AE product manager Steve Forde notes an Autodesk announcement of some cool interoperability between AfterEffects and 3DSMax. Here’s some quotes from Autodesk and two video demos:

“3ds Max artists whose creative toolsets include Adobe® After Effects® software can now enjoy a level of interoperability that sets a new standard for 2D/3D data exchange. With bidirectional support for the transfer of cameras, lights, null objects, plane objects/solids, footage (including footage layering), blend modes, opacity, and effects, artists can iterate more effectively and reduce rework to complete projects in less time. “

“Starting with Adobe After Effects and Photoshop interop, we’ve been working with Adobe for awhile to develop the very best interop between 3ds Max and After Effects. Their engineers and ours have been talking and it shows in this new feature. I think Steve Forde, the product manager for After Effects says it the best:

The new interoperability workflow developed by Autodesk for 3ds Max and After Effects surprised and delighted us. It really is one of the best examples we’ve seen of an integrated workflow. The bi-directional nature of the solution will allow both After Effect as well as 3ds Max users to instantly update changes – in whichever product they occur in, significantly reducing the time and costs around project completion.” – Steve Forde, Senior Product Manager – Visual Effects, Adobe

I think we now have the best workflow with AE of any 3D application, but you be the judge. You can even set up the bidirectional link so that one person is working with Adobe After Effects on one workstation while another works on 3ds Max on a different machine. The update mechanism isn’t limited to a single workstation (we’re researching supporting OSX with this link). For now, we support both CS4 and CS5 with this mechanism. Based on our conversations with Adobe, we know there is more we want to do, but various limits of the products got in the way of taking it even further. The sharing mechanism is based on an XML file so this opens things up for using it to work with any compositing tool. Clever people will probably figure out how to do this before we do. Photoshop users weren’t forgotten either as the render passes can now go direct to a layered PSD with all the right modes supported. Now, if we just had an OSX version of 3ds Max we’d be all set…”

“We’re not done working with Adobe. This is just all we can talk about. I’m here at SIGGRAPH and we have a bunch of future roadmap discussions happening. We’re just getting started.”

An interesting sidenote is that LAFCPUG meetings are now made possible by Autodesk.