Most of the new features in this version are either to do with continuing the effort to legitimate NVIDIA iray as a physically based GPU renderer or with its interoperability with other software (in particular, the CAD importing tools and After Effects connectivity). The availability of compositing operations in the Slate material editor is an interesting addition, especially given After Effects features and that there's already been a bundling of Composite with 3ds Max for a couple of versions. So for modeling, by contrast, the changes are fairly small, but they are in areas where you'll be using the tools very often. These features are supported by videos from Autodesk, coupled with brief descriptions, that can be found at http://the-area.com/blogs/maxstation/n118_autodesk_3ds_max_2013_new_features. What follows is my fairly short summation of what may be beneficial about those additions or changes.
To start with, a mention has to be made that...