Apparently, Autodesk is coming out with a new version of 3ds max annaualy, and that means our team will have only one license for 6, and one for 7. What we need is several licenses for one version, especialy since we are not a school, severl people want to work on our animation, and our laptop is a Celeron and I have to use SW rendering or the PC locks up.
Unless of course Autodesk gives us more than one license! 
This is pretty cool, I think.
Iāve never used v6 yet, but I hope to when we get our K.o.P. (assuming they are giving it to us this year).
Iām not to fond of annual releases though. It kinda shows that they are rushing to get everything done, that there will probably be some major bugs to work out before itās actually good.
Not to mention previous years.
3ds max r3 (1999-2000)
3ds max r4 (2001)
3ds max r4.2 (2002)
3ds max r5 (2003)
3ds max r6 (2004)
3ds max r7 (2005)
Those are all the ones that iāve had to deal with.
the release of max7 is good and badā¦ Itās good because FIRST animators get to use the latest software from discreet. Itās bad because we have to learn all the new specs and tools. Also, its hard to work with two version at the same time. In the past, Iāve experienced errors because a file i created in an older version didnt work on the newer ones.
Iām really looking foward to the new version.
Happy animating 
Does anyone know if v7 will have v6/5ās ridiculous lack of ability to save in a previous version-compatible file?
There are many ways around this. Export the file as a .3ds file. That type opens in previous versions, and maintains texturing.
LBKā¦ do you mean SW rendering of the viewports? cause I donāt think thatās tooo terribly important unless you want to have really really complex scenes that youāre modelling with textures on, etc. HW rendering only helps for that.
Also, I believe youāre allowed to install multiple copies of 3DS to other computers strictly for network rendering purposes. Which is certainly highly helpful for actually rendering the animation.
Finally, Autodesk really likes releasing new versions of everything on a yearly basis. Iām fairly confident that Inventor and AutoCAD have been updated with similar frequency. Personally, though, I got spoiled in college working with Solidworks. When I tried to go back to Inventor this summer to do some designing for the robot, it didnāt work all that well for me.
Usually they also have a free 30-day trial of it, which isnāt limited in any way that I can think of
IIRC, it does not save animation, mapping, lighting, or non-mesh modeling type of stuff.
It would be wonderful if the fine people at Autodesk (Discreet) could bump that up to a 60-day trial. Heck - Iād rather have 5 temporary licenses than 1 permanent.
Last season, my friend and I were working on the animation together. He had most of the files on his computer and one night he was rendering a scene. Due to cheap hardware, his computer exploded or something. We lost everything, including the license information from his computer. That was messyā¦ I wonder if this year Autodesk would be so kind as to give extended licenses to the FIRST teams. As noted before, 60 days would be so much better than 30, and that would definately cover the basic learning time as well as the animating time.
I really wish FIRST and Discreet would have figured out by now that giving us a new version of Max every year does NOT help. We get one license, for one computer, and somehow we have to work between all the other previous versions of Max that weāve gotten every year.
What would be really, really cool is if FIRST and Discreet could offer some multi-user license for FIRST teams only. I am so tired now of having problems just because the versions arenāt compatible with each other :mad:
Honestly, I canāt say Iām excited for 3DS Max 7, because itās only going to make things more complicated.
i don know 6 wasnāt all that big of a step up anywaysā¦ i guess they are now making a bunch of new number releases instead of 4.3 4.5 etcā¦ BUT i hope it will be backwards compatibleā¦
3ds max 7 trial is availible now.
idk about you guys, i think the default colors are booring!!!
so iāve spent some time to customize as much as i could with max7.
sshot1
sshot2
sshot3
I will say from your first screen shot, it looks like Maxās interface is even more complicated now. Personally I donāt really see the point in adding all those buttons when most stuff is accessable from a toolbar menu.
If youāre new, donāt freak out. Justā¦ donāt press all the buttons :]
That second toolbar is probably a custom toolbar. I think it will look like the normal interface. If you have ever seen v3.1, it had all kinds of tabs and things on the toolbar so it has been simplified since then. In the 17mb whats new pdf, there is a picture of the interface. It has that second tool bar but I still think it is a display option.
Eric
hehe, true, all those tabs take up workspaceā¦
thatās y thereās Ctrl+X. 
Yeah, but then you donāt really have anything. I know people who have been using Max for years and they still canāt work in expert mode. :]
Hereās a FRC Public announcement received on Oct 27:
Thatās awesome!!!
So does that mean we get a 25-seat license for 3ds max?
