands and feet roll and rotate around points other than their base pivots.
• Biped Xtras let the user create and animate extraneous biped features anywhere on the rig via FK chains - attached anywhere, parentable to any biped object, and animatable in rotation and position. Save Xtras as .bip files.
• Biped provides high-level tools for asset sharing, animation layering, and nonlinear editing.
• Unique Biped and spline dynamics tools enable animators to precisely control the physical forces acting on a character, and can be used to calculate biped airborne trajectory, knee bend on landing, and overall balance.
• Physique can be used to attach skin geometry automatically to a biped or bones hierarchy.
• Integrated crowd system lets users control biped characters or any 3ds Max Design object using intelligent behavioral interactions, like goal seeking and avoidance.
• Behaviors can be scripted or written as C++ plug-ins and users can move between them based on any scriptable or programmable criteria using cognitive controllers.

Skeletons and Inverse Kinematics (IK)

• Rig characters with custom skeletons using 3ds Max Design bones, IK solvers, and rigging tools.
• Use all animation tools - including expressions, scripts, list controllers, and wiring -
  along with a set of utilities specific to bones to build rigs of any structure and with custom controls; users see only the UI necessary to animate their characters.
• Choose from four powerful 3ds Max Design plug-in IK solvers to reduce the time it takes to create high-quality character animation: history-independent, which delivers smooth blending between IK and FK animation, and uses preferred angles for more control over the positioning of affected bones; history-dependent, to solve within joint limits and create machine-like animation; limb, a lightweight two-bone solver optimised for real-time interactivity and ideal for working with a character arm or leg; and spline IK, a flexible solver for animating skeletal chains, such as a character’s spine or tail, and which includes moveable nodes and easy-to-use twist and roll controls.

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High-Level Animation

Animation Assets
Both Biped and 3ds Max Design software objects have systems for storing, loading, and retargeting animation assets, enabling designers to reuse their content and greatly expand the usefulness of each clip.

Though the Biped file format is specific to itself - providing unparalleled power and ease of restructuring and retargeting - it can also contain 3ds Max Design animation that a biped may depend on.

Animation data can be exported to an XML file from any object or character and then reimported with track-to-track mapping, or in the case of a character, object-by-object control for retargeting onto characters with proportions different from the original.

Motion Mixer
Both Biped and 3ds Max Design objects are supported by the nonlinear animation mixer.

• Store libraries of motions to use with the mixer; apply and retarget motions to single objects, entire characters, or specific sets of objects and tracks within characters.
• Move intelligently between motion clips based on the patterns of the clips themselves for ultimate smoothness.
• Control each animation sequence in isolation or in the context of other animations with muting and soloing capabilities.

Animation Layers
Both Biped and 3ds Max Design objects can be animated in layers, allowing targeted tweaks on even the densest animation data but without compromising the underlying keyframes. 

Parameter Collector
An intuitive interface for collecting, managing, and sharing specific sets of animation controls.

Biped Motion Flow

• Use the Biped clip network interface to set up transitions between motions and define a sequence of movements.
• Use with the crowd system to determine which animation behaviors the crowd-driven biped can choose.

Biped Copy/Paste
The Biped copy-and-paste system feature provides a powerful system for storing, sharing, and retrieving poses, postures, and tracks on whole bipeds or sets of objects therein and facilitating animation blocking and hand posing.

Biped Workbench
Use the specialised version of track view for editing, analysing, and modifying biped animation based on high-level criteria such as acceleration, spikes, and noise.

Biped Footsteps
Animate bipedal characters with footstep gizmos that represent and control the placement of IK constraints for locomotion.

Motion Capture

• Motion-capture data - both hierarchical and marker - can be easily imported and retargeted onto both bipeds and 3ds Max Design objects.
• 3ds Max Design objects are supported by HTR and TRC import formats, which can be converted into XML or biped for reuse and retargeting on any character.
• Biped supports BVH and CSM data and has tools for extracting IK constraints, reducing keys on any body part within set tolerances, and defining offsets within the character figure.

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Modifiers

Select, model, map, and animate objects and subobjects using the modifier stack.

Selection
Move subobject selections up the stack to other modifiers using Mesh Select, Poly Select, Patch Select, and Volume Select.

Animated Deformations

• Animated deformers add life to creatures, simulate fluidic effects and work on all geometry types, including particles.
• Create animated deformations using modifiers, including free form, ripple, wave, squeese, twist, bend, stretch, spherify, noise, displace, skew, and relax. World Space modifiers operate at the top of the modifier stack and bind objects to animated world conditions, such as surfaces, forces, fields, and deflections.

Modelling and Mapping

• Edit mesh, poly, patch, and spline modifiers let the designer use base-level geometry editing tools on parametric objects.
• MeshSmooth, TurboSmooth, Subdivide, Tessellate, and HSDS modifiers increase the resolution of objects or subobjects and offer controls specific to each technology.
• Optimise and MultiRes reduce the resolution of objects while maintaining important characteristics.
• UV Map and UV Unwrap add texture-coordinate manipulation tools into the stack of any object.
• Other parametric processes - adding custom attributes, capping holes in geometry, painting vertex colours, overriding material IDs, and adjusting surface normals -
  benefit from the modifier stack’s flexibility.

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Space Warps

Add world-space animation effects to control the behavior and interactions of all scene objects with Space Warps, which can be bound to geometry and particles.

• Force-based Space Warps, such as wind and gravity, add natural behavior to selections of objects.
• Deflectors contain the animation of objects and particles to enable parametric bouncing and friction.
• Modifier-based Space Warps deform many objects in relation to each other.
• Space Warps included in dynamics simulations enhance physical realism.

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Dynamics

Create effects through the dynamic interaction of geometry, including collisions between rigid and soft bodies.

• Create a full range of rigid-and soft-body dynamics simulations with the integrated reactor plug-in, which is based on the Havok 3.2 solver, and compatible with the 3ds Max Design Space Warp modifiers.
• Use multiple constraints to create intricate and accurate physical relationships between objects. Simple constraints, such as springs and dashpots, require little computation and create realistic dynamic connections between two objects. Generate more complex and accurate multiobject simulations with the computationally intensive cooperative constraints, such as hinge, car wheel, point-to-point, and rag doll.
• Reference a real-time simulation window for trial-and-error iteration.
• Opt to add simulation results - written into 3ds Max Design PRS keys - to list controllers or Biped layers so as to not overwrite existing animation.

Rigid-Body Dynamics (Reactor)

• Easily set up realistic, high-speed simulations of multiple rigid objects and iterate upon them using reactor object collections.
• Determine each object’s physical characteristics through detailed control over mass, friction, and elasticity.

Soft-Body Dynamics (Reactor)
Deformable objects and surfaces interact with rigid bodies and add secondary motion effects, such as clothing, jiggling fat, and floppy ears.

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Cloth

Use powerful cloth simulation tools to create realistic fabric simulations and tailor-made clothing for characters.

Integrated Cloth Solver
In addition to reactor’s cloth modifier, 3ds Max Design software offers an integrated cloth-simulation engine to turn almost any 3D object into clothing or build garments from scratch.

• Use local simulation to drape cloth in real time, setting up an initial clothing state before setting animation keys. Cloth simulations can be used with other 3ds Max Design dynamic forces, such as Space Warps.
• Animate multiple independent cloth systems with their own objects and forces.
• Cache cloth deformation data to the hard drive to allow nondestructive iterations and to improve playback performance.

Fashion Design

• Choose from several preset cloth types; mix fabrics and weights on one garment.
• Realise intuitive stitching of flat clothing patterns similar to traditional garment assembly methods.
• Use real-world patterns as the basis for clothing, including jackets with collars, vents and lapels, and pants with cuffs and pockets, as well as loose or tight-fitting garments. Quickly define and stitch seams to construct garments on characters.
• Tailor clothing in the stack - shorten hems, pinch darts, tighten sleeves - using standard modelling techniques to quickly customise the fit.
• Cloth pinching solution addresses the challenge of cloth pinched between two objects, such as under the arm.

Animation

• Animate any cloth object to achieve the effect of sails, skins, tents, drapery, bedding, and more.
• Clothing moves, folds, and gathers whenever characters move.
• Use texture maps to create wrinkles and deform the cloth.
• Choose from a variety of animatable cloth constraints for greater control of realistic clothing behavior; use these constraints to create effects such as wet and clingy or slippery cloth.
• Tear cloth with variable strength and timing.
• Set collision objects to cut cloth when they collide.
• Inherit Velocity tool blends a new Cloth simulation with one from previous frames to create a smooth transition for staged simulations.

Cloth-Based Visual Effects
Create inflated, enclosed cloth and cloth-like surfaces, such as cushions or balloons.

View, Edit, and Blend Between Caches
Use multiple cloth caches; blend and interpolate between them.

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Particles

Control fully integrated particle effects by forces based on real-world physics or by deformers.

Extensible Integrated Particle System

• Seven different particle emitters provide a wide range of event-driven and nonevent-driven particle behaviors, including spray, snow, blizzard, and super spray.
• Particle Flow provides a sophisticated event-driven particle toolset for designing the behavior of a particle based on a series of defined events.
• Workflow features include script and expression-based control over particle attributes, motion, and dynamics; direct manipulators for interactive control of particles, fields, and emitters; and the ability to control particles by texture values.
• Use geometry instancing to place individual objects, or a sequence of objects, onto any particle.
• Intuitive control of particles via geometric shapes enables the user to place particles where and when desired.
• Apply and layer standard 3ds Max Design deformer modifiers - such as bend, twist, and taper - for nonphysically based particle effects.
• Collision events can trigger multiple procedural animation effects.

Operators and Tests

• Build particle systems using operators that control particle characteristics, such as emission, speed, geometry, and materials.
• Build particle event systems using tests - which trigger changes in behavior - and spawning based on characteristics such as age, speed, and collision.
• Customize operators and tests using scripts or the particle flow API.

Forces
Bind Space Warps - such as wind, gravity, and vortex - to particle systems and operators to generate world-space conditions.

PFlowAdvanced
This toolset adds 12 new, advanced operators and extends and optimises the Particle Flow functionality while reducing UI complexity. Operators include painting, for precise particle placement and Shape Plus, for defining particle shapes, plus a range of Grouping operators for creating particle subsets.

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Hair and Fur

Easily create hair, fur, and other strand-derived effects via the Hair and Fur modifier.

Creation Tools

• Manipulate hair directly in the viewports using Hair selection and styling tools.
• Copy and paste hair from one object to another.
• Derive hair from splines and convert it to splines or meshes.
• Instance any source object as hair strands.
• Use Spline Deform to add splines to a set of hairs, which can act as control guides to pose, key, or assign a dynamic target, with the hair following.

Styling

• Use a brush-based interface for the creation of hair and fur styles: control hairs can be directly manipulated along the contours of an object - individually, in groups, or globally - into any number of styles using traditional transformations (move, rotate, scale); there are also tools for cutting, brushing, clumping, and more.
• Save and load more than 10 preset styles.
• Add kink and frizz, animate frequency and speed.

Rendering
Render hair directly in the 3ds Max Design scanline renderer or in mental ray.

Dynamics and Collisions

• Hair can collide with polygons or implicit spheres.
• Hair can respond to the dynamic parameters of gravity, stiffness, root holding, and dampening.
• Hair and fur systems can be connected to existing dynamic forces such as Space Warps.

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ProSound

• Add up to 100 audio tracks per animated scene.
• Synchronise audio with the viewport play rate, render to match playback speed, or play backwards and forwards (Ping-Pong mode).
• Use both PCM and compressed audio in AVI and WAV format with up to six output channels.

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MAXScript

Use an open interface for customising and scripting 3ds Max Design software.

• Access most features in 3ds Max Design through scripting.
• Easily extend the user interface and automate operations to perform batch processing.
• Establish live interfaces to external systems through OLE Automation.
• Use MAXScript ProEditor for an intelligent interface that streamlines the scripting workflow.
• Display line numbers with MaxScript debugger support.

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Connectivity and Integration

Implement tools for integrating 3ds Max Design content into visualisation pipelines.

• Xref - an intelligent, external file-referencing feature for scenes, objects, or materials - enables efficient team management of complex scenes and animations.
• Manage absolute and relative file paths - for all asset types, including xrefs - or assign new paths to keep external references intact when designers share files.
• Use source control management for in-use assets through Asset Tracker, a feature closely integrated with Autodesk® Vault data-management software.

Integration with Revit Architecture
The FBX®-based Recognize scene loading technology enables fast and accurate transfer of scene data - geometry, cameras, lights, and materials - from Revit® Architecture building design software into 3ds Max Design.

Integration with Autodesk Vault
The Autodesk Vault plug-in, which ships with 3ds Max Design software, consolidates 3ds Max Design assets into a single location, allowing automatic file tracking and management of work in progress, and making it easy and safe for users to share, find, and reuse 3ds Max Design assets in a large-scale visualisation environment. 

AutoCAD Integration

• Quickly import data from AutoCAD® software applications into 3ds Max Design via the DWG™ file format.
• Export 3ds Max Design scene files to AutoCAD; some data types are not supported.
• Maintain through 3ds Max Design software a live data link to AutoCAD via the File Link Manager, including support for Layers.
• Enhance design and visualisation projects with new data in 3ds Max Design without compromising underlying AutoCAD design.
• Select Similar operation identifies all objects in an imported scene that contain characteristics similar to those of a selected object, dramatically accelerating the process of making changes to multiple objects simultaneously.

Integration with Other Design and Visualisation Applications

• Import or link data from AutoCAD® Architecture software, Autodesk® Inventor® software, Autodesk® VIZ software, and other popular visualisation software products into 3ds Max Design via their native file formats or DWG.
• The Autodesk VIZ feature set is directly compatible with 3ds Max Design, making it easy to upgrade. Data for certain functionalities (particles, physics, subobject, and character animation) is not supported, but 3ds Max Design files with these types of data can be opened in VIZ (and vice versa) with no data loss.

Integration with Autodesk Mudbox
Extensive support for the OBJ file format supports pipelines that rely on both 3ds Max and Autodesk® Mudbox™ software. This support includes, but is not limited to:

• Display of texture coordinates
• Display of smoothing groups
• An option for triangulating polygons on import
• An option for choosing how to import normals
• An option to save presets for normal and polygon import

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FBX Plug-In

• The Autodesk FBX platform-independent 3D authoring and interchange format provides access to 3D content from most 3D vendors and platforms; all major 3D data elements, as well as 2D, audio, and video media elements are support.
• The free, downloadable FBX plug-in* can be used to integrate 3ds Max Design into workflows with safeguarded data integrity.
• Ongoing plug-in updates make it easy to transfer files between 3ds Max Design and applications like Autodesk® Maya® and Autodesk® MotionBuilder® software.

*The plug-in is subject to the terms and conditions of the end-user licence agreement that accompanies download of the plug-in.

Autodesk Combustion Integration

• Live integration with Autodesk® Combustion® compositing software via the Material Editor lets designers and visualisation professionals use in-progress composites as texture maps.
• The RPF bitmap format contains channels for 3D data - Z-depth, material IDs, UV coordinates, velocity - that Combustion can use to better delineate data for compositing.

Autodesk Toxik Integration

• Quickly composite scene elements, including HDR-rendered elements, in a collaborative setting.
• Autodesk® Toxik® software supports a streamlined content creation/compositing workflow in which there is no need to rerender scenes.

Adobe Photoshop Integration
Import Adobe® Photoshop® software PSD files as texture maps using the entire composited image or individual layers.

Adobe Illustrator Object Nodes

• Import Adobe® Illustrator® software vector elements as either curves or groups. 

Web Integration

• The embedded Asset Browser lets the user view web pages and quickly drag supported geometry and bitmap texture files into a scene.

Supported Scene Import Formats

• 3DS, AI, DDF, DEM, DWG, DXF™ file format, FLT, HTR, IAM, IGES, IPT, LP, LS, MTL, OBJ, PRJ, SHP, STL, TRC, VW, WRL, WRZ

Supported Scene Export Formats

• 3DS, AI, ASE, ATR, BLK, DF, DWF™ file format, DWG, DXF, HTR, IGES, LAY, LP, M3G, MTL, OBJ, STL, VW, WRL

Supported Texture Import Formats

• AVI, BMP, CIN, CWS, DDS, EXR, GIF, HDR, ICB, IFL, JPEG, MPEG, MOV, PIC, PNG, PSD, RGB, RLA, RPF, SGI, TGA, TIF, VDA, VST, YUV

Supported Bitmap Output Formats

• AVI, BMP, CIN, DDS, EPS, EXR, HDR, ICB, JPEG, MOV, PIC, PNG, PS, RGB, RLA, RPF, SGI, TGS, TIF, VDA, VST, VUE (some formats applicable to certain renderers only).

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