
My material creation and editing workflow is noticeably easier with 3ds Max 2011. Slate is something I have been personally hoping for a number of years now. Having a non-linear schematic based material editor in Max is a welcome addition. The redesign gives it a less cluttered interface and UI that is consistent with Slate. Groups can be color coded for easy recognition and you can have as many groups as you need.Īlong with the material editor the material browser has been reworked in 3ds Max 2011. To help with organizing this wide selection of materials you can create new material groups within the browser to hold you commonly used materials and material parameters for quick reference. Using Slate's integrated context sensitive search makes it easy to find these or any other material within your scene or material library. These materials can be shared with numerous Autodesk products like AutoCAD, Revit and Inventor. Autodesk Materials replace the ProMaterials that were introduced in 3ds Max 2010. Slate also exposes the 1,200 new Autodesk Materials that are included with 3ds Max 2011.

You can also mix the different Max material types, mental ray, Max Standard, architectural, within a single workspace. You can have as many materials within a Slate workspace as you want. Slate allows for the creation and editing of numerous materials within one workspace and without having to understand the older Max concept of multi-materials. Anyone who has used the NodeJoe schematic material editor plug-in for previous versions of 3ds Max will instantly recognize Slate, as it is based off of NodeJoe. There are now two choices for material editing in 3ds Max the well-known older material editor, now known as the Compact Material Editor, and Slate, a new node- based schematic material editor. max scene file that is backwards compatible with 3ds Max 2010 and a video compositing tool. 3ds Max 2011 also adds welcome features such as a new material editor, in-viewport modeling manipulations, the ability to save a. This year's release, 3ds Max 2011, builds on many of the features that were new in 3ds Max 2010, improving both usability and performance.

Spring means warm weather and the annual release of the newest version of 3ds Max.
