New Animation Features

Set Key animation is a new animation mode. Its purpose is to support pose-to-pose animation, especially for characters.

The Auto Key button is for generating keys automatically. It is equivalent to the old Animate button in previous versions of 3ds max.

The Track View interface has been significantly improved. It now provides two separate, specialized editors:

Spline IK is an IK solver that uses a spline as the basis for the shape of the IK chain. Spline IK is suitable for modeling things like tails, snakes, tentacles, and ropes.

Spline IK on a multi-segment tail

The Boolean Controller is an on/off type of controller. Unlike the On/Off controller from previous releases, it does not alternate the on/off state at each key. Instead, each key has its own state definition: sequential keys with the same state do not affect the on/off state. Only when a key with a different state is reached, does the object state change.

Boolean Controller key display in Track View's Dope Sheet

Gimbal rotation is a new reference coordinate system for rotating objects interactively with the Euler XYZ controller. It gives you a one-to-one correspondence between axis orientation and the Euler XYZ tracks.

With gimbal rotation, the XYZ axes aren't necessarily orthogonal to each other.

The new Auto Tangent interpolation type guarantees a smooth transition between keys. It avoids the overshooting that is often seen with Smooth interpolation. See the Curve Editor Toolbar topic.

Auto Tangent is now the default interpolation type.

Key slopes are now automatically tangent to the interpolated curve, unless you specify otherwise.