3ds max 2017 to Blender?
3ds max 2018: The Let-Down
2017 has not been my year, and today seems to be no exception. Autodesk has released 3ds max 2018. By my initial observation of the Autodesk website, 2018 feels like a patched 3ds max 2017 with Mental Ray removed and Arnold included, with the catch that instead of unlimited installations of Mental Ray, Arnold will run on only one computer. Additional render nodes (Arnold or Mental Ray via nVidia) will cost extra, in the case of Arnold, $1220 per computer per year plus annual maintenance. So 3ds max’s price is going up (cheaper maintenance plans are being phased out) and users are getting the same software functionality with little new development or capability, and being introduced to a completely new software licensing cost for their render farm.
Abandon Ship!
At this point, I assume that software development of 3ds max and Mental Ray has all but stopped. What I can’t fathom is that Autodesk would rock the boat with this new licensing scheme for render nodes. The render node cost is several times my 3ds max maintenance, per render node. Why would you raise the price so drastically without significant enhancements? I won’t be sticking around to find out.
Is Blender a Viable Alternative?
I have been using 3ds max since the 1900′s, so I am about as entrenched as a user can be. That said, I was upset with the news of this phoned-in 3ds max 2018 release, so I installed the latest version of Blender and started testing. I imported big scenes and little scenes. I learned how to create materials shaders, and got a few decent looking frames out of Blender’s Cycles renderer. I still have some work to do, but here are my initial findings:
Blender Pros
Blender loaded up my largest files (imported as OBJ) faster than 3ds max.
Viewport performance was better on Blender in every case I tried. The quality wasn’t as good as the Nitrous viewports, but it was better than regular shaded viewports.
Blender saved files in the background, not locking up the GUI. It was autosaving every two minutes and I didn’t even know it!
Blender allowed me to work with some of the non-viewport scene settings during a render. This was really helpful to read about and change shader or render settings while a render progressed.
Cycles renderer can show progressive enhancement of an image, giving you a very good look at the whole frame (albeit with a lot of noise) quickly.
Blender never crashed during a full day of testing and work, even when I had no idea what I was doing.
Blender Cons
Blender (Cycles renderer) results were noisy compared to Mental Ray and took longer to get rid of noise in the shadows. Rendering might be a bit slower here, but this also could be mistakes that I made with scene scale and I would need to learn to optimize lights and render settings.
Blender’s Cycles renderer seems to have some issues with specks of light, called “fireflies” by users, but there appear to be tools to address these or at least minimize them.
The interface definitely takes some getting used to when coming from 3ds max, so there is a learning curve here. That said, I found for every menu pick I didn’t like where it was, there were others that I did like.
Blender Parity
It looks like there is a network rendering feature that you can enable and has master/slave settings similar to Backburner. (Not really parity, as this is now a Blender advantage since all slave machines would be free to license in Blender.)
I found scripts to export out Blender 3D cameras for After Effects. Blender also supports OpenEXR and separate rendering passes (z-depth, velocity) for post-processing depth of field and motion blur. So compositing options look pretty comparable.
Blender’s BSDF shader (Cycles renderer) looks to be similar to 3ds max’s Arch+Design shader, as it even has a node editor. It took a bit of getting used to, as you have to mix diffuse and glossy shaders as separate nodes, but it was fairly straightforward once I figured that out.
So far, the workflows that I have tested show Blender being as capable and in some cases more capable than 3ds max. This morning, I started out wondering how I was going to afford all of those Mental Ray or Arnold licenses. This evening, I am looking forward to a time where I will never have to pay Autodesk another dime. It isn’t a done deal yet, but Blender is looking pretty good. Here’s the testing I have left before I can make a final decision:
Particle system comparisons
Poly modeling, skinning, and character animation
More rendering: 4K, more heavy scenes, and SSS and glass
Explore fluids/smoke
Lots to test, and I don’t know when I would make the switch, but as of right now I am considering a future where I never install 3ds max 2018. With no new features to benefit from, I will keep my free 2017 MR render nodes, thank you. Who knows? Maybe Blender can achieve the results of some of the plugins that I rely on to round out 3ds max’s feature set, saving me even more money. Maybe 2017 is starting to look up after all!
