Batch Collect Thumbnails - 3ds Max

[nic190]

Hi, hope to find a solution to this problem,

would it be possible to extract the thumbnail preview of the .max file that i see in windows explorer? I'm zipping a lot of old files and it would be great to collect all the previews as i can't see them inside winrar. Automating the process is also a must as i don't want to screenshot every single preview.

Thank you

This post has been edited due to: @heather_tracy added the product to the title to help more users find this topic via external search.

[MartinBeh]

This tool https://thumbcacheviewer.github.io/ might be able to help you. Look in %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer for the tumbnail caches.

Also, there seems to be a free MAXScript utility for this available at https://miauu-maxscript.com/portfolio-item/miauu-get-external-max-file-properties-thumbnail-generato... 

[nic190]

Thanks for the insight. The script seems cool but unfortunately is supported until max 23

[MartinBeh]

Have you tried it? There is a good chance it will also work for newer versions of 3ds Max.

[nic190]

Yes i tried, it doesn't install unfortunately

[MartinBeh]

And which version do you need it for?

[nic190]

I'm on Max24

[A娘]

.max file is a compound document file , just like old version .doc , if you have some programming experience , it's easy to export thumbnail from file direct

the thumbnail info was saved in the stream named "\u0005SummaryInformation" , you can get the stream with open source dll , such as I use c# , with openmcdf , I can access .max file without the knowledge about compound document 

when get stream , check is there 0xFFFFFFFF at 1st 0x200 data , if no , there is no thumbnail saved in file , if yes , after 0xFFFFFFFF , the 7 and 8 bytes means width and next 2 means height , then from the 99 byte to end without last 6 bytes means the thumbnail data , parse them as rgb you will  get the thumbnail image (you should set a = 255 if need)