In nuce: Autodesk has released 3ds Max 2023.2. One of the main new features added are the procedural array modifiers. These modifiers are useful for procedural modelling or creating motion graphics & mesh triangulation. There are also other improvements – including MeshSmooth is more performant; triangulation for editable poly objects, which should ensure a better topology when creating new faces; a more reliable and accessible track view and, and, and.
How do the new array modifiers work? We explain this below. An overview of all other new functions can be found at help.autodesk.com and makeanything.autodesk.com – and in the corresponding release note.
- New procedural array modifier: Meshes now distributed with one of four distribution types: Grid, Radial, Spline and Surface
- With Grid, users distribute objects evenly along the X, Y and/or Z axis
- With Radial, users distribute lined-up mesh data along an arc – whereby the number of duplications can be controlled. Control elements are also provided for: dimensioning the radius, start and end point of the angles, number of rows and rings
- With Spline, users clone objects along a spline. Many setting options are offered together with Spline – including Setting up a fixed number of objects, relative offset spaces from the first to the last spline node (spline knot), fill distribution and more
- Mesh data can be distributed via Surface – along the position of all or certain vertices, edge centres or face centres of a selected mesh
Clicked further: On 21 June 2022 , Digital Production reported on the release of the previous version 3ds Max 2023.2 – at that time, the new features included extended spline segments and higher-performance modifiers. Incidentally, the black hole in the lead image was created by artist Vadim Sadovski.
