Discreet 3DS Max 4.2 (2001) WIP Thread (Based On An XP SP3 Install) Many Extras>>>

[BellicoseBloke]

About 50% done with assembly... Figured I'd start thread a ways before any uploads so peeps can prepare/bookmark as when it's uploaded hoster life is limited often someone come in a month later "Hey, links are dead"...

Doing installs on two machines one with a 'C' drive as main & other with a 'D' drive as main but has a small 'C' partition... Both work but you will have to have at least a small 'C' partition for the C-Dilla License Server to install on it won't install to anywhere else... The rest can go on any other letter drive without having to hard link the folder to 'C'...

Figured I'd put that first so no need to get excited if you can't meet that requirement... The original C-Dilla would not install on XP so had to dig up one from Max5 which install fine...

So why Max 4.2? ... It's a long list mainly it became a serious piece of code, first version for editable poly, render elements, activeshade, UI schemes, quad menu, upgraded modifier stack and much more but also some features that would go missing in later Maxes like the ability to use photoshop & premiere plugins in the material channels....

Now because of the pixel-shading improvements in 4.2 finalRender stage-0 was available & thusly is in this package with fairly easy install but also there is Mental Ray 2.1 which is an external install but then works like it's built-in... Had some problems with install but it was me not paying attention... There's also VirtuaLight 1.4 which was a briefly available GI renderer for just Max 4 & Maya 4 & 4.5 but also was injected into trueSpace... Also there's Exluna Entropy which is a renderman compliant render engine... Illustrate 5.2 which is an NPR renderer & don't forget the Scanline render which always comes with Max...

Max is certainly tops for interconnectivity & plugins & the list is long... If it connects to a certain program then the program gets included as well....

Here Max is connected to Combustion 4, the connection is realtime... When I paint in Combustion it immediately shows in the viewport in Max, Not only that but in Combustion every stroke can be readjusted at anytime which also does in Max plus Max will animate Combustion's timeline which shows in Max as well-

Even shows up on the shaderball in the material editor...

Other connectivity as well-

Amapi3D 6.1 - Max4 (back-forth)
Right Hemisphere Deep Paint3D - Max4 (back-forth)
Maxon BodyPaint3D - Max4 (back-forth)
NextLimit Realflow 1.3 - Max4 (back-forth)
DarkSim DarkTree 1.10 & 2.51 - Max4 (into Max)

Also LightScape 3.2 as an external render engine....

Tons of plugs to boot...

Haven't got Brazil to work yet but finalRender is better anyways GI, Radiosity, SSS, ETC...

Also SSS don't have a render but here is one of there's from back then you see it in the ear-

Mental Ray is OK but takes longer than finalRender-

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Going through some 3D World PDFs from 2001 certainly sticker-shock well enough to make one soil themselves-

Discreet 3ds max 4 - $3,495

Character Studio addon - $1,495

Reactor addon - $995

Cebas ThinkingParticles plugin - $1,295

Mental Ray 2.1 Render plugin - $2,995

Exluna Entropy Render plugin - $1,750

Cebas finalRender plugin - $895 (A stark bargain compared to others)

Splutterfish Brazil Render plugin - $1,200 (Yup, got it working finally)

LightScape External Render Engine - $595 (A bit older but still a great value of the time)

Discreet Combustion 2 - $3,495 (Same as Max price)

That doesn't even cover the vast small plugins... Back then get ready to drop 20 grand & not flinch>>>

I see why Lightwave 3D 6-6.5 was popular as it was $2,495 & had a very good render engine for the time however the render engine was rather slow...

Maya was still at 3 or 3.51 somewhere like $6,999 for the full unlimited...

Cinema 4D was the DEAL at like $1,500...

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Forgot some stuff...

OK the 3dsMax4 Bible companion CD is here, pretty sure the PDF is inside, personally I went ahead & bought the book as since this old a Max is considered 'obsolete' it was only 8 bucks, that's INCLUDING shipping on a 1,200+ page book-

https://archive.org/details/3ds-max-r-4-bible

Also there's a VTC Max 4 video course, not the best but it's way better than nuthin', mostly like a 'video manual'-

https://archive.org/details/3dsmax4vtc


OK now have Splutterfish Brazil working as render engine, does not come with much scenes & needs a bit of 'lernin' before serious use but I have renders done by others in Max-Brazil from 2001-2003, they are way better than me at it...

Some of the best came from Koji Yamaguchi AKA 'Beans Magic'-

This next one was quite famous back then-

So quite capable in the right hands>>>

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Few more aspects... 3ds Max 4.2 only requires 128 MB RAM which is quite heartwarming & most all my XP machines are way over that at usually 2-4 GB RAM, such RAM is cheap nowadays but back then it was like a dollar a megabyte...

So my lowest machines like have 1 or 1.25 GB RAM still very good but the kicker is how much VIDEO RAM your old machine has...

I have a Toshiba Satellite P25 from like 2003 it has 2 GB RAM with 2.8 GHZ single-core so it rocks in that respect but it has one of those nVidia GForce GO 5200 graphics with only 32 MB video RAM... Haven't installed the Max 4.2 on it yet but plan to just to see... Often one can get better viewport framerate by switching your viewports to Direct3D from OpenGL...

In the end these old soft are better than new with such light requires, Hell, Max has been subscription for several years which has caused many users to stick with the last 'offline' version...

Yes, newer maxes can do different things & better this-that but they also require like 8 GB RAM minimum, That's what like 65 times the RAM of Max 4.2... Now is the output 65 times better than 4.2... NOPE!... 2 times, sure, 3 times, probably, 4 times? I vote no... Now if you could run Max 2022 on 128 MB RAM THAT would be something but there's nothing spectacular about new software they just take advantage of more powerful machines with coding gone all to hell, I have read volumes on problems in more recent maxes as well as others...

You see, faster broadband has not made things better... Back in the 4.2 days it was still a CD delivery system with no chances of 'hotfixes' so it had to be RIGHT before leaving the door, 100%... Nowadays you get a 'beta for sale' & they update it as they get up to speed via the internet... Very sloppy same with video games... The high prices back in the day reflect this 'effort' that had to be put in as well as the trouble of creating such monumental software that had to run stable on grim old machines, what a task>>>

 

[Dayron]

I agree. I started appreciating old software when I found out that using Windows 7 past its end of life made me excluded from a lot of things. I also noticed that older versions have much lighter requirements despite not always being that much different in functionality.

At first, my immersion in retro software was a necessity but now it's a preference as well. The amount of bloat in modern software is staggering. Developers these days treat my disk space as some kind of free real estate. Not long ago I gave Maya 2022 a try with its 7 GB. It took a damn 100 years to download, install, and no less time to UN-install. A lesson learned: Never again.

I used to think that older software were smaller for the plain reason that they were pathetically poor in features and incomplete. And I got to admit, I have experienced disappointment a few times when I would download versions that lacked some important features that later versions could boast of. But there are a few gems which prove that lightweightness and functionality don't have to be mutually exclusive. A professional digital audio workstation REAPER (the latest version) weighs mere 70 MEGAbytes!!! This sounds like a mind-blowing feat of software engineering.

Another example. My favorite DAW for music production, FL Studio 12, takes only 1.5 GB and is complete with all the effects, samples and synthesizers you need to start creating without needing any external plugins. This stands in stark contrast to hogs like Ableton Live or Pro Tools that take up many gigs.

Then there's also Blender - a full 3D package which needs only 300-400 MB of the disk, runs portably, and starts up lightning-fast. So I can't help but conclude that all the bloat in many modern applications is a manifestation of a disregard that big tech companies have for optimization. Since they expect that anyone using their software is gonna have very powerful hardware anyway, they see no need to tighten up the code. Less work for the company and more profits for hardware manufacturers who love it when people are forced to buy new computers on a regular basis.

We need to preserve old software versions. I'm keeping After Effects CS6 (2012) that I found on TPB because it's the last version before MP4 export was removed. And the scary thing is that that was the only copy of that version I found. You'll find plenty of copies of the later versions all over the internet, while these old ones are slowly sinking into the abyss until one day they will be gone for good.

 

[cleverscreenname]

You see, faster broadband has not made things better... Back in the 4.2 days it was still a CD delivery system with no chances of 'hotfixes' so it had to be RIGHT before leaving the door, 100%... Nowadays you get a 'beta for sale' & they update it as they get up to speed via the internet... Very sloppy same with video games... The high prices back in the day reflect this 'effort' that had to be put in as well as the trouble of creating such monumental software that had to run stable on grim old machines, what a task>>>

Preach it!
Now they're also doing this shit to cars, appliances, what they muck up next?!

 

[cleverscreenname]

At first, my immersion in retro software was a necessity but now it's a preference as well. The amount of bloat in modern software is staggering. Developers these days treat my disk space as some kind of free real estate. Not long ago I gave Maya 2022 a try with its 7 GB. It took a damn 100 years to download, install, and no less time to UN-install. A lesson learned: Never again.

And now they want to hide their crap. Why is a program getting installed in "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application DATA" <<<!!! a folder literally created to keep user data backups small and not include program code!
Answer: because the folder is hidden by default on Windows, so users aren't mucking around with your program.

So we'll just abandon the "C:\Program Files" we invented in Windows 95 for the literal purpose of... program files...
(and we put a space in it just to piss off all the non-LongFileName-aware program developers so they'll have to add code to recognize volume-labels-as-a-filename LFNs.)

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Yes, agreed... First time a program wanted to install to C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application DATA I hit the cancel button... WTF?

Yes, much bloat without choice... If I am going to want to bloat my software it's gonna be with what I wanna bloat it with... Stuff that I am gonna use not stuff they think I should be using that I will never use...

And yes, REAPER takes the cake... highly regarded everywhere I just can't figure out why other DAW developers don't take clues from it... It's very efficient & STILL installs & runs on XP just fine & STILL uses DX plugins (if you engage the feature).. Very few problems with it compared to others who have very long lists...

Hell, one of my favorites in Cubase VST24 3.70 from 1999... Best layout, easy, fast small (like 15 mb initial install)... I also use Reason 3.0 & also Reason 2.5 on very marginal systems, these were incredibly efficient & capable I have done the tests against not only the VST based systems but also against the DX based which is more efficient & higher quality to VST, nothing compares...

 

[Chiron]

. . . So I can't help but conclude that all the bloat in many modern applications is a manifestation of a disregard that big tech companies have for optimization. Since they expect that anyone using their software is gonna have very powerful hardware anyway, they see no need to tighten up the code. Less work for the company and more profits for hardware manufacturers who love it when people are forced to buy new computers on a regular basis.

I believe that you're dreadfully right.
At the dawn of "modern" processors (the ones even a small company could afford without going bankrupt, years 1970+) the CPU speed was measured in MHz, the memory in KB, and a program that wouldn't fit on a fistful of floppy disks (usually 720 KB each) was regarded as way too bulky.
Which forced programmers and system developers to use their brains in order to write software that fitted into the available memory, run fast enough to keep the user awake and still performed as required or better. Of course it took some ingenuity and plenty of dirty tricks to do that, thus one who wasn't up to it would better choose some other way to make a living.

Then, as the CPUs became gradually faster, the memories cheaper, the hard drives affordable, the programming languages increasingly foolproof, someone found out that 500 barely qualified fools could do the same job as 5 skilled programmers at a much lower cost - and that marked the beginning of a new software era.
Quite obviously such a huge step entailed the introduction of cyberbureaucracy ... opps, structured programming galore, which meant saying good bye once and for all to the optimization of hardware resources and execution time. But who cares? Time and resources are the user's business but the money is ours! And the vast majority of the users aren't computer-savy enough even to notice it and grumble...

One could maintain that it was probably M$ that got it started, however they didn't (or couldn't) patent it. As a result the new fashion didn't stay confined inside their walls for long, and within a couple of decades virtually all the major and medium software companies were infected: cheap and dirty sells much better than expensive and clean.
Today it feels as if we reached the point where every new technological improvement in the hardware gets promptly swallowed by a new software release that uses it up to perform something pointless - but with many more mouse clicks, lest the users might suspect that they just served yesterday's leftovers warmed up.

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Some success in getting Poser content into 3ds Max 4.2 however exporting from Poser 6 did not work very well, instead used P3DO Explorer which had more intelligent exporter & made it much easier to locate textures buried within runtime-

One of the funky-cool plugins of vintage lore is Digimation's Head Designer... You have all kinda params to adjust only thing is you can't see it till you create it-

The heads are triangles rather than quads but that was very normal back then-

When I get more time gonna hafta test out using MaxSculpt on one of these heads-

One script located that is quite handy is 'TubeCap' which appears a good choice for starting a head of a human creature... Easily create a mouth & eye then symmetrize over in less than a minute you have the essence-

 

[BellicoseBloke]

OK I guess I have enough views here to get started... I'm sure 90% of them are from non-members which is actually the target audience...

So here it is... Have included the following info in an RTF-

OK... FIRST in the 'swl' folder install C-Dilla, for XP you must use the one from Max5... You must have at least a small 'C' partition to install this on... Everything else can go on whatever letter drive your using for everything...

After installing C-Dilla then restart machine, check a process manager to see if C-Dilla is running...

Install 3ds Max 4 but do NOT run it... Instead install the 4.2 update THEN using the keygens in that folder start max & begin the process... Read the readme in that folder for clues...

YES, in this vintage version you had to register Max, Reactor & Character Studio separate kinda a pain but all these together back then woulda been about $6,000 When they were super optimized code that worked well on grim machines...

-BellicoseBloke

PS- This assumes an install on a REAL XP machine not a 'VM' as that is not the same, only a close approximation... Your much futurized Direct-X, OpenGL, Large format desktop items & icons & more are not 'backwards compatible' but you will probably have better luck with Max than Maya/Messiah Studio/Nichimen Mirai... If there's weirdness then try switching to a different viewport driver>>>

Since there are like 4-5 keygens in there I encrypted the RAR

Pass = FRICKINGROOVIN

https://www.sendspace.com/file/62b6os

OR

https://gofile.io/d/wbrEqE

OR

https://send.now/urq7j9kgbiwz

OR

https://workupload.com/start/P9vAejS8V6w


Next will be an overwrite folder of @ 560 MB that installs alot without having to mess with anything, Lot's of shader plugins, help files, etc...

 

[BellicoseBloke]

OK, Whilst compiling the overwrite folder let's grab the 3ds Max Joan-Of-Arc tutorial... this was the original that started the craze... Michel Roger did quite a bit of work on this tutorial which was done in 3ds max 3 & 4 so for us, perfect... It's also the most complete of all of them includes UV mapping, texturing, hair (shag hair but don't worry we got that) and bones & skinning so she's ready for animation as well...

So this is not a PDF it's the siterip of the tutorial so it opens up in a browser, I use old Opera 12 to view such... The blueprints are included also my versions which give her more meat on the bones... Also in there is 3DCreative Oct 2005 that has interview with Michel Roger about the JOA craze that had started years before by this time...

https://workupload.com/start/J3c2fbF3ZwD

OR

https://send.now/0misiezx5e4c

OR

https://gofile.io/d/7BcwaL

OR

https://www.sendspace.com/file/pzv399


Unlike most the others that expect a degree of 'assumed knowledge' this is pretty much written for a rather raw beginner... The translation to English from French is pretty good...

 

[BellicoseBloke]

OK, Here's the overwrite folder for all you 'Out There' that has this up-running or plan on it... You will merge this with your 3dsmax4 directory so you will get the warning '3dsmax4 already exists proceed anyway?' or something like that the answer is YES... If you don't get that warning you are doin' something wrong...

This installs alotta maps-textures, scenes, help files and plugins that are either free or medicated as to not need further attention... You will have alotta shader plugins after this overwrite...

Like 543 MB unRARed...no pass-

https://workupload.com/start/pJDDUEBjxGq

OR

https://send.now/86isjps9me7v

OR

https://gofile.io/d/biDHt3

SendSpace not available as limit there is 300 MB...


What next? Probably Mental Ray 2.1 with special specific instructions so nobody has to go through what I did to get it running... the one good aspect of Mental Rays before 3.1 is that they use the standard Max materials... So you setup a render in scanline you don't hafta redo all the materials into mental ray materials, you just switch render engines, do some adjusting & go>>>

You should probably count on this all taking up at least 1 GB space when done... My Max 4.2 & LW 6.5 & C4D XL7.3 Roots are all between 4-5 GB of stuff EACH!... Heck, back in 2000 5 GB of space would be half the HDD...

 

[Dayron]

This version of 3ds Max didn't come with stock materials and maps? Or are these just extra presets?

 

[BellicoseBloke]

The stock materials & maps are in that upload... The 'stone', 'organics', 'metal'...etc both in maps as well as matlibs... There weren't big libraries then as peeps had small HDDs, images were small as to save resources... The 'CDs' then had alotta garbage fillers on them to take up space like demo software, old QT or adobe reader, codecs...

I thru in some DarkTree, FilterForge & GroundZero textures just for there to be something else... These have smallish textures as they came from my DeepPaint2D (not 3D) folder which paints much better with small textures & uses diffuse, bump & spec maps to paint in 2D...

A few to add are here - I got a nice collection of UV texture images for when you are doin' that crap plus in here are blank textures in white, grey & black up to 2K both JPG & TGA... what you need blanks for? Well, when you wanna 3D paint thru a connection to either DeepPaint3D or BodyPaint3D you assign textures in Max you need blank textures to paint on...

https://workupload.com/start/nRzJ8BDtvCA

OR

https://send.now/5ymqn34xhoj4

OR

https://gofile.io/d/eA1h1r


Back then there was not really great examples coming out I guess at that time ANYTHING 3D was cool even though the software was capable of a helluva lot more they wanted everything to work stable on the old hourglass machines...

BTW... This MAX 4.2 will install on Windows 2000 & Windows 98 all you need is at least 128 MB RAM & a 300 MHZ machine but you won't be able to do much at those specs...

But back to verbose... One thing that always got me was there not 'super-promoting' the software by either contracting or hiring splendid artists to create a richly detailed super-wench to show off the possibilities... NO!... It was always well here's your vase & here's your lamp, COOL Huh?... NOPE!... One's like TGS Amapi 3D which was a powerful modeler fell into that category... I woulda fired everybody in the company & hired ONE good 3D artist to really show it off using the BEST damn machine at the time....

A great 3D image says 100,000 chapters...

Discreet was not much better... I have a third-party 'Dosch 3D Virtual Sets' that are MAX files that work in 4.2 that eventually to upload but they use the simple scanline render but are quite nice now Discreet coulda done this too instead of kornwhole krap... Here's a few-

As with all Dosch scenes the 'spheres' are dummy objects you replace with your own garbage-

That's just a few out of 100 scenes...

 

[BellicoseBloke]

OK as we have here what was not promised... Mental Ray 2.1 for Max 4.2... Here's instructions I have reworked that most can follow to prevent strange problems-

Mental Ray 2.1 Install for Max 4.2-

In the 'Mental Ray 2.1 for 3D Studio MAX' Folder-

Place 'COMMON', 'NT-X86' & 'SETUP' Folders On Root Drive (Usually 'C' or whatever letter ROOT drive)... then Run Setup... Choose 'standard install' don't bother with licensing/SPM or other as this Mental Ray is already medicated

Now in the 'Max4 Connection to Mental Ray Full Install' Folder-

Run Max4 Connection & Install choosing the 3dsmax4 directory...

Now in the 'MentalRay Creek' Folder (Avoiding 'Crack' Names for folders)-

Then Overwrite Crack Into 3dsmax4 then copy the 3dsmax.dll from the 'Ray' folder to program files\mental images\mental ray\shaders Overwriting...Otherwise you will get error 'Can't find max_bitmapPyramid' error & some things won't work....

Restart Machine...

Mental Ray will now work but there will be an error on startup as there will be a maxtrans.dlr in both the plugins folder AND stdplugins folder...

To fix this-

Go in 3dsmax4/plugins folder name maxtrans.dlr to maxtrans.bak to avoid the duplicate error on every start...

If there are issues of not finding Ray.exe then check 'maxtrans.ini' in the 'plugcfg' Folder...

There will be a mental ray folder in max root now with scenes make sure you add 'bitmap' path to the folder in customize/paths/bitmap...


This is included as an RTF in the upload-

https://send.now/6879dogw08z1

OR

https://gofile.io/d/EFa5FX

OR

https://www.sendspace.com/file/traf5s

OR

https://workupload.com/start/NMg9PXENCJQ

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Whilst waiting for the next one should grab whatever plugs from MaxPlugins.de..

Probably the most important is the freeware digimation suite that has many plugs inside including MaxSculpt-

https://www.maxplugins.de/r4_files/digimation/The Digimation Suite for 3ds Max 4 and 5.zip


Others here make sure you are on the max 4 pages-

https://www.maxplugins.de/max4.php


I have several Max4 books but this is a good one for Max3-4-

Now there are TWO editions... make sure it's this one that has the yellow on the cover which is the 2001 version... The other is a 2005 version...

 

[BellicoseBloke]

OK, now there's finalRender Stage-0... Looking through I think most can get through the instructions... It's by far the easiest MAX finalRender to get working... There's included promo stuff plus a video which strangely enough is in WMV format which shows renders with terrible banding which are NOT present in the images of course... Don't know why they didn't use quicktime...

Now this is STAGE-0 not stage-1 so when you are done there will be no assignable renderer like as he is speaking in the video on stage-1... this earlier version works when you apply a finalRender MATERIAL to any object in a scene... In fact the render globals are all on the material panel or you can call them up separate by hitting ALT-Shift-F...

In archive 'Keygen' is changed to 'Qeyjen' and YES this fools the hosters so then I don't hafta encrypt the package...

https://send.now/i6b344n8z6zh

OR

https://gofile.io/d/eiJwEX

OR

https://www.sendspace.com/file/0puawi

OR

https://workupload.com/start/Qcn6CJkV3gS

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Here's Sitni Satni Afterburn for Max4... Also Discreet Combustion 4 which is a later product but medicates fine, Combustion 2 would not... Max4 & Combustion 4 communicate fine & there is an advantage as Combustion 4 uses After Effects plugins where Combustion 2 does not... I have a ton of AE plugs but no time for that right now... Combustion 4 was the first screenshot in this thread...

Keygen renamed to Qeyjen which seems to fool hosters everywhere... I guess if it scans out clean how would they know?... I should try uploading GIMP.exe & change the name to Keygen.exe & see what happens... 'File is BANNED!!' HaHaw...

https://send.now/anp7v5ilo6dg

OR

https://gofile.io/d/eRTbxH

OR

https://www.sendspace.com/file/gp3jda

OR

https://workupload.com/start/feug6cdr6yS


Like with LW65 testing connection with Max4.2 to BodyPaint3D & back... It's 'OK' not as slick as LW as for initial paint I have to manual reload textures on first painting otherwise it works fine...

 

[BellicoseBloke]

Here's the link to grab 'MJPolyTools for 3ds Max 4'... I made a toolbar & mounted it on the left you can see it in previous GUI screen shots... I also use it in Maya 4.5 which is a menu at the top on that GUI...

For whatever reason I have not seen this for Max anywhere else maybe many did not know of it at the time-

https://web.archive.org/web/20020819232657/http://www.maya3d.dk/scripts/mjpolytools/


Now this works for the 'Editable Poly' only not 'Editable Mesh'... In Max 4 - 4.2 the editable poly was new & did not yet have attributes of the editable mesh... Such as the common 'shift-drag' of edges or polygons that extrude a new edge or polygon... This does not work in editable poly mode in 4.2 only editable mesh but if you wanna use MJpolyTools you will have to convert to editable poly which just takes a second...

You will no doubt get used to switching back-forth there is no limit to how many times this can be done but if you have a symmetry object going on it will be broken in the process so in such a case best to just model on a half & just symmetrize on occasion to see how it all looks then delete the virtual side & continue modeling if you still plan on ping-ponging between editable poly & editable mesh but if you are done with the ping-pong you can keep the mirrored side... That is kinda how you model in Nendo, just one side then here-there mirror over to have a look then UNDO that operation as in Nendo all you get is ONE undo so you cant screw around much...

For most modeling just staying in editable mesh is not a problem... The previous Joan-Of-Arc by Michel Roger he did all in editable mesh using simple model tools...

BTW Here's more images of Brazil Render Engine from Back then... We'll get to that soon enough-

https://web.archive.org/web/20021010060710/http://www.trinisica.com/sub_view.asp?lv=1&mode=4