What's New in 3ds Max 2021.1 Update

Highlights
Bake to Texture:

Model courtesy of TurboSquid and their artist, Luke_Ahearn.

Fluids:
  • The Fluid loader is now exposed so that object types such as particle systems can work with the data
  • The Velocity channel now reports correct information when not using meters as your default scene scale. This fix will enable motion blur in your renderer
  • PRT now supports a signed and unsigned integer values (via .ini change).
Interactive Extrusion and Inset:
  • Users can now utilize a Shift+Drag (left mouse button) with the Move transform tool to extrude polygon component selections when using an Editable Poly or an Edit Poly modifier
  • Shift+Drag with the Scale transform tool now performs a polygonal inset action on selected polygon component selections when using an Editable Poly or an Edit Poly modifier
  • Clone/Copy actions are now performed with Ctrl+Shift+Drag when using the Move transform tool on the polygon component on and Editable Poly or an Edit Poly modifier.
Viewport improvements:
  • Depth of field now affects the environment map
  • Vignetting scale is now the same value as defined in the camera
  • Matte/Shadows material now work in the viewport
  • Each view can now have its own exposure, white-balance and vignette settings.
Arnold renderer:
  • MAXtoA 4.0.4
  • AOV token system
  • Animation support for Alembic
  • Increased shader spinner accuracy
  • Bake to Texture support for projection of normals from high to low resolution, normals spaces, and Mikkt.

Enhancements and Changes

Installation

You can now install updates such as this one without installing 3ds Max 2021 first.

Weighted Normals Modifier

Now includes support for multi-threaded processing to enhance speed and performance when performing calculations as well as other stability improvements.

Explicit Normals Preservation for Mesh

Applying an Edit Mesh modifier no longer invalidates explicit normals, nor do the following actions: Attach, Detach to Object, Detach to Element, Clone to Object, Clone to Element, Detach as Clone to Element.

PBR material

Both PBR materials now support displacement.

Shared Views

Shared Views now supports Physical material.

SketchUp model importation

There is improved handling of internal edge visibility, improving the imported mesh quality, and SketchUp 2020 models are now supported.

Slate Material Editor

The Slate Material Editor now pans and zooms smoother and faster when using a 4k monitor. In addition, the Search field has been improved to perform global search through all materials and maps in the editor. For example, if you were searching for the Advanced Wood map and typed "wood," the old search would not find it but now it will.

Render output size

HDTV resolution of 1280 x 720 is the new default output size.

UDIM display

When you work with UDIM, you are now able to view all textures in the viewport when using the Bitmap Lookup OSL shader, instead of just viewing one as when using the Multi-Tile map.

User Defined Defaults

Allows you to set your own default values for ParamBlock2 supported spinner, radial, checkbox, or input field through MAXScript calls.

Viewport

Depth of field now affects the environment map, the vignetting scale is now the same value as defined in the camera, Matte/Shadows materials now work in the viewport, and each viewport can now have their own exposure, white-balance and vignette settings.