Creativity Extension for 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009

If you are part of the Autodesk Subscription program for 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009, you can download the new Creativity Extension. This extension gives you new particle systems effects, new tools to incorporate audio and sound effects into your animated scenes and allows you to optimize highly detailed 3D models from digital sculpting applications like Mudbox and ZBrush.

Advanced Particle Effects
The new PFlowAdvanced toolset offers:

Numerous paint tools enable you to precisely place particles in your scene. Operators, including Particle Paint, Birth Paint, Placement Paint, Birth Texture, and Mapping Object, enable you to paint both particles and emitters onto specific parts of your objects. Other special effects include the ability to emit particles based on animated color data in emitter objects.

The utility operators have been integrated into the 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design core to extend Particle Flow's capabilities, while giving you a streamlined workflow for creating particle effects. Clean up particle flow, synchronize layers, repair the cache system, save a custom flow as a preset, and automatically delete operators that are not in use and lock or bond particles to an object (improves on the former position object operator).

The ability to group particles enables you to perform specific operations on arbitrary subsets of particles. Quickly create multiple groups and work with as many of them as you like through such operators as Group Selection, Group, and Split Group.

The PFlowAdvanced Shape operators greatly expand the Particle Flow Shape toolset. Define a particle shape beginning with a pre-existing shape (a vast range of 3D and 2D shape presets are available to choose from). Additionally, the Fast Shape Evaluation operation evaluates a reference mesh object on the final frame quickly and accurately, significantly improving performance.

Workflow enhancements include an Express Save operator that has been integrated with the 3ds Max Design auto-save functionality, backward compatibility with Orbaz Particle Flow Tools, Box # 1-based scenes, and general memory and performance improvements based on source.

Polygon Modeling Optimization
Reduce the number of faces on your model using the new ProOptimizer technology, which is ideal for optimizing high-poly count 3D models from digital sculpting applications, such as Mudbox and ZBrush software.

This new modifier offers support for:
Precision control over the number of faces or points in your scene/model
Preservation of detail: useful faces are removed last, enabling you to reduce your selection up to 75 percent without removing detail
Real-time scene optimization (optimization is precalculated)
Batch optimizing of files (you control the optimization level for each file)
Preservation of all UV texture channel information and vertex color channel information
Optimization of multiple objects simultaneously (optimize a selection of faces or the inverted selection across multiple objects)
Symmetry preservation
Protection or exclusion of object borders, so your objects stay connected after optimization

Integrated Audio
Enhance your presentations with the addition of audio and sound effects. The incorporation of ProSound means the software now supports integrated, multitrack audio to enhance your film, game, and visualization projects through the addition of high-quality audio and sound effects. This allows you to assign sounds to specific objects, and add a music track or voice-over for your presentations.

The toolset supports the following:
Up to 100 audio tracks per scene
Per-track animated volume
Audio output normalization
Audio playback during motion capture
An intuitive user interface and workflow features help you to quickly synchronize your audio
Sync your playback with the viewport, render your track to match playback speed, or play it backwards and forwards (ping pong mode)
Support for both PCM and compressed audio in AVI and WAV formats with up to six output channels
Controllable via MaxScript through 46 script commands