Max 2026

[Otuama]

Hi all,

We're about to update our systems to Max 2025 - but with Max 2026 recently being announced I think we should hold off.

How long do you expect Corona to be fully integrated with Max 2026; or is it already?

Thanks

[TomG]

It usually takes 2 to 3 weeks to roll out a final release with compatibility (which appears first in daily builds for testing, of course). Right now that ought to be with Corona 12 Update 2 since that was due around then anyway, but if that gets pushed back for non-development reasons, Max 2026 compatibility will be in a hotfix around the same date to save further waiting. Shouldn't be long before the daily is out though (since we have to have Release Candidates for Update 2 pretty darn soon :) )

[arqrenderz]

Hi all,

We're about to update our systems to Max 2025 - but with Max 2026 recently being announced I think we should hold off.

How long do you expect Corona to be fully integrated with Max 2026; or is it already?

Thanks

Eager to try that 3 point rectangle ??
We usually wait for the first service pack to resolve new bugs..

[romullus]

Eager to try that 3 point rectangle ??
We usually wait for the first service pack to resolve new bugs..

LOL, is this the only worthy new feature in new 3ds Max? I skipped Max 2025, so i think i will be installing this one, but i agree with you, it's wise to wait at least for a first service pack or hotfix.

[alexyork]

The new Colour Management stuff is both welcome and concerning in that I imagine it will require work for Corona devs to get things synchronized properly, I guess? Be good to hear from the devs on that. It feels like colour management is still a bit of a jungle of guesswork, trial and error and incompatibilities in that regard, but hopefully the new changes facilitate this being sorted out.

Other than that, it's pretty depressing seeing the dismal state of max's development these last few years.

[James Vella]

The new Colour Management stuff is both welcome and concerning in that I imagine it will require work for Corona devs to get things synchronized properly, I guess? Be good to hear from the devs on that.

I thought Corona already have this sorted in the latest versions.

It feels like colour management is still a bit of a jungle of guesswork, trial and error and incompatibilities in that regard, but hopefully the new changes facilitate this being sorted out.

It shouldn't be guess work if you already work in a color corrected pipeline. Otherwise use the gamma workflow until you can utilize it, in my opinion. A good question to ask your team is - does it matter? If you need it then do the ground work and implement it into your workflow, if you have others who change the color formats for you up the chain you might be wasting your time, pipeline matters. A good example of this is how they made the movies District 9 and The Lego Movie, you should check these on youtube if it interests you. They go into great depth on this topic. (I think these links are the ones, correct me if I'm wrong)

Other than that, it's pretty depressing seeing the dismal state of max's development these last few years.

3dsmax is a sandbox these days, sure the updates aren't impressive when you compare to other DCCs but otherwise its pretty damn solid in my opinion, we have so many tools to work with, for non-animated scenes its blazing fast for most things... For example Blender gets a lot of hype for its development which is great but extremely slow for fbx, archviz workflows, its still a baby in terms of a fully fleshed out DCC for massive scenes with lots of data so yeah, updates seem often and amazing because its still missing lots of useful things for production. Maya has great animation tools, C4D has its pro's but its difficult to compare until you go through the ringer on every component in the pipeline.

If you are archviz focused mainly, I still think 3dsmax has the edge... my point of view of course. C4D isnt far behind but 3dsmax still has better integration with CAD/Revit. My 2cents.

[Tom]

... but otherwise its pretty damn solid in my opinion, we have so many tools to work with, for non-animated scenes its blazing fast for most things...

3ds Max blazing fast?! Wow ... first time I hear this. I've never put my hands onto Maya, C4D or Blender, but I'm dealing with Max for 20+ years now and I'm still impressed by the fact it's not multithreaded yet, in 2025 ... Anyway, I agree with you about the archviz point of view, Max is a cool tool after all as you get all these scripts and plugins to speed up your workflow.

[James Vella]

3ds Max blazing fast?! Wow ... first time I hear this. I've never put my hands onto Maya, C4D or Blender, but I'm dealing with Max for 20+ years now and I'm still impressed by the fact it's not multithreaded yet

Hah, yeah well that's what I mean by sandbox, plugins like sini, tyflow, fume, phoenix, are multi-threaded or run on GPU or both. The core of 3dsmax wont ever be fully multi-threaded but 3rd party tools will eventually replace all the slow things, if people make them. The only thing we can hope from Autodesk is that they dont discontinue 3dsmax and keep working on making it more stable, its more stable than it ever was so that's ok by me.

[zaar]

Hi all,

We're about to update our systems to Max 2025 - but with Max 2026 recently being announced I think we should hold off.

How long do you expect Corona to be fully integrated with Max 2026; or is it already?

Thanks

Eager to try that 3 point rectangle ??
We usually wait for the first service pack to resolve new bugs..

I for one am really stoked about the new possibility to weld splines with a modifer. Might seem like a small thing, but if you are deep into non-destructive modelling this is a tiny thing that allows you to some nice things.
Just wish they would've made a built in reference rotate when they made the 3 point creation thing.

All of these tiny updates are great in their own right. But yeah, it sure feels dissapointing that another years gets added to Max and there's no hope of seeing updates to cloth, hair, curve editor  etc. 😢


About color management, not having moved over to OCIO or ACES yet, my main frustration is that since they've gone with OCIO (which is probably smart) support for display profiles has been a low priority. It seems that the assumption is that you are SO pro, that you monitor is set to and calibrated to one of the given and supported default color spaces. And Corona doesn't seem to have any plan on supporting system display profiles or ICC files. Adobe software like Photoshop has supported this since the 90s or something (Premiere and AE were pretty late to the game I think). You migh have a wide gamut monitor and work in Adobe RGB in lightroom, and REC 709 in Premiere and sRGB in Photoshop, without any troubles or changes to your monitor settings. It's kind of baffeling to pay for imaging software that doesn't care if you can see the colors right, and only has the perspective of a hollywood level pipeline TD, and not a beginner or mid-level user. And a lot of discussions about OCIO I feel are a bit gate-keepery and if you don't get how to set this up, you probably don't deserve it.


support for display profiles is still lacking in Max and Corona. Corona support even stated that there is no plan on supporting that or ICC profiles. Which means that you pay month after month for software that specializes in image creation, yet the only why to represent colors accuratly on your monitor is to have one that allows you to set it and calibrate it to one of the default colorspaces like sRGB, Adobe RGB, Rec 709, DCI-P3. You cannot run monitor native or any other colorspace AFAIK.

[TomG]

I don't recall it ever being said that we would not develop ICC profiles - especially not since the implementation of color management in C4D and Max in the last year or so. There's an Ideas Portal entry for it, that folks can vote on, to express your desire for this to be done :) https://chaos.aha.io/ideas/ideas/CMAX-I-152

[zaar]

It's what I was basically told in my discussions with support. Which was surpricing to me, considering the recent developments in color management as you say.

The efforts to structure ideas with the portal and voting system are appreciated. But it's becoming a bit of a "go fish" answer. I'm afraid that and the ideas portal gives me the same feeling as the autodesk 3ds Max one does. It's full of great ideas that will never be realised, but getting a hold of the right person/developer on Stack or the beta forum is when things acctually gets done. And the now read-only forum led to many great discussions that I don't think will happen on the ideas portal.

[TomG]

There will always be some great ideas that never get realized, just the nature of development that not everything can be done, unfortunately.

Something like ICC profiles is very likely to be done though, so definitely worth voting for it over there and further increasing its priority. And getting a hold of a developer in stack or forum would not get things done - as all prioritization is a team effort when we all get together to decide what will happen in the next release, and that's where ideas from the portal are considered. An individual developer will not be able to do anything themselves as it takes that group review (and a request sent to an individual dev, or to me, is likely to go astray and be forgotten when it comes time to do this review - while the Ideas Portal is a permanent record so things can't be lost). For that reason, contacting anyone directly will also give the "Oh, that's not a bad idea - put it on the Ideas Portal please so it doesn't get lost!" answer anyway :)

Long story short, the Ideas Portal IS where the idea reaches the right person/developer. Thanks!

[RecentSpacesSam]

... but otherwise its pretty damn solid in my opinion, we have so many tools to work with, for non-animated scenes its blazing fast for most things...

3ds Max blazing fast?! Wow ... first time I hear this. I've never put my hands onto Maya, C4D or Blender, but I'm dealing with Max for 20+ years now and I'm still impressed by the fact it's not multithreaded yet, in 2025 ... Anyway, I agree with you about the archviz point of view, Max is a cool tool after all as you get all these scripts and plugins to speed up your workflow.

It depends entirely on what you're doing. Is max the fastest & best tool for animation? Certainly not. But in other instances such as this example from Eloi Andaluz Fulla, Max is clearly winning.
https://youtu.be/4VmTBCFZE6Q?si=mvLhATs4yxbrHZ8c&t=12
Yes it's one tool in one scenario on a particular set of hardware but you need to ask yourself: does Maya/Blender/C4D have all the tools you need to continue your workflow uninterrupted or would you be hitting several stumbling blocks if you tried to ditch max?