Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 animation software or download delivers new rendering, motion graphics, 3D animation, and simulation tools empowering artists to focus more on creative, rather than technical challenges.

Adobe After Effects Interoperability

Complete projects in less time with the new Media Sync functionality. It provides two-way transfer of cameras, lights, null objects, plane objects/solids, footage (including footage layering), blend modes, opacity, and effects.

Render Pass System and Photoshop Interoperability

Scenes can now be more easily segmented for downstream compositing. Thanks to an entirely new render pass system, render elements can now be more efficiently created for Autodesk^® Smoke^® 2013 software, Adobe After Effects, Adobe^® Photoshop^® software. A state recorder enables you to capture, edit, and save the current state, while a visual interface shows how compositing and render elements are wired together to create the final result. You can quickly set up and execute multiple render passes from a single file; individual passes can be modified without the need to re-render the whole scene, enhancing productivity.

Slate Compositing Editor

Perform simple compositing operations with the new Slate Compositing Editor. The schematic node-based interface lets you easily wire together rendered layers and passes as well as combine them with compositing nodes (for example: blends and color corrections); the resulting composite can be sent to Adobe After Effects or Adobe Photoshop for further refinement.

ActiveShade Interactive iray Rendering

Experience an interactive creative process for finalizing renderings with new ActiveShade support for the NVIDIA^® iray^® renderer. ActiveShade enables you to iterate more effectively by providing an interactive rendering session that constantly updates as changes are made to cameras, lighting, materials, and geometry. Shorten the feedback loop to more efficiently fine-tune your scene, making it faster and easier to achieve your intended look.

MassFX Enhancements

Gain a more integrated and accurate dynamic toolset, with a wide range of enhancements and additions to the MassFX unified system of simulation solvers. Highlights: a new mCloth module that features tearable fabric and support for dynamic ragdoll hierarchies. Improve overall workflow with constraints, better handling of pivot points, and enhanced UI readability.

Focus on Workflow

With the understanding that small things can make a big difference, 3ds Max 2013 includes a number of improvements: the ability to manipulate the camera when cutting polygons and during the creation process, enhancements to the skin modifier, and a modeless array dialog.

Tabbed Layouts

Create and switch between unlimited viewport layout configurations. Layouts can include both 3D and extended viewports. Easily select a different layout by clicking on its icon, or pressing a hotkey. Share customized View Tabs with other artists by saving and loading presets.

Customizable Workspaces

Configure the workspace to suit your preferences or to fit the task at hand. Select from a choice of default or custom workspaces. Each workspace can have individual settings for menus, toolbars, ribbon, and viewport tab presets; in addition, selecting a new workspace can automatically execute a MAXScript.

Track View Retiming

You can now retime portions of animations to increase or decrease their speed. The retiming is achieved by changing the tangency of the existing animation curve; there is no requirement to have keyframes present in the portion to be retimed, and no extra keyframes are created in the resulting high-quality curve.

Autodesk^® HumanIK^® Interoperability with CAT

You can now convert 3ds Max CAT (Character Animation Toolkit) bipedal characters into characters that are compatible with the Autodesk^® HumanIK^® solver used in Autodesk^® Maya^® 2013 software and Autodesk^® MotionBuilder^® 2013 software in a single step. These portable characters enable you to transfer existing character structure, definition, and animation between the software packages in order to take advantage of particular feature sets. Animation changes created in Maya or MotionBuilder can be updated back onto the original CAT character in 3ds Max, facilitating a round-trip workflow.

Compare Autodesk 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design.

Compare Autodesk 3ds Max/3ds Max Design 2013 and 2012.

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Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 System Requirements

32-Bit for Windows

Operating System:

• Microsoft^® Windows^® 7 Professional operating system
• Microsoft^® Windows^® XP Professional operating system (SP3 or higher)

General animation and rendering (typically fewer than 1,000 objects or 100,000 polygons):

• Intel^® Pentium^® 4 1.4 GHz or equivalent AMD^® processor with SSE2 technology²
• 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
• 2 GB swap space (4 GB recommended)³
• Microsoft^® Direct3D^® 10 technology, Direct3D 9, or OpenGL^®-capable graphics card⁴
• 512 MB or higher video card memory
• 1 GB or higher recommended
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• 3 GB free hard drive space
• DVD-ROM drive⁵
• Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^® 8.0 internet browser or higher, or Mozilla^® Firefox^® 3.0 web browser or higher
• Internet connection for web downloads and Autodesk^® Subscription-aware access

64-Bit for Windows

• Microsoft^® Windows^® 7 Professional x64 operating system
• Microsoft^® Windows^® XP Professional x64 Edition (SP3 or higher)

General animation and rendering (typically fewer than 1,000 objects or 100,000 polygons):

• * Intel^® 64 or AMD64 processor with SSE2 technology¹
• * 8 GB RAM
• * 8 GB swap space²
• * Direct3D 10, Direct3D 9, or OpenGL-capable graphics card³
• 1 GB or higher video card memory
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• 3 GB free hard drive space
• DVD-ROM drive⁴
• Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^® 8.0 internet browser or higher, or Mozilla^® Firefox^® 3.0 web browser or higher
• Internet connection for web downloads and Subscription-aware access

For Macintosh

Boot Camp

Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and 3ds Max Design 2013 software can be used on a Mac^® computer on a Windows^® partition. The system must use Boot Camp^® application program to help manage a dual OS configuration and meet the minimum system requirements.

• Intel^®-based Mac Pro or MacBook^® Pro computer¹
• Mac^® OS X 10.5.x operating system or higher
• Boot Camp V 2.0 or higher
• Minimum 2 GB RAM (Recommend 4 GB for 32-bit Windows OS, 8 GB or more for 64-bit Windows OS)
• Minimum 20 GB disk space for Apple OS partition, minimum 20 GB for Windows OS partition

Mac Virtualization on Parallels Desktop⁵

Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and 3ds Max Design 2013 can be used on the Mac via Parallels Desktop^® for Mac software without having to boot directly into the Windows OS so it is easy to switch between platforms. The system must meet the following requirements:

• A Mac computer with an Intel^® Core^™ 2 Duo, Intel Core i3, Intel Core i5, Intel Core i7, or Intel^® Xeon^® processor.⁶
• Mac OS X 10.5.x or higher
• Mac OS X
• Mac OS X Lion 10.7 higher
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 or higher
• Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or higher Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac
• Minimum 4 GB RAM (6 GB system memory for 32-bit Windows OS, 8 GB or more for 64-bit Windows OS recommended)
• Minimum 40 GB available disk space (100 GB recommended)

For more details, please read the 3ds Max for Mac FAQ.

Learn more about graphics hardware compatibility.

¹ Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2013 have been optimized to take advantage of the SSE2 extended instruction sets supported on Intel^® Pentium^® 4 processor or higher, AMD Athlon^™ 64, AMD Opteron^™, AMD Phenom^™ processors. 3ds Max 2013 will not operate on computers that do not support SSE2. Several utilities are available on the Internet that report CPUID, including supported instructions sets.

² Autodesk recommends settings that allow Microsoft Windows to manage virtual memory, as needed. There should always be at least twice as much free hard disk space as system memory (RAM).

³ Some features of 3ds Max 2013 and 3ds Max Design 2013 are only enabled when used with graphics hardware that supports Shader Model 3.0 (Pixel Shader and Vertex Shader 3.0). In addition, Quicksilver hardware rendering requires additional GPU resources to work effectively. A minimum of 512 MB of graphics memory should be used. A minimum of 1 GB is recommend for the most complex scenes, shaders and lighting modes.

The integrated NVIDIA^® iray^® rendering technology operates well solely with CPU processing but processing can be accelerated by NVIDIA GPU CUDA technology. Check to see if the graphics card is CUDA ready here: Learn more about graphics hardware compatibility.

⁴ Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2013 are available only on dual layer DVD media (or electronic download where available). CD media is no longer available. DVD-ROM drive is not required if installing using electronic download. However to accommodate the installation files, you will need 9 GB of hard disk space and an additional 16 GB of space for temporary files created during the installation.

⁵ Parallels Desktop is the only supported virtual machine software at this time.

⁶ 64-bit Windows Vista requires an Intel Core^® 2 Duo or Intel^® Xeon^® processor.

Autodesk reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document.

Autodesk is not responsible for errors or failures of Autodesk software arising from the installation of updates, extensions or new releases issued by third party hardware or software vendors for the qualified software or hardware identified in this document (or for any other third party software or hardware that you may use in connection with Autodesk products).