1. Introduction

Thinking back to the days of the original 3DSMax brings a tear to my eye. Anyone who has been around in the animation business for a number of years remembers the pre-max days, when 3DStudio R4 was the "big dog." The 3DStudio releases were still for DOS and required users to switch between component modules to perform different tasks such as modeling, animation and texturing. One had to "hack" the executable to run it in Windows 95, which allowed you the "luxury" of being able to switch between 3DStudio and Photoshop.

3DSMax, written with windows NT in mind and the ability to flip back and forth between open applications, was heaven sent. Some of the new features in Version 9 (V9) will bring about similar comparisons to the old days. V9 also represents a significant upgrade/time saver.

64 Bit = Better Memory Access

Autodesk has finally heard the call of those requiring greater memory access and released version 9 in 32- and 64-bit flavors. The 64-bit compilation can account for dramatic increases in rendering speed versus the 32-bit version for complex scenes as it reduces hard disk access. The former lets power users get around the 3 GB memory limit, which cripples 32-bit versions. The extra memory is important for rendering larger scenes, especially hi-res DV at 1920x1280. A bane of any high vertex renderer’s existence is when Max eats up its memory limit and starts swapping rendering data on the hard disk, which is a slow and painful process.

Most low-poly/feature users or those rendering low-res output won’t hit the swap file issue, and for them, 3 GB of RAM is plenty. However, high-end production environments require the ability to access memory beyond the 3 GB limit, as it reduces render times and greatly helps delivery before deadline.

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