The final step of delivering the bright new version of 3DS Max has been made : after having  presented it at the latest GDC, and made it available for download several days later, Autodesk is shipping 3DS Max/Design 2010 packages since yesterday.

Among the most important improvements listed on the official What's New page :

• innovative modeling toolset
• improved material explorer
• integrated mental mill technology
• advanced particle effects (PFlowAdvanced, already in Creativity Extension for 3DS Max 2009)
• Containers toolset
• performance improvements
• better C# and .NET support
• … and a pretty lot of others

The product is sold online for $3495, with upgrade options from 2009 and 2008 version at $895 and $1795 respectively. The fully-functional 30-day trial is, as always, a good way to start