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,

[Isaac_Zuniga]

Wow, that's pretty dang cool. Thanks for sharing that man!

(If only I knew this trick earlier, so much time wasted on manually adjusting lights...)

[Anonymous]

Thought i'd take a look at the Max Forum for the first time. This was the first one i picked - "Share your favorite tips. . . " with Alfred DeFlaminis' tips on Particle Flow. I have struggled with PF for years, newbie medical illustrator wishing to be expert in particle (and fluid) flow. THIS IS HELPFUL. THANK YOU.

Susan

[Anonymous]

Sub-object edge selection trick:

Double clicking an edge selects the whole edge loop or ring in an editable poly and in the edit poly modifier.

[Anonymous]

Sub-object edge selection trick:

Double clicking an edge selects the whole edge loop or ring in an editable poly and in the edit poly modifier.

[miledrizk]

Hi,

This is a tutorial i made last year on how to extract 2D sections from 3D objects and export them to Autocad

https://youtu.be/8AM-K64yJIE

[Anonymous]

Sub-object edge selection trick:

Double clicking an edge selects the whole edge loop or ring in an editable poly and in the edit poly modifier.

[hasen3d]

[video]

[Anonymous]

That video it totally useless - the quality is so low that it's impossible to know what you're doing as the text is illegible in the extreme. 

[Anonymous]

My notes on UV Unwrapping for games...
______________________________________________________________________________

UV Unwrapping for Games

Have to decide what need to unwrap / e.g - if prop has seperate attachments that can be customised
2k map standard for games

Golden Rules..***

Apply one smoothing group per UV island

Follow the flow and Avoid hard edges in UV islands - e.g 45 degree angles. - stretching - normal maps effected. Relates to smoothing groups

Avoid zig zagging and distortion as much as you can - Make sure everything is as straight as possible on UV borders - Torus islands should be straightened

--

Clear all smoothing groups
TexTools plugin ****
- tools - smoothing groups from UV shells - caclulates smoothing groups based on UV islands - makes prop ready for texturing ****

--

Chamferzones google drive - shares his free project files

Useful stuff - smartstitch script

--

Smart stitch script***

to install script - new script - open - scripts folder - smart stitch - tools - evaluate all - customise user interface - set to shift plus S shortcut for smartstitch

Using smartstitch - selects a break on uv island and presses shortcut and it stitches for you

SS Options - UVeditor - tools
Align clusters - Scale Clusters - checked

Bias - 0

---

Unwrapping Processes..

Isolates a part
Has smoothing groups (watch highpoly special - chamfer modifier and smoothing groups)
Selects whole element - Flatten by smoothing group
Lays out UVs according to smoothing groups! **
Isnt perfect - may have stretching
Select everything - Peel mode (peel does everything that relax does but usually better)
Tex tools - edge mode
Select edges and click align
For parts you wont really see - dont worry too much about hard edge unwrapping

Rescale elements --- sets everything to same density

Selects faces on edge of a curve and does Flatten Mapping - smart stiches to make islands

Selects faces - does Quick Planar

Peel mode

If theres a mess after peel mode - do Pack Custom

To define a UV cut - select edge and click "convert edge to seams"

To straighten two sides of a striaght uv island - select the edges - make loop selection select the top right - press *---* - then select *|* (looks similar - 26min in tut**)

Unfold Strip from loop**
Edge ode- define seam - click unfold strip from loop - makes clean unwrap

When all unwrapped - rescale elements button

To layout**
Uncheck rescale under arrange elements
click pack normalize
Change padding to 0.1

look at parts you wont see much and scale them down
repeat the pack normalize

Last step:
Use textools to assign one smothing group to each UV island

Sometimes doesnt apply the hard edge principle to more organic shapes like grenade he wants it all to be one smoothing group

[AdrianWise8371]

Been away for a while being busy and all that work stuff that g ts in the way...

When populating or dressing a scene, you don't want to sculpting every object or detail. 3DSMax lets you build objects from nothing but modifiers.

For this example I create a "fortnite" like NPR shader again using procedural shaders, no texture painting

https://autode.sk/2sgHGqw

[AdrianWise8371]

Modelling with modifiers... check
Modelling with Shaders?

https://autode.sk/2IVqLBb

[Isaac_Zuniga]

No kidding Adrian!

Dang, I've been away from 3ds Max for far too long. I had no idea that it was possible to do procedural stuff like this. You're creating some really high quality tips and tutorials man, I might have to keep an eye on you, because you're showing me some things that the help documentation (as far as I'm currently aware) is not telling me.

Keep up the awesome work man!

[attila.cselovszki]

Hello Everyone!

Please let me share with you a great tool for scene management and batch rendering. It is in beta phase right now so every expert's opinion makes it better! It is ideal for dealing with a complex scene. You can try out the beta in: http://pulze.io/

[pyroskat]

Hello, here different shortcuts and tricks I use in 3dsmax.

[Anonymous]

Hi and thank you so much for the tips.

---

@Swordslayer wrote:

You can even apply the FFD modifier to the camera

could you be a bit more specific with that? how are you doing this and what can be achieved?

Cheers,

Adam

[Swordslayer]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hi and thank you so much for the tips.

---

@Swordslayer wrote:

You can even apply the FFD modifier to the camera

could you be a bit more specific with that? how are you doing this and what can be achieved?

---

Basically what it says, select a camera, add a FFD modifier, tweak it.

Similarly, the CameraCorrection modifiier is nothing else than a Skew modifier under the hood.

[Swordslayer]

When running the chamfer tool, if the Quad mode (i.e. not Standard) is active, you can control the amount of segments of chamfer. Without releasing the mousebutton, press down Alt and drag right to increase the number of segments, left to decrease:

[Anonymous]

This is awesome! I did not even know about this function... could you provide some more applicable examples? what is the main purpose of this? 

[attila.cselovszki]

Thanks for the hundreds of testers, comments and reports! We have upgraded and fine tuned the Pulze Scene Manager for 3ds Max. The latest 0.8.5 upgrade with new features, such as scene setup duplication, auto-creation of setups and many more is out and ready to be downloaded for free. The beta test period has been extended until August 31. 

[Anonymous]

thanks for sharing.

[Anonymous]

I guess something like this already exist or dunno, tho didn't find (y can set hotkey on ctrl+shift+d for example).

-- script to deselect everything for editable poly on sub-object level by loxotron v.0.1

Macroscript DeselectAllSubObjects 
	category:"Edit"
(
	on isEnabled return
	(
		selection.count == 1 and classOf selection[1].baseobject == Editable_Poly
	)
	
	t = dotnetobject "Timer"
	t.interval = 500
	
	local i = 5
	local subobject
	local deselsub
	
	fn resete =
	(
		t.Stop()
		i = 5
		dotNet.removeAllEventHandlers t
	)
	
	fn subobject =
		(
			t.Stop()
			subobjectlevel = i
			if i  > 0 then (
				i -= 1
				dotnet.addEventHandler t "Tick" deselsub
				t.Start()
			) else (
				dotnet.addEventHandler t "Tick" resete
				t.Start()
			)
		)
	
	fn deselsub = ( 
		t.Stop()
		max select none 
		dotnet.addEventHandler t "Tick" subobject
		t.Start()
		)
	
	fn modify = 
	(
		t.Stop()
		max modify mode
		dotnet.addEventHandler t "Tick" subobject
		t.Start()
	)

on execute do
	(
		dotnet.addEventHandler t "Tick" modify
		t.Start()
	)
)