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[wallworm]

I have been slow to move away from Max 2016 in part because it's the version we use at Black Mesa, but also because it was a game changer for me in many ways. 2016 was simply an awesome Max release. 2017 had many problems for me, and it was the first release of Max that I tested and then abandoned because of driver incompatibility with Nvidia cards (those problems are now gone... but a new version of Max is out).

So this brings me to 3ds Max 2018.

Although it continues with the icon changes of 2017 that I do not like, there are numerous things about 2018 that I really love. There are new motion paths, spline tools, enhancements to modifiers like PathDeform, Normalize Spline, Unwrap UVW and more. And noteworthy for WW is that some new MAXScript functions have been added that speed up accessing mesh data. This means that exporting files will be faster as well as committing complex sculpt meshes, etc. So this is a big one. I've already started the process of supporting these new features for those who have Max 2018.2+.

There are still some annoying things in 2018. Of course, I do not like the new icons/theme. But that could be cranky-old-man syndrome. Other annoying things are that some nested windows won't automatically adapt to viewport changes (like closing the Graphite Toolbar or Mini Curve Editor leaves an empty gap between where the window was and the viewports). Another annoying thing is that the Command Panel often gets stuck at a larger-than-necessary width. It's hard to say what causes that, but I find it highly annoying.

Despite those annoyances, I'm eager to use 2018 more regularly. I feel very good about this iteration of Max.

[wallworm]

3ds Max 2018.4 is out now.

As far as Wall Worm is concerned, 2016 has now finally been dethroned. All Wall Worm users should update to 2018.4 for the best results with the latest versions of Wall Worm.