3ds Max 2017 new UV features Thread

Hi

A friend of mine shows of some of the new uv features in 3ds max 2017 on a character, might be something to check out if you are interested in these kind of things.

Youtu.be

About time they updated the uv toolset

Can't say that is much improvements - the UV editor is still utterly horrible, lacking a ton of basic features that you will find in Maya, Modo and 3rd party UV-tools. I had to transition to using 3ds Max at a former workplace and I don't think a day passed without me complaining/swearing - and 75% of it was because of the UV editor.

Edited by: Nightshade

@Niteshade

What do the other packages offer in their UV editor that MAX doesn't?

MeshMagnet wrote:

@Niteshade

What do the other packages offer in their UV editor that MAX doesn't?

Maya:
-Shaded UV shells (Maya) - so you can actually see if shells are stacked or flipped
-Proper projection and unfold tools. Max UV projections are just plain bad. Create a box, scale it, convert to editable poly and do a projection on it. The shells remain the size of the original shape (even after performing stuff like Utility > reset xForm).
-UV symmetry. It's in Maya 2016 EXT2 - comming for 2017.
-Can actually focus/frame selections in the UV editor.
-Can actually convert a selection between component types.
-Isolate select UVs - or any other form of components.
-Marking menu in UV editor
-Super-easy to work with multiple UV sets - in Max, working with UV sets is horrible.
-Moving edges/vertices in the persp/ortographic viewports will not screw up/distort the UV's in the UV editor, unless you move things that are along the W-axis. In Max things get distorted if you touch the mesh.
-Selecting components in the persp/ortographic viewports will select them (or highlight if you only hover) in the UV editor as well. This doesn't happen in Max.
But most important of all: Maya has the ability to work with modelling and UV mapping in parallel. You can do this in Max too but it's MUCH more difficult and annoying as you have to collapse your mesh > do modelling > reapply new UVW modifier > tweak UV's > collapse mesh (AGAIN) repeat.

But, even when I don't count all the UV issues, 3ds Max is just... bad. Pivot management is absolutely horrible without third-party scripts, the modifier stack is about as unstable as Maya's history, instanced meshes work horribly (applying a modifier on one might not always apply it to the other instances), the vertex paint modifier is so old (legacy) that things like component conversion functionality breaks down in the entire 3d program if you have a vertex paint modifier on your mesh. What else is there? Deleting components that you have focused/framed in on will reset the focus/zoom to the object center, you can't display shell borders in the persp/orto viewports and when creating sphere primitives, you have a uniform value for both the divisions (so you can't have a hexagonal-shaped sphere with say 12 subdivisions along the Z-axis (Max) / Y-axis (Maya).

Anyway, Maya isn't flawless either. She lacks the ability to orient shells (Align edge in Max) and the ability to Stitch UV shells - but that are TWO things.

But hey I am probably heavily biased to Maya because I created and worked with this for several years:


So yeah... moving over to Max was like going back to the stone age. At least in UV terms

Edited by: Nightshade