The built-in Arnold renderer provides a fully interactive experience and can handle your most complex characters and scenes.
- Render previews while you work and iterate quickly
- Save time with artist-friendly UI and intuitive controls
- Produce high quality renders, faster
What's New
Bake to Texture
Streamlined, intuitive and fully scriptable texture baking experience, with support for PBR (Physically Based Rendering), Overrides and OSL workflows
Installer
The online and offline installation process has been overhauled for a simpler and faster experience
Scripting with Python 3
We are investing in improving 3ds Max's Python support to offer developers and technical artists a modern and robust experience for extending and integrating 3ds Max into production pipelines
Arnold as the Default Renderer
Presenting users with a modern and high-end rendering experience right out of the box
Physically Based Rendering (PBR)
3ds Max 2021 adds several features to simplify the use of PBR workflows in the viewport when rendering, and when working with real time engines
Improved Viewport Quality & Settings
Simpler viewport configuration workflows allow you to produce high quality and high-fidelity viewports which were previously cumbersome to achieve
More Updates
- OSL Shaders
- File I/O
- Chamfer improvements
- Weighted Normals Modifier
- SketchUp Import
- Substance Update
- ProSound Improved audio support
- FBX Improvements
- 3rd Party Developer Tools
Features
Modeling and texturing
- Spline workflows - Create and animate geometry in several intuitive ways with enhanced spline tools
- Open shading language support - Create or use pre-existing procedural OSL maps with any supported renderer
- Chamfer modifier - Create best-in-class procedural edge modeling details with simple and precise
Animation and effects
- 3ds Max Fluids - Create realistic liquid behaviors such as water, oil, lava as well as replicate gravity and collisions effects
- Character animation and rigging tools - Create procedural animation and character rigging with CAT, biped, and crowd animation tools
- General animation tools - Use keyframe and procedural animation tools and also view and edit animation trajectories directly in the viewport
Rendering
- Improved viewport quality - As part of our OSL integration, you can display procedural maps created with OSL at 1:1 quality using Nitrous viewport
- Arnold for 3ds Max - Use Arnold GPU Renderer to view scene changes in real time, including lighting, materials, and camera
- Activeshade viewport - An interactive rendering experience that allows you to see your scene in a near-final rendering quality as you’re working
Workflow and pipeline
- Improved pipeline tools integration - Smooth, high-quality experience with added flexibility of tear-off viewports
- Alembic support - Alembic Version 1.7 now supports instances, allowing files to be drastically smaller while maintaining their original complexity
- Modern UI and workspaces - Create your own custom workspaces with a more modern, responsive, high-DPI-ready user interface
Design visualization
- Embellishments - Bring to life fine-tuned touches such as materials, lighting, and textures for photorealistic imagery
- Import capabilities - Import your CAD and BIM files and use it to create a general structure and enhance the details of your 3D design
- Physically based lighting - Simulate artificial lighting sources
Games and entertainment
- Powerful scene modeling - Easily model a place, person, or element with fast spline and poly modeling workflows
- Stunning characters - Create procedural animation and character rigging with CAT and biped tools
- Physically based rendering - Quickly iterate and see near-final quality renders of your game assets
Manufacturer's system requirements are generally the bare minimum that you need to run the software and insufficient for effective and productive operation of the product.
Our suggested "real world" mid-range desktop system key specifications to properly run 3ds Max are as follows:
