3ds Max 2011 Features

Quicksilver Hardware Renderer
Create high-fidelity pre-visualizations, animatics, design dailies, and marketing materials in less time with Quicksilver, an innovative, new hardware renderer that can help produce high-quality images at very fast speeds.

Slate Material Editor
Easily visualize and edit material component relationships with Slate, a new node-based material editor in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 that helps significantly improve workflow and productivity for artists and designers creating and editing complex material networks.

Local Edits to Containers
Collaborate more efficiently with significantly enhanced workflows for Containers that enable artists and designers to layer local edits nondestructively on top of referenced content.

Modeling & Texturing Enhancements
New tools in Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 and 3ds Max Design 2011 extend the Graphite modeling and Viewport Canvas toolsets to enable you to accelerate 3D modeling and texturing tasks.

Viewport Display of Materials
Develop and refine scenes in a high-fidelity interactive display environment—without the constant need to re-render—with the new ability to view most 3ds Max texture maps and materials in the viewport.

Autodesk 3ds Max Composite
Enhance rendered passes and incorporate them into live action footage with 3ds Max® Composite, a fully featured, high-performance, high dynamic range (HDR)-capable compositor.

Autodesk FBX File Link with Autodesk Revit Architecture
Receive and manage upstream design changes from Autodesk® Revit® Architecture building design software with a new Autodesk® FBX® File Link. This intelligent handling of data helps reduce rework of design visualizations when original designs are revised and refined, supporting nonlinear decision-making processes and facilitating collaborative, iterative workflows.

In-Context Direct Manipulation UI
Save time when modeling and maintain focus on the creative task at hand with a new in-context user interface (UI) for polygon modeling tools that helps eliminate unnecessary mouse movement away from the model.

Fully Integrated Character Animation Toolkit (CAT)
More easily create and manage characters, and layer, load, save, remap, and mirror animations with the Character Animation Toolkit (CAT). Now fully integrated into Autodesk 3ds Max 2011, CAT provides an out-of-the-box advanced rigging and animation system.

User Interface Customization
Maximize the usable workspace and focus on the features that matter most for specialized workflows with customizable user interface layouts.

Autodesk Inventor Import Improvements
Take advantage of new Smart Data workflows for your digital prototyping process when using Autodesk® Inventor® 3D CAD software. Significant enhancements have been made for importing Inventor data into Autodesk 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design.

Native Solids Import/Export
Nondestructively import and export surfaces and solids between Autodesk 3ds Max and certain other applications supporting SAT files, including Autodesk® Revit® Architecture building design software, Rhino, SolidWorks®, and form-Z® software.

Google SketchUp Importer
Import Google® SketchUp™ sketching software version 6 and 7 files into Autodesk 3ds Max more efficiently. The enhanced SketchUp Importer supports SketchUp entities: layers, groups, components, materials, cameras, and the daylight system, and enables users to directly import SketchUp files from the Google 3D Warehouse.

Autodesk Material Library
Seamlessly exchange material data between Autodesk applications with the new Autodesk Material Library. Materials can be exchanged with certain other supporting Autodesk applications in a true one-to-one mapping—helping create a consistent definition and rendered look and eliminating the need to rework materials after data import.

Updated OpenEXR Plug-in
An updated OpenEXR image import/export plug-in supports unlimited layers in one EXR file and automatically stores Render Elements and G-Buffer channels as EXR layers. This improves interoperability with 3ds Max Composite and certain other compositing systems.