Share your favorite tips, tricks, workflows, and secrets in 3ds Max.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello Everyone!

I wanted to make a thread about sharing your favorite tips, tricks, or secrets found within 3ds Max.  From awesome hotkey combos to those really essential tools that everyone may not know about, this is the place to share!  I've started the ball rolling below with some really cool tidbits on the particle flow presets that people may not be aware of.  

Please, share yours too! 

Best Regards,

[Swordslayer]

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@AdrianWise8371 wrote:

What is an LOD? what do they do and how do I use them ?

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Note also that with a two-item group when you set min and max size both to zero and keep the simple object displayed in the viewport, it will replace the object on render every time giving you another hack for a fast viewport/complex render (similar to the Substitute modifier).

[Swordslayer]

Did you know that since R2 (20 years ago), you can use mouse strokes in max? Assign a shortcut to the 'Middle Mouse Button Toggle' item in the Customize UI dialog. When you switch it on, you can draw a gesture using the middle mouse button, when you turn it off, middle mouse button works as a pan tool again. For an unrecognized gesture a dialog appears where you can assign it to an action:

As you can see, it even allows you to execute the action for objects within the stroke extents boundary (rectangular/circlar) and other goodies:

You may hold down the Alt key or the Shift key (or both at once) while you draw strokes (the keys must be held while you're finishing drawing the stroke for them to be recognized). These strokes are recognized as different than the same strokes drawn without the key(s) held, which quadruples the number of easily/quickly drawn shapes.

You can also setup/trigger the strokes using the Strokes utility (Utilities > More... > Stroke). With that dialog active, you can use left mouse button instead.

[Anonymous]

Batman - batmobile - dark knight

3ds max modeling - workflow

[Anonymous]

Create custom and ready-to-animate 3D characters

A nice place to start when you are looking for ready to animate and customizable characters is the Autodesk Character Generator.

With subscription, you have access to advance features and high quality models.

Like i said, i think it's a good place to start and of course, nothing will replace your own perfectly rigged character with her ultra-realistic and dynamic hair 🙂

[Swordslayer]

There's another Scatter tool hidden inside the Helpers > Crowd. It's more cumbersome to use (you have to keep pressing Generate for each category, otherwise it won't do anything) but unlike the Scatter compound, you can use it to distribute completehe hierarchies (so it works with grouped objects, too). You don't have to create the Crowd object, just activate it and press the first button:

[Swordslayer]

Whenever the usual ring array, array tools or spacing tool don't cut it and you need something more complex, you can use the snapshot tool and animate the source node (you can animate pretty much any parameter, transform properties or modifier properties). To better see what you're doing, you can also activate Ghosting (and set it to more than the default 5 frames):

[melissa.lax]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for sharing! do you have any specific tips and tricks you'd like to share from this? 

Best,

Melissa

[AdrianWise8371]

Sometime you inherit geometry that needs work, if the geometry isn't instanced then you have the task of adjusting many different objects if they all need the same operation it can be quite a task.  Here's a solution to apply the same modifier to many objects in your scene.

[silentboof]

fast rendering using max viewport!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_c0T7kGJDQ

[Judith.Hageman]

Hi to all contributors,

No tip, that will take more time (years?)... 

I just want to let you know my appreciation for all your efforts and thank you for all your very generous contributions and sharing your experience!!!!

Thanks!

Judith

[MedalHellWay]

A my small contribution 🙂 To speed up, I prefer to write small strings of MaxScript and create buttons (drag and drop string in the toolbar).

Center the pivot

centerpivot $

Center the object/s in origin grid (0,0,0)

$.pos = [0,0,0]

Random wirecolor (useful when I have many object and I must differentiate the colors)

for i in selection do (i.wirecolor = random black white)

Apply a Standard Material for object without using the Material Editor (no slot use!): 

$.material = StandardMaterial()

Set Viewport to work with MaxScript

(
	global view_layout,view_active_1,view_set_type_front,view_active_2,view_set_type_pros
	(
	view_layout = viewport.setLayout  #layout_2h
	view_active_1 =viewport.ActiveViewport =1
	view_set_type_front = viewport.setType #view_front 
	view_active_2 = viewport.ActiveViewport =2
	view_set_type_pros = viewport.setType #view_persp_user
	view_active_1 =viewport.ActiveViewport =1
	actionMan.executeAction 0 "40407" 
	redrawViews()
	)
)

Reset the Viewport defoult

(
	viewport.ResetAllViews()
	redrawViews()
)

These are some of the dozens I've written :D 

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Very nice contribution @MedalHellWay, I love it!   I use little scripts like this myself for the more common tasks, it's super helpful.  Thanks for posting that!

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Just poking to say that I've followed up on requests by @bob.bernstein and @Judith.Hageman to have this stickied on the front page.  Thank you all for your contributions.

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Here's another tip!  

The Scene Converter scripts are backwards compatible, so the updated ones in 2018 work in 2017.   I've attached the updated scripts to this message. Copy them into:  C:\Users\%username%\Autodesk\3ds Max 2017

Drop the folder in there, technically the path is C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2017\SceneConverter

I would backup the old ones first just in case, but I've tested them and they are working great!

Best Regards,

[Judith.Hageman]

Thanks AJ for putting it at the top of the front page. It's a Top Thread and should be there, way easier to find!!!

Just wanted to show you what I have done with your tips and tricks so far. Since I normally only work with imported mechanical designs from Inventor and just make renderings, most of your tips are still way out of my league! But the ones that I can understand I use.

Every Friday there is a post called Friday Pictures on the Inventor Forum, where we show what we have been working on, which I think is great fun at the end of the week! Every now and then there is a theme. Last Friday it was "Friday pictures Easter edition". So I decided to put in some extra this time, including some of your tips. The animation I made for the Easter edition is too much child-play to show here , so I made a little scene especially for this thread as token of appreciation, I dare to show this. 

So:

- thanks for the topology tip @Alfred.DeFlaminis, at the end it worked pretty nice!

- thanks for the decall tip @AdrianWise8371. I used your blend tip so get the "marbled egg". A decall as you described I used in one my other renderings as well.

- thanks for the colour picker tip @Swordslayer. It saves me a lot of time! Instead of getting a bitmap sample of a material/colour dragged into the Slate Material Editor, I now am able to pick the colour straight outside Max, much less complicated.

- thanks for the tips on the fine-tuning of topology of the egg @-niels- (The tips were here before, but since it got to a question and answer post, it was moved to new thread).

Thanks everyone, Happy Easter!!!

J.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Happy to oblige, I should have done it when @bob.bernstein suggested it but it wasn't quite as popular a thread yet at that time.  Live and learn!

Best Regards,

[Isaac_Zuniga]

I cannot believe that I have not discovered this thread earlier, there are some quite legit shortcuts, tricks, and tips about 3ds Max in here!

I haven't had time to view and read all of the posts, but as of right now, I'd say that it'll probably be hard for me to find something that has not already been stated. The interesting one to me (so far) is about the particle flow preset shortcuts. I've wasted so much time starting from scratch and building my own system, only to find out that hidden within the program are presets. You saved me so much time with that Alfred!

I hope to post some useful information when I get more time to work with 3ds Max 2018 in the near future.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Isaac_Zuniga!

That's great to read!  I love hearing that these thread are helpful and that people gain from them.  Thanks so much for the confirmation, that's cool!  I use those presets a lot.  

Random Max tip:

There are two polygon counting methods you can use to gauge your poly budget.  One is by right-clicking the + symbol in your viewport, then going to Configure Viewports->Statistics tab.  From there you can turn on "Show Statistics in Active View"  and "Total + Selection" and get an idea of your scene count as well as your object count.  You can also go to the Utilities menu and press "More" to get a Polygon counter floater with red/yellow/green lines that help measure the budget as well.  I use them both all the time.  

Best Regards,

[lightcube]

Minor Addendum to AJ's tip about polygon count. You may find it better to Uncheck Polygon Count and instead turn on Triangle Count. Polygon count can be deceptive depending on what you are doing, because a single polygon can have an arbitrary number of Triangles. This is important when trying to gauge triangle counts (for sending into other apps like games). Some games won't have a concept like a Max polygon, but all should have Triangle.

[Swordslayer]

Another small tidbit. When wiring parameters, you can use Schematic View for a visual feedback on what's connected to what, and it's easier to pick the source and target tracks that way, too. Here it's in vertical hierarchy mode and with hide hidden filter active:

Too bad so many other things are broken in the Schematic View.