3d Studio max 9 (Autodesk 3ds Max 9)

Member Name: Gtiracer

Product:	Autodesk 3ds Max 9
Date:	14/02/09 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good program with lots to it

Disadvantages: A little overwhelming to beginners

Use this at university for creating my 3d images and 3d animations, Ok Im not that great at the animation part of it yet, but we've only just started to learn this feature.

The interface is a little bit mind boggling to start with, to be honest, I didn't have much of an idea what to do, being completely honest, I had lessons on this program week by week in university but it didnt take too long before I got to grips with the programs and was creating realistic looking scenes for my assignments.

The effects you can create are brilliant; create a really effective glass/mirror effect on items which just has to be seen to be believed, and all you have to do is play around with settings in the material editor, its all to do with, layers and filters that you put on each object.

beware this product is highly memory intensive, its great and a fast progam to use if you're just creating a scene in the mesh view you are first presented with, but once you try rendering your image/animation this is when it can get tricky, the PC's we have at uni have 4GB ram and they can struggle on occasions if the scene is highly detailed. But for basic work and beginner work, you'll be fine with 1GB, but 2GB minimum is recommend personally by me. Im not sure what the actual specs of the program are for PC requirements becuase i haven't had to box to look at, I'm sure a quick scout through Autodesk's website would find you the info you need.

A couple of bugs in the program such as not loading filters from a scene if you load 3d max up on a different computer, but this may be becuase of the different networks and file directories at my universities. Can also crash at some annoying times so make sure you save it often. Also the hair and fur function always goes belly up at my university but worked on my home PC so just another note worth mentioning

Summary: Not a bad program but not the most user-friendly

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