A top priority of the Excalibur (XBR) initiative to restructure 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design was to introduce a new viewport system engineered to help provide dramatic improvements in performance and visual quality. The new Nitrous core leverages GPUs and multi-core workstations to enable you to iterate faster and handle larger data sets with more interactivity. Advanced scene management techniques, together with multithreaded viewport scene traversal and material evaluation, result in a smoother, more responsive workflow. Furthermore, Nitrous provides a render-quality display environment that supports unlimited lights, soft shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion, tone-mapping, and higher-quality transparency.

Achieve a vast range of look variations with a new library of 80 Substance procedural textures. These dynamic, resolution-independent textures have a tiny disk space footprint, and can be exported to certain games engines via the Substance Air middleware offering (available separately from Allegorithmic SAS). Alternatively, textures can be quickly converted to bitmaps for rendering. Some examples of dynamically editable and animatable parameters are: brick distribution, surface aging, and mortar thickness in a brick wall; and the age, roughness, curb borders, and lane markings of a street texture.

3ds Max 2012 and 3ds Max Design 2012 introduces the MassFX unified system of simulation solvers, and deliver the first module: mRigids rigid-body dynamics*. With mRigids, you can leverage the multi-threaded NVIDIA® PhysX® engine to create compelling, dynamic rigid-body simulations directly in the 3ds Max viewport. mRigids supports static, dynamic, and kinematic rigid bodies (the latter for rag doll simulations), and a number of constraints: Rigid, Slide, Hinge, Twist, Universal, Ball & Socket, and Gear.

* The mRigids rigid body simulation component of the MassFX simulation framework replaces Havok™ Reactor which was available in prior versions of 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design.

Creating realistic images has never been easier with 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design, using the newly incorporated iray® rendering technology from mental images. Get more predictable, photo-real results that more accurately portray the physical world without worrying about rendering settings— similar to a ‘point-and-shoot’ camera. Focus on your creative vision and intuitively use real world materials, lighting, and settings to more accurately portray the physical world; iray progressively refines the image until the desired level of detail is achieved. iray works with standard multi-core CPUs, however, NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPU hardware will significantly accelerate the rendering process.

Take advantage of the focused toolsets in the Autodesk® 3ds Max® Entertainment Creation Suites 2012, with new single-step interoperability between 3ds Max and Autodesk® Mudbox™ 2012 software, Autodesk® MotionBuilder® 2012 software, and Autodesk® Softimage® 2012 software. Export 3ds Max scenes to Mudbox to add sculpted and painted details, and then update the scene in 3ds Max in one simple step. Take a 3ds Max scene to MotionBuilder to access the animation toolset, without having to think about file format details. And tap into the power of the Softimage ICE (Interactive Creative Environment) particle system directly from your 3ds Max scene.

Enjoy smoother interoperability with Autodesk® Alias® Design software for industrial design, with the ability to import .WIRE files natively into 3ds Max Design and 3ds Max as Bodies objects, preserving object names, hierarchies, layers, and material names. Designers can now interactively adjust tessellation results inside 3ds Max Design and 3ds Max to help fine-tune their visualization, and add sculpted details on top of Alias Design reference data using the intuitive Graphite polygon modeling toolset in 3ds Max Design and 3ds Max.

Create better UVW maps in less time, with a new Least Squares Conformal Mapping (LSCM) method, enhancements to existing tools, and more streamlined workflows. The LSCM method preserves local angles of the mesh faces in order to help minimize texture distortion. Employed in a new ‘Peel’ tool, the new method produces unwrapped UVWs from cut seams with a single click.

With new support for Vector Displacement Maps (VDMs) in 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design, you can use mental ray® renderer or iray to render complex high-resolution details created in Autodesk® Mudbox™ software or certain other packages on low-resolution geometry. VDMs can represent directional displacements that do not simply follow the normal: for example, forms with appendages, undercuts, folds, and bulges.

Enjoy greater control over brushstrokes and their effects on geometry, thanks to new sculpting and painting workflows. Useful in topology reduction workflows, the new Conform brush guides geometry towards another surface, with the degree of the conforming effect varying from softly approaching to shrink-wrapping. Modelers can slide vertices along target surfaces with the new transform brushes: Move, Rotate, Scale, and Relax. In addition, Paint Deform brushstrokes—for tools such as Push, Flatten, and Exaggerate—can be constrained to a spline, enabling it to be used as a guide or ruler, or to easily repeat freehand strokes.

Create a variety of non-photorealistic (NPR) effects that help simulate artistic styles, with the new ability to render stylized images in the viewport and with the Quicksilver renderer. The looser, more abstract style of NPR imagery helps designers and architects more effectively communicate their core design intent while deemphasizing distracting or incomplete design details.

You can now optimize models faster, more efficiently, and with better results, using the enhanced ProOptimizer feature. ProOptimizer now offers normal and UV interpolation, together with the ability to keep high-resolution normals on the low-resolution result.

Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk 3ds Max Design software have one of the richest 3D modeling toolsets in the industry:

• Efficiently create parametric and organic objects with polygon, spline, and NURBS-based modeling features.
• Unleash your creativity with more than 100 advanced polygonal modeling and freeform 3D design tools in the Graphite modeling toolset.
• Control the number of faces or points in your object with ProOptimizer technology and reduce a selection's complexity by up to 75 percent without loss of detail.
• Articulate minute details and optimize meshes for both interactive manipulation and rendering using subdivision surfaces and polygon smoothing.

Access a vast range of texture painting, mapping, and layering options:

• Perform creative texture mapping operations, including tiling, mirroring, decal placement, blurring, spline mapping, UV stretching, and relaxation.
• Design and edit complex shading hierarchies with the Slate material editor, leveraging extensive libraries of textures, images, and procedural maps.
• Use the intuitive Viewport Canvas toolset to paint multiple layers onto any maps in any material directly on 3D objects.
• Bake each object's material and lighting into new texture maps with the Render to Texture functionality.
• Access up to 1,200 material templates and seamlessly exchange material data between supporting Autodesk applications with the Autodesk Material Library.

Create intelligent, believable characters and higher-quality animations by tapping into a sophisticated toolset:

• Leverage procedural animation and rigging with CAT (Character Animation Toolkit), biped, and crowd-animation functionality.
• Use the Skin modifier and CAT Muscle to help achieve more precise, smoother control of skeletal deformation as bones move.
• Rig complex mechanical assemblies and characters with custom skeletons using 3ds Max bones, inverse kinematics (IK) solvers, and customizable rigging tools.
• Wire one- and two-way relationships between controllers to help create simplified 3D animation interfaces.
• Animate CAT, biped, and 3ds Max objects in layers to tweak dense motion capture data without compromising underlying keyframes.

Create dynamics and effects with production-proven, high-performance toolsets:

• Use the built-in cloth-simulation engine to turn almost any 3D object into clothing, or build garments from scratch—and then make adjustments to and animate these cloth objects.
• Create hair, fur, and other strand-derived effects such as grass, and precisely control their styling and animation.
• Design sophisticated event-driven particle effects such as water, fire, spray, and snow, and control them with expressions, scripts, or direct manipulators.

Achieve stunning image quality in less time with powerful 3D rendering software capabilities:

• Get more predictable, photo-real results without worrying about rendering settings, using the iray® rendering technology from mental images.
• Make interactive decisions in context with the ability to view most 3ds Max texture maps and materials in the viewport.
• Take advantage of idle processors to finish rendering faster with batch rendering in mental ray® renderer.
• Output multiple passes simultaneously from supported rendering software, including high dynamic range (HDR) data, for reassembly in 3ds Max® Composite functionality.
• Create high-fidelity pre-visualizations, animatics, and marketing materials with the innovative Quicksilver hardware renderer.

iray and mental ray are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH licensed for use by Autodesk, Inc.

Import data from a multitude of sources and more smoothly transfer Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk 3ds Max Design data across file iterations, software applications, users, and locations:

• Use Autodesk® FBX® technology to exchange data with certain other leading 3D applications, including Autodesk® Maya® software, Autodesk® Mudbox™ software, Autodesk® MotionBuilder® software, and Autodesk® Revit® Architecture software, and work nondestructively with upstream changes.
• Import surface and solids data directly into Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk 3ds Max Design from Autodesk® Inventor®, Autodesk® Alias® Design, and other 3D CAD software.
• Aggregate data with support for more than 30 2D and 3D data formats, including 3ds, AI, DEM, XML, DDF, DWG, DXF, FBX, DAE, IGES, IPT, IAM, OBJ, STL, VRML, FLT, SAT, WIRE, and SKP.
• Smoothly transition between versions, with the ability to save scenes in a format compatible with 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design 2010 and 2011..

Collect, organize, and share data in complex scenes, enabling multiple users to collaboratively contribute to the workflow:

• Improve scene performance and reduce memory consumption by temporarily unloading Containers from the viewport display while maintaining their relationships to the scene for reloading when required.
• Use containers to override object properties for scene organization without affecting layer organization (similar to a nested layer workflow).
• Reference containers created by others into a single scene and layer local edits on top nondestructively for more flexible, collaborative workflows.

Use containers to override object properties for scene organization without affecting layer organization.

Enhance rendered passes and incorporate them into live action footage with 3ds Max® Composite functionality, a fully featured, high-performance, high dynamic range (HDR)-capable compositor, based on technology from Autodesk® Toxik® compositing software. The 3ds Max Composite toolset incorporates keying, color correction, tracking, camera mapping, raster and vector paint, spline-based warping, motion blur, depth of field, and tools to support stereoscopic productions.

Helps optimize your productivity with user interface features designed to help you work more efficiently:

• Maximize the usable workspace and focus on the features that matter most for specialized workflows with customizable user interface layouts.
• Create and store personalized UI configurations that include frequently used action items and macro scripts, and toggle the display of these configurations with the touch of a hotkey or button.
• Save time when modeling and maintain focus on the creative task at hand with the Caddy in-context UI for polygon modeling tools

• Measure light at any location by generating light measurement grids of any shape.
• Generate light-intensity and indoor-environmental quality evaluations such as those required for LEED® EQ Credit 8.1.
• Achieve more sustainable designs by better predicting how light will interact with buildings.
• Analytically explore direct lighting effects on complex architectural designs with interactive results right in the viewport.

Exposure has been validated by the National Research Council, Canada's leading organization for scientific research.

Turn complex civil design geometry into precise and compelling 3D design visualizations faster and more efficiently with the 3ds Max Design Civil View feature set. With simple, style-driven functionality and an extensive library of parametric civil-oriented objects and materials, Civil View helps civil engineers achieve stunning results, even those with little or no detailed knowledge of 3ds Max Design. Civil View dynamically links to data from AutoCAD® Civil 3D® civil engineering software and other software products such as Bentley® MXROAD® software. When design changes occur, design visualizations are more easily refreshed, enabling them to evolve in tandem. Civil View now offers enhanced support for the new iray® and Quicksilver rendering solutions for faster results and simplified setup.

iray is a registered trademark of mental images GmbH licensed for use by Autodesk, Inc.