Blender saved files in the background, not locking up the GUI.

The quality wasn’t as good as the Nitrous viewports, but it was better than regular shaded viewports.

Viewport performance was better on Blender in every case I tried.

Blender loaded up my largest files (imported as OBJ) faster than 3ds max.

I still have some work to do, but here are my initial findings: Blender Pros I learned how to create materials shaders, and got a few decent looking frames out of Blender’s Cycles renderer. That said, I was upset with the news of this phoned-in 3ds max 2018 release, so I installed the latest version of Blender and started testing. I have been using 3ds max since the 1900′s, so I am about as entrenched as a user can be. Why would you raise the price so drastically without significant enhancements? I won’t be sticking around to find out. The render node cost is several times my 3ds max maintenance, per render node. What I can’t fathom is that Autodesk would rock the boat with this new licensing scheme for render nodes. Abandon Ship!Īt this point, I assume that software development of 3ds max and Mental Ray has all but stopped.

So 3ds max’s price is going up (cheaper maintenance plans are being phased out) and users are getting the same software functionality with no new development or capabilities, and being introduced to a completely new software licensing cost for their render farm. Additional render nodes (Arnold or Mental Ray via nVidia) will cost extra, in the case of Arnold, $1220 per computer per year plus annual maintenance. By my initial observation of the Autodesk website, 2018 looks to be a patched 3ds max 2017 with Mental Ray removed and Arnold included, with the catch that instead of unlimited installations of Mental Ray, Arnold will run on only one computer. 2017 has not been my year, and today seems to be no exception.