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Using Anima and its plugins you can quickly and easily populate your 3D scenes using Library assets. Also, the plugin for 3ds Max optimizes memory usage, improves viewport performance, and adapts to the needs of the user by automatically generating native materials for the actors for all the supported render engines, including V-Ray,  Corona,  Octane, Redshift, Arnold, Fstorm, and more.

Also, thanks to the Anima plugin, 3dsMax gets full support for the amazing 4D Digital Human models, which use the most advanced State-Of-The-Art volumetric video technology.

There are 2 complementary workflows that can be used with Anima in 3ds Max:

  • Import and synchronize your simulation from Anima into your 3dsMax scene using the Alive Synchronization workflow.
  • Drop models directly into the scene using Anima Drop.

You can learn more about both workflows in the links below:

In this article, you will learn more details about all the features that both workflows enable in 3ds Max thanks to the Anima plugin.

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This tutorial was made using version 3.5 but the workflow with 3ds Max has not changed. That said, make sure to take a look at the new features added to Anima 6.

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Each one of the options available in the Rendert texture quality dropdown corresponds to the following square sizes in pixels.

Notice that these values represent the maximum quality size of the texture but, depending on the type of model the size can be lower than that.

For example, the Ready-Posed models use unique texture for the whole model and it does get up to the maximum 4k texture size when using the “Insane” quality mode.

On the other hand, the Rigged models use multiple textures for different parts of the body (the head alone is using a 2k texture), so they don’t have a 4k texture available because they can provide even more quality using multiple textures of a lower size.

Also, the 4D models have a max resolution of 2k because they use animated textures, which means that they use a different texture image for each frame of their animation.

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Delete Actors

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To delete individual actors, select anActorand press theDeletekey.

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To manually change the display mode of an individual character, select them and open theModifypanel.

1. Parent
Displays the Anima Project file to which this character is associated.

2. Draw as arrow
Turn this option on to display the character in the viewports as an arrow mesh. Does not affect rendering.

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Anima Vehicles

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Workflow with XREFs

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Xref Scenes

We highly recommend to not use Anima scenes inside 3dsMax Xref scene files.

The Anima plugin for 3dsMax uses extreme optimizations that let it handle a huge number of actors and animations. This system has a great number of pros (you can easily manage thousands of actors with Anima almost in realtime, 3dsMax cannot do that even with a fraction of that number) and only one limitation: there can only be one object of this type inside the whole 3dsMax scene loaded in memory (and that includes the Xref files).

That’s one of the reasons why we designed Anima as a project-based software. Each project can have multiple scenes and within the same project, you can share resources that can be used for any of the project’s scenes (backgrounds, custom actors, custom animations, etc).

When you load an Anima project from 3dsMax, our plugin connects your 3dsMax scene with one or multiple Anima scenes of the project. Initially is just one, but you can later load more scenes of the same project using the Anima Scene Controller.

This way you can load an arbitrary number of Anima scenes inside the same 3dsMax file, they only need to be part of the same Anima project. That lets you use a similar workflow that is often used in 3dsMax with Xref files, where you slice the project in several parts (Xref files in 3dsMax, scenes in Anima) that are referenced from another centralized base file (the main file in 3dsMax, the project in Anima).

So, the suggested workflow in large projects with multiple Xrefs is to build one Anima project and with one scene for each Xref. While you are working on each Xref you can import and the Anima scene in there to quickly go back and forth and check the results of your work inside the Anima app. Then, when you finish, remove the Anima Scene Controller from that Xref and instead load the Anima scene directly from Anima Scene Controller on the main 3dsMax file.

Just keep in mind that it can only be one Anima project loaded and that it must be imported in the main 3dsMax file (it cannot be in a 3dsMax referenced file).

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Xref Objects

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We also recommend to not use Anima scenes inside 3ds Max Xref objects for the same reasons that we exposed about the Xrefs Scenes.

However, you can use Xrefs Objects as background geometry and send them to Anima using the Alive Synchronization connection. This can be useful in some cases when a team of artists is working in different parts of a big scene and you want to keep updated with the latest available backgrounds the members of the team that are using Anima. As soon as they detect any background modification, they can simply send the same list of objects inside that will already be in their Background section of the plugin and Alive Synchronization will update it inside Anima.

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