In this video, Autodesk 3D application specialist Michael Langmayer gives a demonstration of 3DS Max and how it takes advantage of multi-core computing. 3ds Max integrates the Mental Ray rendering engine and uses distributed processing, including over a network.
"Metal Ray allows you to take advantage of multiple processors -- not only processors in this machine, but processors in the network," he says. "We have something called distributed bucket rendering. If I switch this one on, and the network here is connected to other machines, I could basically connect to four other machines having dual-core processors intalled, and I could then render with the power of four machines."
He then demonstrates the rendering process: "At the bottom you can see we're getting all those different buckets. Each bucket is actually representing one core of this machine I'm running here. It's helping the artists or the creator of any office or design-related building to render a lot quicker. ...We can utilize this in the games market for texture baking, for example. ...We're really harnessing the power of those multi-threaded machines."
Langmayer also demonstrates the 3D sculpting tool Mudbox.