Tag Archives: 2024

Pulldownit for Maya 2024

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Pulldownit , the destruction plugin, is already available for Maya 2024, you can review latest features of PDI for Maya in this post:

Pulldownit 5.5 for Maya released

Maya 2024 itself brings a number of updates in animation, modeling and performance, and native support for Apple Silicon chips in Macos systems. This new version introduces a novel Graph Editor Sculpting feature, allowing to drag or smooth animation curves in brush-like style to make adjustments on the fly. In addition, animators con now display all skin weights values directly in the viewport and multiple Skin Clusters are supported. Besides the Time Slider has been redesigned for better handling of keys selection ranges and audio waves visulaization. Finally Autodesk claims of significant performance improvements, especially when playing back animation on complex rigs.

Regarding modeling, Retopology tool has got a number of updates,a new symmetry option allows to get the same exact topology at both sides of the model, and there is new options for preserving edges by angle or component tag, also user can now display both input mesh and retopologized one simultaneously, allowing to compare result and adjust areas visually and there is a new option to pre-check mesh during Retopologize to quickly identify and fix mesh issues.

An there is a new unsmooth option which lets you simplify a smoothed mesh, useful for creating low resolution versions of 3D models, although currently only works with meshes subdivided by the Catmull-Clark method.

The old good Make Live tool has got an useful improvement aswell, now It supports multiple objects, speeding up the drawing of splines or quads over existing geometry.

USD support introduces LookdevX, a new material editor for creating USD shaders inside Maya. It is independent of the classic Maya Hypershade tool therefore counts with its own editor, according to Autodesk it is intended to work seamlessly across multiple DCC tools in the pipeline.

In the simulation field Bifrost updates to version 2.7 introducing a new MPM solver able to simulate snow and high viscous matter like toothpaste, ketchup or ice-cream along with improved volume rendering in the viewport.

AntCgi review and test many of Maya 2024 new features in this nice video:

Pulldownit for 3ds Max 2024

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Pulldownit , the destruction plugin, is already available for 3d Max 2024 , you can learn more about latest features of PDI in this great tutorial by Esteban Cuesta:

Oneiric temple destruction in 3ds Max

3d Max 2024 itself brings quite a lot of new features for modeling, animation and rendering and a high performance boost when working with STL models.

In the modelling field introduces a brand new boolean modifier, contrary to classic compound objects,  boolean operations are now managed in the modifiers stack so user can remove or re-order them seamlessly, in addition it can convert the model to an OpenVDB version making the boolean operation more robust and independent of the source topology. Array Modifier introduced in previous version gets a new Phyllotaxis distribution mode for generating spiral pattern as seeing in many natural structures like flowers. The whole Modifiers tab has been ported to QT making it faster navigation and includes a handy search filter for fast selection on the long modifiers list.

The slate material editor has been rewritten using QT making it much more customizable, and besides user can now package several nodes into one single compound for better legibility when working with complex graphs. In addition there is a new Material Switcher node allowing to quickly change the material of an object for fast look-dev workflow

Animation has got also an important update, a new “Transform List” controller allows to add multiple controllers to an object and blend them together, in addition motion paths can now be displayed and adjusted in viewport for all controllers types.

Max 2024 introduces support for the OCIO colour-management broadly used in the animation industry although Gamma workflow is still the default mode, MaxToA now supports OCIO standard as well.

So a noticiable amount of improvements, Autodesk continues strengthen 3ds Max for polygonal modelling and visualization task, though there are some important enhancements for animation this time, hope it continues in the following updates this year.

Eloy Andaluz introduces all of these new features in a great demo video you can review here: