It’s that time of the year again when the next major release of Autodesk software becomes available to you through your Subscription, with many of the products having their 2022 release date over the next couple of months. 3ds Max 2022 pushes a faster and more secure environment, with a primary focus on efficiency through faster and easier texturing and rendering workflows within a secure and safe environment. Rendering with Arnold in 2022 is better than ever, with new capabilities to bake textures alongside enhanced features to popular modelling tools.

Security
With Save Scene Script Execution and Malware Removal functionality 3ds Max is more secure than ever, offering protection against malicious Maxscript, Python or .NET commands. Safe Scene Script Execution detects and removes known malicious code,  and notifies users when a new version of the scene security tools are available through the Autodesk App Store.

Smart Extrude

With 2022, Smart Extrude is now supported for use within the Edit Poly modifier, and offers the same time saving and flexible features from within its Editable Poly implementation. On top of this, Smart Extrude also now supports “Cut Through” mode, which enables users to extrude their geometry with fewer constraints. These Smart Extrude give users the ability to construct a more unified mesh, enhancing the poly modelling experience in 3ds Max.

Slice Modifier

One of the most widely used modifiers within 3ds Max, Slice, includes both performance enhancements as well as new modelling features based on user feedback.  The Slice tool now support more options when cappingholes, working with multi-axis cutting, radial functionality as well as more alignment options than ever before. These are powerful complements to your existing 3ds Max workflows, allowing you to dramatically reduce data processing for Autodesk Retopology Tools in 3ds Max.

Extrude Modifier

Another frequently used modifiers in 3ds Max, extrude, offers huge performance boosts to both the initial calculation speed as well as the responsiveness of the output when making adjustments. Working with complex splines, which historically could take several minutes to process, can be completed in seconds with 3ds Max 2022.

Symmetry Modifier

The Symmetry modifier has been enhanced to include new features to improve your modelling workflows within 3ds Max 2022. Symmetry can now produce faster results, and offers a more interactive experience in the Viewport. On top of this, 2022 brings multi-axis symmetry, radial symmetry and all new alignment options to your 3ds max environment.

AutoSmooth

AutoSmooth has been updated in this release, generating new smoothing data faster, regardless of whether you are smoothing thousands or millions of faces. Whether you are working on adjusting the smoothing data on a mesh, poly or spline or even a modifier such smooth, chamfer, edit mesh, edit poly or proOptimize to name a few.

Relax Modifier

A new “volume preserve” option has been added to the Relax modifier, which when active performs additional calculations to reduce small detail and noise out of your models. This happens without affecting the shape or definition of the overall mesh that the modifier has been applied to, which works wonders when working with large amounts of unwanted or microsurface data from scan and sculpt workflows.

Rendering

3ds Max 2022 introduces a new render configuration window with much faster and responsive QT-based UI. Alongside this, render settings when using Quicksilver are now QT-based, giving a much faster and snappier experience. 

Viewports can utilise a new Ambient Occlusion sampling value through their configuration settings which users can further refine to optimize their GPU performance by increasing or decreasing the Viewport Ambient Occlusion quality.

Arnold

3ds Max 2022 brings several additions and improvements to the Arnold render engine:

• ‘Auto-tx’ can now be used to automate the process of converting texture files to .tx format at render time.
• Imagers can now be applied, removed, re-ordered, and edited directly in a dedicated tab of the Arnold RenderView to post-process rendering without additional render time.
• A new Light Mixer imager makes it possible to interactively edit the contribution of each light group AOVs during and after rendering, without restarting the render.
• Bloom or “glow”, a post-processing effect, has been added to the Lens Effect imager to blur pixels above a given threshold across the frame and simulate light bleeding on an imperfect lens.
• Noise Denoiser is now a post-processing effect. Artists can automatically denoise images every time they render a scene. Edit the denoising settings and see the resulting image directly in the render view.
• OptiX Denoiser: The OptiX™ denoiser is now available as a post-processing effect. This imager also exposes additional controls for clamping and blending the result.

Bake to Texture

Bake to Texture’s interface has been simplified to offer both easier navigation and selection of baked map types. Bake to Texture also now features a number of new utility maps, such as rounded corners and material ID maps. This enables users to quickly arrange what was previously a complex material setup workflow quickly and easily into Bake to Textures results in just a few clicks.

Viewports

3ds Max 2022 allows you to turn any floating Viewport into a full-screen, borderless view which is game changing for presenting your artwork.  When using Presentation Mode, all gizmos are hidden allowing your 3d scene to be the centre of attention.

Source and image credit: https://makeanything.autodesk.com/3dsmax?fbclid=IwAR1QLNh4mnuwNb_9GaIo6UnuLJk_095U9lzzou6fpJOm13JpBgacmruJYlg