Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2012 14.0

Here are some key features of "Autodesk 3ds Max Design":

Nitrous Accelerated Graphics Core:
· A top priority of the Excalibur (XBR) initiative to restructure 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design was to introduce a new viewport system engineered to help provide dramatic improvements in performance and visual quality. The new Nitrous core leverages GPUs and multi-core workstations to enable you to iterate faster and handle larger data sets with more interactivity. Advanced scene management techniques, together with multithreaded viewport scene traversal and material evaluation, result in a smoother, more responsive workflow. Furthermore, Nitrous provides a render-quality display environment that supports unlimited lights, soft shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion, tone-mapping, and higher-quality transparency.

Substance Procedural Textures:
· Achieve a vast range of look variations with a new library of 80 Substance procedural textures. These dynamic, resolution-independent textures have a tiny disk space footprint, and can be exported to certain games engines via the Substance Air middleware offering (available separately from Allegorithmic SAS). Alternatively, textures can be quickly converted to bitmaps for rendering. Some examples of dynamically editable and animatable parameters are: brick distribution, surface aging, and mortar thickness in a brick wall; and the age, roughness, curb borders, and lane markings of a street texture.

mRigids Rigid-Body Dynamics:
· Introduces the MassFX unified system of simulation solvers, and deliver the first module: mRigids rigid-body dynamics. With mRigids, you can leverage the multi-threaded NVIDIA PhysX engine to create compelling, dynamic rigid-body simulations directly in the 3ds Max viewport. mRigids supports static, dynamic, and kinematic rigid bodies (the latter for rag doll simulations), and a number of constraints: Rigid, Slide, Hinge, Twist, Universal, Ball & Socket, and Gear.

iray Renderer:
· Creating realistic images has never been easier with 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design, using the newly incorporated iray rendering technology from mental images. Get more predictable, photo-real results that more accurately portray the physical world without worrying about rendering settings— similar to a ‘point-and-shoot’ camera. Focus on your creative vision and intuitively use real world materials, lighting, and settings to more accurately portray the physical world; iray progressively refines the image until the desired level of detail is achieved. iray works with standard multi-core CPUs, however, NVIDIA CUDA-enabled GPU hardware will significantly accelerate the rendering process.

Single-Step Suites Interoperability:
· Take advantage of the focused toolsets in the Autodesk 3ds Max Entertainment Creation Suites 2012, with new single-step interoperability between 3ds Max and Autodesk Mudbox 2012 software, Autodesk MotionBuilder 2012 software, and Autodesk Softimage 2012 software. Export 3ds Max scenes to Mudbox to add sculpted and painted details, and then update the scene in 3ds Max in one simple step. Take a 3ds Max scene to MotionBuilder to access the animation toolset, without having to think about file format details. And tap into the power of the Softimage ICE (Interactive Creative Environment) particle system directly from your 3ds Max scene.

Autodesk Alias Products Interoperability:
· Enjoy smoother interoperability with Autodesk Alias Design software for industrial design, with the ability to import .WIRE files natively into 3ds Max Design and 3ds Max as Bodies objects, preserving object names, hierarchies, layers, and material names. Designers can now interactively adjust tessellation results inside 3ds Max Design and 3ds Max to help fine-tune their visualization, and add sculpted details on top of Alias Design reference data using the intuitive Graphite polygon modeling toolset in 3ds Max Design and 3ds Max.

Enhanced UVW Unwrapping:
· Create better UVW maps in less time, with a new Least Squares Conformal Mapping (LSCM) method, enhancements to existing tools, and more streamlined workflows. The LSCM method preserves local angles of the mesh faces in order to help minimize texture distortion. Employed in a new ‘Peel’ tool, the new method produces unwrapped UVWs from cut seams with a single click.

Vector Displacement Map Support:
· With new support for Vector Displacement Maps (VDMs) in 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design, you can use mental ray renderer or iray to render complex high-resolution details created in Autodesk Mudbox software or certain other packages on low-resolution geometry. VDMs can represent directional displacements that do not simply follow the normal: for example, forms with appendages, undercuts, folds, and bulges.

Sculpting and Painting Enhancements:
· Enjoy greater control over brushstrokes and their effects on geometry, thanks to new sculpting and painting workflows. Useful in topology reduction workflows, the new Conform brush guides geometry towards another surface, with the degree of the conforming effect varying from softly approaching to shrink-wrapping. Modelers can slide vertices along target surfaces with the new transform brushes: Move, Rotate, Scale, and Relax. In addition, Paint Deform brushstrokes—for tools such as Push, Flatten, and Exaggerate - can be constrained to a spline, enabling it to be used as a guide or ruler, or to easily repeat freehand strokes.

Stylistic Rendering:
· Create a variety of non-photorealistic (NPR) effects that help simulate artistic styles, with the new ability to render stylized images in the viewport and with the Quicksilver renderer. The looser, more abstract style of NPR imagery helps designers and architects more effectively communicate their core design intent while deemphasizing distracting or incomplete design details.

ProOptimizer Enhancements:
· You can now optimize models faster, more efficiently, and with better results, using the enhanced ProOptimizer feature. ProOptimizer now offers normal and UV interpolation, together with the ability to keep high-resolution normals on the low-resolution result.

Exposure Lighting Simulation & Analysis:
· Simulate and analyze sun, sky, and artificial lighting in a 3D architectural design with Exposure lighting analysis technology.
· Measure light at any location by generating light measurement grids of any shape.
· Generate light-intensity and indoor-environmental quality evaluations such as those required for LEED EQ Credit 8.1.
· Achieve more sustainable designs by better predicting how light will interact with buildings.
· Analytically explore direct lighting effects on complex architectural designs with interactive results right in the viewport.
· Exposure has been validated by the National Research Council, Canada’s leading organization for scientific research.

Civil View Feature Set:
· Turn complex civil design geometry into precise and compelling 3D design visualizations faster and more efficiently with the 3ds Max Design Civil View feature set. With simple, style-driven functionality and an extensive library of parametric civil-oriented objects and materials, Civil View helps civil engineers achieve stunning results, even those with little or no detailed knowledge of 3ds Max Design. Civil View dynamically links to data from AutoCAD Civil 3D civil engineering software and other software products such as Bentley MXROAD software. When design changes occur, design visualizations are more easily refreshed, enabling them to evolve in tandem. Civil View now offers enhanced support for the new iray and Quicksilver rendering solutions for faster results and simplified setup.

Requirements:

· Intel Pentium 4 1.4 GHz or equivalent AMD processor with SSE2 technology
· 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
· 2 GB swap space (4 GB recommended)
· 3 GB free hard drive space
· Direct3D 10 technology, Direct3D 9, or OpenGL-capable graphics card (256 MB or higher video card memory, 1 GB or higher recommended)
· Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
· DVD-ROM drive
· Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 internet browser or higher or
· Mozilla Firefox 3.0 internet browser or higher