3ds Max 2015

Quad Chamfer

Modelers can use the new Chamfer modifier to create quadrilateral-based chamfered or beveled edges between two surfaces. This can help eliminate pinching, and produces better results when used in conjunction with the TurboSmooth modifier. Quad-based chamfering is also newly available in the Editable Poly object.

Better scene management

Combined Scene Explorer / Layer ExplorerDealing with complex scenes is now easier, thanks to new layer-management features within Scene Explorers that help artists and designers better organize data. In addition, a number of other enhancements have been made to the usability of Scene Explorers, contributing to an overall productivity improvement for scene management. Highlights  include support for docking and Workspaces, and customizable quad menus. State Sets Improvements State Sets have been improved to accelerate performance, enhance usability; and to streamline interoperability workflows between 3ds Max and Adobe ® Photoshop ® and Adobe ® After Effects ® software.

Game-on

3ds Max 2015 delivers powerful new tools that provide you with an intuitive WYSIWYG experience in the viewport, smarter modeling tools that help speed up the creation process, and Python scripting to make 3ds Max your own.

ShaderFX

Game artists and programmers can now easily create advanced HLSL viewport shaders with the ShaderFX real-time visual shader editor. Shader networks are created by connecting different nodes together using an intuitive click-drag workflow; artists can select from a powerful array of floating-point values, mathematical operations, texture maps, normal maps, and color nodes. The resulting materials, even those with animated values, can be visualized in real time in 3ds Max viewports. An advanced mode enables more  technical artists to drill down deeper into the inner workings of each basic node. With this feature, artists and programmers can design shaders that match those of their game engine. Using your game assets and textures inside 3ds Max viewports is now made easier.

Placement Tool

Artists and designers can now more easily position and orient content relative to other content within their scenes, with new Placement tools that feature intuitive auto-parenting and aligning behaviors. Objects can be moved along the surfaces of other  meshes as though magnetically attracted and quickly rotated to the desired orientation as part of the same operation.

Populate

The powerful Populate crowd animation feature set now offers increased artistic control, better realism, and improved usability. Designers and artists can give their characters more convincing walking, jogging, passing, turning, and seated behaviors; control more aspects of how their characters are generated to influence the outcome; save textures for customization, sharing, andnetwork  rendering; and bake animation for editing and export. In addition, studios can customize Populate through exposure of the functionality in an SDK (software development kit).

Accelerated Viewport Performance

Working in 3ds Max viewports is faster; a number of improvements accelerate navigation, selection, and viewport texture baking,  resulting in greater interactivity, especially with dense meshes and scenes with many texture maps. In addition, antialiasing can now be enabled with minimal impact on performance - so artists and designers can work in a higher fidelity environment without sacrificing speed.

ActiveShade Improvements

ActiveShade preview renderings now support the NVIDIA ® mental ray ® renderer, in addition to the NVIDIA ® iray ® renderer and  scanline renderers previously supported. With ActiveShade, artists and designers can see the effects of changing lighting or  materials interactively, helping them more easily refine their work - the ability to match the final renderer helps artists more accurately preserve creative intent. For both iray and mental ray, interactive updates are now faster, while viewport navigation and switching, adjustments to light parameters, and certain other scene changes - creating, moving, or deleting objects - are captured more frequently, offering finer grain updates.

Point Cloud

The Point Cloud feature lets you create precise, three-dimensional models from real-world references by importing large datasets captured from reality as point clouds. 3D modelers can view point clouds in true color in the viewports, interactively adjust the extent of the cloud displayed, and create new geometry in context by snapping to point-cloud vertices.

Availability

You can buy a perpetual license or pay as you go with a Desktop Subscription plan. Desktop Subscription plans give you access to a full-featured, commercial license of 3ds Max or an Entertainment Creation Suite, on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.

You can also as part of the Entertainment Creation Suites: