Autodesk sees double. 3ds Max 2009 (x2) announced.

Its official. 3ds Max 2009 was announced today. Surprised? Yes, this release cycle was wicked fast. I’m sure there were lots of reasons why this happened so quickly. But the net end result is not just one new version of 3ds Max, but two. “Two?” You say? Yes, two. Not just 3ds Max 2009 was released, but a new member of the 3ds Max family called “3DS Max Design.”

Before we all jump off bridges, immolate our selves, or otherwise go berserk, lets chill for a sec. Lets hear from Ken Pimentel, 3ds Max Product Manager.

According to Ken, “Why two? We’ve decided that the best way to focus on Entertainment and Design/Vis solutions is to customize the user experience accordingly. So, we now have two versions of your favorite product to choose from. At the same time, we are ending development on VIZ and encouraging customers to shift to 3ds Max Design. This is one of the reasons we created 3ds Max Design – to give VIZ users a clear path to 3ds Max and something they can fully leverage.

At this time, we are not releasing all the information about the two new flavors, but that will come as we officially launch the products later this quarter (March 25th). So, I don’t actually want to duplicate all that information here, just deal with the major points:

1. 3ds Max Design 2009 includes 100% of the features in 3ds Max 2009 – except for the SDK
2. 3ds Max Design has the new Exposure lighting analysis feature, 3ds Max 2009 does not

Those are the critical differences you need to know about. We’re also working on making each product a richer experience for the specific set of users, so you’ll see evidence of this in tutorials, samples, application defaults, etc. They are 100% data compatible and they are actually the same binary. We think this should be the policy moving forwards as it means you’ll always be able to mix/match these versions without fear of data loss.”

Thanks Ken, you saved me lots of typing. You can see Ken’s full blog entry here. And for those sleepless nights, here’s the official press release.

So what does this mean for you? Well, if you’re 3ds Max user, life just got a little better. I can’t officially comment, of course. (I don’t work for Autodesk) but I can say that I think we are going to see a very stable release with lots of new features.

Over the next several weeks, I will post some reviews of those new features. 3DS Max 2009 doesn’t officially ship for “several weeks” but its a good looking app.

Lastly, if you want to “pile on” with your comments about the split. Go here.

Advertisement

~ by learn3dsmax on February 12, 2008.